Parenting
Appreciating Mom on a Good Day
In Honor of Mothers Day
I admit that before becoming a parent I believed, at least subconsciously, that our parents are, if not solely, somewhat to largely responsible for our “challenges” in life. In other words, I blamed my parents for my faults (what faults?!) — particularly my mother, the blame part of my brain winning over the pleasure part; I might have remembered her soothing washing of my hair with warm water, then rinsing with cold water as I leaned back over the kitchen counter once a week for my first eight years.
My studies in psychology and child development at Columbia University as part of training to become a social worker reinforced this convenient opinion of parental programming. So did various therapies I’d been involved with, including the Fischer-Hoffman group therapy session (at the church in Berkeley) where we beat pillows with all our might with baseball bats, as if we were hitting mom and dad, screaming, “I hate you, you (fill in the blanks).” (And there were a lot of blanks).
Although that therapy was completed (if such things can be said to be completed) occasionally, over time, in a bad year, in a bad time of month, on a bad day, on a bad phone call or visit this primal anger gradually would build, (genes screeching), up until the point of no return, and…
