hate hate hate hate today
Go Ahead: Call Yourself �Mother�
By Robin J. Roberts, LCSW, PhD
The woman on the telephone was sobbing. It was bad news, again: a 10-week fetus with no heartbeat on ultrasound. How was she to wait for the inevitable miscarriage? How could she schedule a D&C, as if this were nothing but the remnants of "the products of conception?" Others might think she was exaggerating her pain, yet how could she ever call herself a mother, if she could be so cold and clinical?
Often I�ve been faced with situations like this. Whether a call brings news of a chemical pregnancy, a failed IVF, a miscarriage, or another menstrual period, the pain is immense and the caller wants to know, in some way, "Will I ever be able to call myself �Mother�"? Not a prophetess, what comfort can I offer under the circumstances? When one is so full of grief, what comfort can even be received?
What I want to say from my heart is this: What you cannot see now is that even in your grief, you are more of a mother than ever. Go ahead: call yourself �Mother�.
How can this be? How can one who feels so bereft of a child, so empty of love and barren from the inside out, be entitled to call themselves "Mother"? Why? Because mothers grieve.
The psychological archetype of the grieving woman is most frequently portrayed in myths and stories as the grieving mother. In depth psychology, an archetype is an unconscious model or idea that is inherent in all humans. Somehow in the human mind, a mother�s grief is more authentic than any other�s. Perhaps it is the sharp contrast between creating life and facing death, or the loss of a cherished part of oneself, that makes this pain so unquestionable. So, let me repeat: whether it is through miscarriage, stillbirth, or an unsuccessful procedure; whether it is for an egg, an embryo, a fetus, an infant, an opportunity or a dream � mothers grieve.
The capacity of the mother to grieve is a highly valued aspect of the mother archetype. Universally, a mother�s grief is understood as an expression of her very connection to humanity even through the experience of loss. Religious stories and myths give hope and comfort through this figure, as when Christianity offers the image of the Madonna holding the body of Christ to those who suffer. In Jewish mysticism, the grieving mother is found in the figure of the Shekhina, the feminine aspect of God, known as the "Mother of all Souls." Legend says that while the Jewish people are in Exile, the Shekhina grieves "like Rachel weeps for her children. " In Buddhism, the Kwan Yin is the "Great Mother" who "hears the cry of the world ". As an expression of her compassion and mercy, legend says that she sacrificed her own full enlightenment in order to comfort those who suffer on earth. Thus, she is often represented holding a flask of mercy that she pours over the world; others say these are her tears, and statues of her often contain secret receptacles that drip water into a dragon�s mouth.
When we first decide to become mothers, most of us are focused on the fulfilling aspects of motherhood: the satisfaction of nursing our infant, feeling the weight of a baby in our arms, and drifting off to sleep with a little one on our chest. Further on, we imagine family times and teaching our children our traditions and values. We are not the least dissuaded by warnings that mothers are constantly exhausted from putting themselves last in order to meet the needs of others, or that mothers can excessively worry about their children, imagining all sorts of ways that little ones can come to harm. Yet these less attractive aspects of motherhood, including sorrow and grief, are innate to the full experience of mothering.
After we adopted our son, I thought I was having bizarre thoughts when I imagined that he might be smothered in daycare. I cried on the way to work. When I shared this with some female colleagues, they burst forth with their own fears. One woman said that she had to imagine going through her child�s funeral in order to feel that she could handle her worst fears. Thus, even as her son was alive, she grieved his death as only a mother would. Finding that other women, biological and genetic mothers, had fears and feelings similar to mine, made me feel more authentic as a mother.
When experiencing infertility, we easily make a mistake in thinking that mothers are made biologically. They aren�t. As the treatment cycles pass and the bills mount despite our best intentions and good character, we should all know that biology is indifferent to us. It is not motivated by character or moral intention. The production of eggs, the implantation of an embryo, or the birth of a child alone is insufficient to make a mother.
Foremost, mothers are made psychologically. For those dealing with infertility, this process begins long before conception. It starts with a dream, and we mold that child in our dreams cycle after cycle. We have plenty of time to imagine whom our child will look like and to pick out names. Feelings for our child precede the physical form, often with an intensity that others cannot understand. Emotionally, we are already constellating the maternal archetype within ourselves whenever we look tenderly at developing follicles on the ultrasound screen or grieve a poor egg retrieval.
Mothers are also made socially. In Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich reminds us:
The �childless woman� and the �mother� are a false polarity, which has served the institutions both of motherhood and heterosexuality. There are no such simple categories�For one thing, in the original matriarchal clan all females, of whatever age, were called �mothers� � even little girls. Motherhood was a social rather than physical function. Women �were sisters to one another and mothers to all the children of the community without regard to which individual mother bore any child. (p. 250)
In our society, we have lost the connections that accrue in a collective sense of motherhood, like that described by Anita Diamant in The Red Tent. How different would it be if each of us could rejoice at another woman �s pregnancy and feel connected to her infant? Instead, we each have to produce our own, and in the doctor�s waiting room, it�s every woman for herself.
When we step out of the biological arena, we see that there are many ways to cultivate the maternal archetype within ourselves. Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, points out that the maternal archetype is not restricted to being a mother; a woman activates it in "teaching, nursing, counseling, in any job in which helping others is part of the role � and in any relationship in which she can be a nurturing person". Traditionally consigned to these "helping professions," American women have increasingly moved out of these arenas and vitiated their identity with the maternal archetype.
If these ways of mothering feel empty to you, you are not alone. Many women react angrily to well-intended advice that they care for a pet, plant a garden, or do volunteer work as a substitute for mothering a child. To someone devoted to becoming a mother, the comparison of these activities to motherhood trivializes her dream. None of these activities is the equivalent of motherhood. It may help, however, to think of them not as sublimation of the maternal instinct, but rather as cultivating the maternal archetype within you. By instilling the habit of tending others, they prepare you for the discipline of a demanding relationship with your own child.
Yet the maternal archetype is most easily integrated without any conscious intention on our part. It really "gets under our skin" when we find ourselves feeling like mothers feel, thinking like mothers think, and acting like mothers act. As women we mother each other whenever we cease competition among ourselves and turn to support and encouragement. Loyalty to family and friends, protection of the environment, devotion to a cause, compassion for suffering, fears for the future of humanity and grief for the world � all of these are vital expressions of the maternal instinct within us. When we dismiss these venues of self-expression as poor imitations of the "real thing", we diminish ourselves. No wonder we hurt so much.
Surprisingly, even when we find ourselves gripped by the seemingly unmotherly emotions of anger, jealousy, and envy, we are evoking the maternal archetype within us. At such moments, we are identifying with the negative aspect of the mother rather than the positive. Like the two sides of the moon, the maternal archetype has its bright and dark aspects. Just as the positive aspect expresses compassion and gives life, the negative aspect expresses rage and wields destruction. In our darker moments, we emulate the negative mother when we are jealous of other women, or even angry at the baby we long for yet doesn�t come to us quickly. Some women find it impossible to stop treatment, because doing so feels like abandoning the baby they have already formed in their minds. At such moments of despair, the negative mother emerges from the unconscious and makes herself felt in distressing ways, like unwarranted guilt. To change our path towards motherhood is neither betrayal of a dream nor murder of the unborn, though it may feel this way. It is an act of courage that is assisted by the expression of grief for the lost dream. We may pass through a period of mourning or depression along the way. Remember? Mothers grieve.
I have to say that by enduring the experience of infertility, many infertile women come to be fabulous mothers. They will tell you this themselves, crediting their maturity, patience, and gratitude to the labor of infertility. At the end of their struggle, they have much more empathy towards other women. In learning to persist towards their goals and overcome obstacles, they become better advocates for their children as well.
Every initiate goes through a period of preparation in which they live "as if" they were already a member of the order they seek. Gradually they take on the tasks and duties of the role they desire, and they try on their new identity. As part of this process they often choose a new name for themselves. So, this Mother�s Day, start using your new name. Go ahead: Call yourself �Mother.�