An Ode To My Mother
My mum in funny mode whilst visiting my Aunty Kath in Dubai in the 1980s..
Today I stumbled across a book I bought a few years ago called “Healing Through Words,” by Rupi Kaur and I landed on a page about our Mothers.
Armed with a cappuccino on a sunny terrace in a local cafe, I started the exercise to write something my mother should know.
Within minutes I put my sunglasses on to hide the tears welling up as I started to pen an ode to my mother who passed in 2002 when she was 49 and when I was a lost and confused 20 year old girl.
I Invite you, whether your mum is alive or in spirit, to answer - What do you want your Mother to know? And then write it down and if tears come, allow them to cleanse and heal you…
I’ll start.
“Mum I need you to know that it broke my heart whenever I saw you in pain.
I wanted so badly to make it stop.
I panicked inside and everything got screwed up and tight - I felt desperate.
I didn’t know what to do with that pain in you - that then landed in me.
I just wanted you to be happy again.
Smiling again.
Carefree again.
Laughing again.
Beautiful again.
Larger than life again.
Magnetic again
Magic again.
Powerful again.
Alive again.
Yourself again.
And now I realise that you must have wanted all that for me too when you saw me in pain…..
We couldn’t fix each other could we mum?
If only we had known back then that we were more than flesh and blood.
If only we had known there was something bigger playing out.
If only we had known to simply breathe over and over into the body to calm the soul and still the muddied waters of ancestral trauma.
If only we had KNOWN deeply, rather than merely beLIEved, that there was an aliveness all around us trying to communicate and connect ….
If only we had known how to be with the pain, instead of being victims of it.
Bridey.
Bridget.
My mother.
My heart.
My most beautiful green-eyed, huge- hearted Irish Warrior Goddess of the hearth and home..
My greatest lesson from you is to KNOW my Self.
To KNOW the powerful lineage from which I come.
And live that power and that truth.
In your honour.
And in Aunty Kath’s honour, in Uncle Patrick’s honour, Nanny Hennessy’s honour and all ancestors of Earth who never knew who they truly were…
With knowledge, first comes anger, which helps motivate the rest of the search for the rest of life…
Followed by acceptance, understanding, compassion and peace.
And that peace?
Well, that is everything.
Coz that’s where the power is.
Love you to the moon and back forever and ever…
Your Daughter,
Sarah xxxxxxx”
Me with my mum, dad and another dear ancestor whom, had we not been so fast asleep, would never have been in our arms. But there it is xx