She’s nine years old and yet to experience the kind of soul connection and depth of feeling that happens in adult life, but she knows when she likes someone, and she knows when they don’t like her back.

 

I’ve been watching her wrestle with the grief, arguing with herself about whether her suspicions are right, whether it will get better, will things go back to the way they were, is it time to move on? My prayer for her has been that in each moment, she will be gifted wisdom to discern who to give her heart to, who to companion with, who is equally yoked. For the rest of her life, I can’t wish that she’ll never experience heartbreak, but I can speak blessing over her life, that she will have knowledge of her worth, discernment about who sees her, and who cannot.  

 

It was the week of Mother's Day that I truly felt it. I could see the natural evolution of the friendship dynamics amongst her peers, changing, and even though it is a part of life and nobody’s fault, she feels shunned.

 

I felt the pinch in my heart, almost as if it was happening to me. It wasn’t projection, or over-functioning, helicoptering or insecure attachment.

 

It was a mother’s love.

 

I had never experienced this particular kind of empathy until I had a child. Even though I had deeply loved, certainly held my partner and my friends through times of sorrow, the mother-child bond is different. It’s not that you live your child’s experience for them, but you do carry a share, a little slice, a little sample of the punch, of the emotions they carry.

 

Perhaps there is a scientific explanation for this, I don’t know. Certainly, we are evolutionarily wired to protect our child from danger, so we sense when they are hurt and we quickly develop a razor-sharp lens that shuts out the noise and puts their needs above the rest. I never thought I could leap out of bed at 1am to respond to newborn’s cries, but of course, I did.

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Mary, my (big girl) also recently dislocated her knee. Whilst she was in the process of recovery, I woke up one morning with the strangest pain in my left knee, the same side as her injury. I hadn’t fallen, or tripped or injured it, I just woke up with it.

 

Perhaps that’s a coincidence.

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Perhaps.

 

I’m not sure, however, how do we explain a share in social pain?

 

I found myself contemplating the nature of this bond. What am I to do with it? Why have these been gifted to me; these little shares in sorrow and joy?

 

There's story in the Bible about a man called Simeon, a deeply spiritual man, who spoke a piercing prophesy to Mary and her newborn Jesus. The story goes that he approached her as a young mother in the Temple, though he was a total stranger, and said to her that he believed her son would be “a sign that will be opposed so the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2.35)

 

The sorrow of unrequited love, of being shunned from the group, of social pain, will be deeply felt, first by a son, and then by his mother who will also take bite and eat it.

 

It is a piercing to the heart when this happens. But why, I wondered, does a mother’s love feel a share in it? We can’t take the sorrow away, we can’t live our child’s story and we can’t protect them from the very healthy, very necessary process of learning from their choices and their mistakes.

 

I began to see the importance, not only of being helped to move on and love again, but that it’s in the nature of love to hold the weight of the experience, and let it have its moment.

 

Before we move on and resurrect, we give human sorrow the weight it deserves, allowing ourselves to feel and grieve. A mother’s love does more than put band-aids on cuts and bruises, giving helpful advice and dusting off the residue. Mothers give emotions their moment, because if it matters to our kids, it matters.

 

This is what I’m learning about love.

 

She waits. She hopes. She perseveres.

 

She doesn’t try to heal what hasn’t been felt.

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Religion tries to do that, but not God. God feels it in his body, to his soul, allowing the pain of rejection to ricochet through his mother’s heart as it wells in his throat and fills his lungs, until it has had its hour. Only then, can it be brought to its end, and a new day can dawn.

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Mother's Days

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Written for Mother's Day 2023

Image by Caroline Hernandez