Over the years since Emiel died I’ve travelled often to the property at Glenorchy feeling both a desire to be on this piece of land surrounded by mountains and a sense of responsibility to complete what Emiel started and make it into a beautiful place to come to.
We arrived last evening. It being summer the sun was still up, and, as usual, the first thing I did was walk about and check out what had grown in the garden and how the fruit trees and others were going; this despite having left here only three weeks beforehand.
I have gotten fairly philosophical over the past few years, finding that if I didn’t allow myself to think about all that I felt needed doing in the short time I’m here and instead just pottered from one task to the next as my mood dictated, I often got things done and left feeling that there just might be a little less to do next time. Sometimes I even did nothing! But most people would tell you that that was never for very long.
But in my recent efforts to be more conscious of what’s really going on in me I got up today, went out to where only three weeks ago there was, with a little imagination, quite a pretty little garden, and attacked with anger all the bracken that had sprung up and was choking what was left of the plants that hadn’t been eaten or trampled by visiting wildlife. And, not satisfied with that, I moved onto further dismantling a wire enclosure I’d built only a few years ago to protect chickens and their chicks from the ever-present hawks circling above.
Why dismantle? The chicks were gone, the weeds were high, the construction was built by an amateur working without advice or experience and the hope was that the same wire would be of more use protecting plants in the garden. Will I never learn??
It seems not. Eventually the anger gave way to grief, meaning that the fury went out of my self-talk of ’why does everything I do not work out the way I want it? Why do I have to do everything all by myself? Why can’t I get on top of all this? And so on.
And the childhood memory came of my making a chicken coop when I was about 12 years old from the scraps of building material under the house that my dad said I could use, because I desperately wanted to keep chickens (which my dad later obtained for me). And I recognised the connection between my anger and grief at not getting help with this childhood venture – my father being busy working hard to provide for us all. I could see that same loneliness and frustration, and determination to prove to the world that I can do what people tell me I can’t do, and underlying that, the awareness of the lack of a parent who was available to help me fulfil my desire.
Why ruminate on all this? I can see why I go to the local woodcraft group where there are all these older men only too happy to help me with advice. They are temporarily filling a hole of need in me. But the need returns as soon as I leave. I recognise that I have a strong need to lean on competent capable men who will show me what to do and help me, but also that many men will pick up on the angry feeling ’I can do this all by myself’ which I am only starting to see I have been emitting all my life. No wonder it’s impossible to please me!
And the way out? Well I know the theory: continue to feel that childhood grief that started it all. Practically, for me that means a different approach to my time in Glenorchy. Instead of keeping a lid on my sense that there is too much for me to do here and it’s all too hard anyway, I can just let all my frustration out – there’s plenty of physical outlets here for that! And see what happens.
Maybe one day I can put a sign on the gate – "No help needed here" !!
Friday, January 28, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Touching on motherhood
Who would have thought it? Certainly not me. Me, Karen Pronk, blogging??
But there it is. I have a strong suspicion that I've stolen one of my son's titles - where I'm going, where I've been - but I don't yet know how to change it, and can't just now think of anything better. So, sorry Nick.
I woke today thinking about Mary's blog (http://magdalena-mary.blogspot.com/) which has inspired me so much in recent weeks, and it occurred to me that I could do the same! I can see the process of writing about what is happening in my life (and what I want to happen that doesn't) as being pretty challenging, but also less demanding that others listen to me in person.
And immediately after that thought was the feeling that I could start talking about this whole 'demanding' thing. Specifically, what I am finding out about myself as a needy and demanding person, something I would never have believed once.
It started around the middle of last year when I wrote to my daughter suggesting that she told me how she really felt about me. She replied with very strong statements about how she felt manipulated by my sadness and the feeling that it was her responsibility to make me happy and she needed to mother her own mother, to mention a few things.
When I received this reply I actually laughed out loud! I thought it was quite funny because she expressed so exactly how I felt about my own mother and of course I just knew I wasn't like that at all. I, who have always been strong and competent and independent, or so I had been told and was happy to believe. I, who never allowed my emotions to show, happy or sad, or so I thought.
But over the following weeks and months I continued to try on this idea of myself as needing constant reassurance, as actually being angry at the world without even being aware of it, so long had I been in the habit of withdrawing into myself at any sign that things weren't going my way. And I found, to my discomfort, that my daughter's words fitted surprisingly well. I am so much more like my mother than I ever wanted to be. I manipulate others with my moods, all the while telling myself that all I am doing is going away to be by myself. How many times when my children were young did they cry out to me in frustration to adjudicate over their arguments, to listen to them? And I well know my response - to try as hard as I could to insulate myself, to tell myself that this childhood fighting was a natural part of growing and to let it run its course, though all the while feeling it was up to me to find a solution and that I felt completely inadequate to do so.
There's another thing: I have felt, since at least my teens, that my mother was incompetent. I remember as a child often weighing up all the advantages I saw of being a male but deciding I was better off as a female for the sole reason that I could have children. I wanted to be a mother.
But lately I've been asking myself, how much of this desire was based on the need to prove that I could be a better mother than my own?
I spent much of my childhood isolating myself and as I mentioned, I now look at that, at least in part, as an expression of anger at the world. My daughter when little was an angry child, but as I reflect on it now, in her teens she became, as she herself described, a person who felt she needed to make me happy. I didn't recognise it for what it was at the time. If asked, I would have said, 'oh yes, she was a difficult child but now she's a really nice person, so caring and attentive, and we get on so well'. Read between the lines 'and I am such a good mother'.
But I am so very lucky to have a daughter who has chosen to follow a path of being truthful no matter what the cost. Though often, to be honest, I don't feel very lucky. I have to say that I would love to revisit the days when we spent time together and talked and felt good - at least I felt good. But I hold on to the firm hope that, especially as I experience and release my own childhood feelings of anger at my mother, and my own belief that I am not a good mother, she and I will have a deeper and more real interaction, one not based on her reassuring me and watching for any sign I might withdraw with a view to not upsetting me.
And perhaps we will find common interests and joys and have fun together, or perhaps we won't. But I know one day I will feel that that doesn't matter. I can love her without needing to be a part of her life. I can look forward to every future interaction being fully truthful and real - and I have a feeling that that will be wonderful.
But there it is. I have a strong suspicion that I've stolen one of my son's titles - where I'm going, where I've been - but I don't yet know how to change it, and can't just now think of anything better. So, sorry Nick.
I woke today thinking about Mary's blog (http://magdalena-mary.blogspot.com/) which has inspired me so much in recent weeks, and it occurred to me that I could do the same! I can see the process of writing about what is happening in my life (and what I want to happen that doesn't) as being pretty challenging, but also less demanding that others listen to me in person.
And immediately after that thought was the feeling that I could start talking about this whole 'demanding' thing. Specifically, what I am finding out about myself as a needy and demanding person, something I would never have believed once.
It started around the middle of last year when I wrote to my daughter suggesting that she told me how she really felt about me. She replied with very strong statements about how she felt manipulated by my sadness and the feeling that it was her responsibility to make me happy and she needed to mother her own mother, to mention a few things.
When I received this reply I actually laughed out loud! I thought it was quite funny because she expressed so exactly how I felt about my own mother and of course I just knew I wasn't like that at all. I, who have always been strong and competent and independent, or so I had been told and was happy to believe. I, who never allowed my emotions to show, happy or sad, or so I thought.
But over the following weeks and months I continued to try on this idea of myself as needing constant reassurance, as actually being angry at the world without even being aware of it, so long had I been in the habit of withdrawing into myself at any sign that things weren't going my way. And I found, to my discomfort, that my daughter's words fitted surprisingly well. I am so much more like my mother than I ever wanted to be. I manipulate others with my moods, all the while telling myself that all I am doing is going away to be by myself. How many times when my children were young did they cry out to me in frustration to adjudicate over their arguments, to listen to them? And I well know my response - to try as hard as I could to insulate myself, to tell myself that this childhood fighting was a natural part of growing and to let it run its course, though all the while feeling it was up to me to find a solution and that I felt completely inadequate to do so.
There's another thing: I have felt, since at least my teens, that my mother was incompetent. I remember as a child often weighing up all the advantages I saw of being a male but deciding I was better off as a female for the sole reason that I could have children. I wanted to be a mother.
But lately I've been asking myself, how much of this desire was based on the need to prove that I could be a better mother than my own?
I spent much of my childhood isolating myself and as I mentioned, I now look at that, at least in part, as an expression of anger at the world. My daughter when little was an angry child, but as I reflect on it now, in her teens she became, as she herself described, a person who felt she needed to make me happy. I didn't recognise it for what it was at the time. If asked, I would have said, 'oh yes, she was a difficult child but now she's a really nice person, so caring and attentive, and we get on so well'. Read between the lines 'and I am such a good mother'.
But I am so very lucky to have a daughter who has chosen to follow a path of being truthful no matter what the cost. Though often, to be honest, I don't feel very lucky. I have to say that I would love to revisit the days when we spent time together and talked and felt good - at least I felt good. But I hold on to the firm hope that, especially as I experience and release my own childhood feelings of anger at my mother, and my own belief that I am not a good mother, she and I will have a deeper and more real interaction, one not based on her reassuring me and watching for any sign I might withdraw with a view to not upsetting me.
And perhaps we will find common interests and joys and have fun together, or perhaps we won't. But I know one day I will feel that that doesn't matter. I can love her without needing to be a part of her life. I can look forward to every future interaction being fully truthful and real - and I have a feeling that that will be wonderful.
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