M is for

O is simply cos you're growing Old

T is for the Tears you shed to save me

H is for your Heart of purest gold

E is for your Eyes with love-light shining

R is Right and Right you'll always be

Put them all together, you're my MOTHER, a word that means the world to me.

The world. A world. A lifetime of detangling, disentwining, unravelling and re-stitching. Thanks Howard Johnson for those lyrics, first heard by me in a Dorothy Hewett play, The Chapel Perilous, sent to audition at age 14 by my mother whose unfulfilled dreams it was my obligation to execute with all the commitment of the luckiest girl in the world.

Did Darren Aronofsky write me as a character? Am I Eleanor Oliphant? Is it my karma to live out a classic text-book Death Mother scenario?

What I did somehow piece together as I emerged as a patchwork person from my chaotic childhood, is that I was raised in poverty by a trauma survivor solo mother who struggled with mental health and addiction issues along with high impact physical ailments; but who also had erroneous middle class aspirations, an audacious baby boomer sense of entitlement, and the boldest streak of creative genius I have ever known in any single human being.

If she had lived as an artist, she would have made so much more sense. If she had accessed good therapy, maybe even meds, she would have suffered so much less. If she had been supported with some parenting education, she would have saved me so many years of therapy and bad choices. But you get what you get and you don't get upset; and oh the things I inadvertently learned.

Dear Readers: my listicle, in two parts, of things I learned from my Mother:

Part One, 1-10, things I learned the hard way

1. If you are traveling around the world in the seventies with two young children and end up in a cult, don't succumb to the resident sex-pest. If you have no choice, and end up with a child, please don't tell them their entire childhood what a horrible person their absent father was, get some help there.

2. Let your kids do their own homework. Getting 10/10 for a project that your mum did doesn't feel anything like satisfaction or pride, and makes accomplishments later in life feel suspect.

3. If you really wish you could've done ballet, take up ballet, don't push your kids into ballet.

4. Learn to speak kindly to yourself so that you can speak kindly to your children.

5. Process your own shame until you are free of it so that you don't pass it on as a family trait.

6. Celebrate your children's independence rather than feeling and acting threatened that they are a separate person from you. Under no circumstances do you guilt trip them for spreading their wings, let alone for dipping their toe in the water.

7. Have friends, interests, and projects outside of your children.

8. Listen to your children, and if they happen to tell you about a hard time, don't gaslight them. If you don't know what that is, find out. Your unfortunate past is not your children's responsibility.

9. Raise your children to know that they belong in this world, allow them access to normal childhood experiences so that they can relate to other children.

10. Teach them self-respect by modeling self-respect. Raise them to know that they are welcome and worthy. If this is hard, get help.

Part Two, 11-20, things I am truly grateful to have learned directly:

11. Gardening is good for the soul.

12. Creativity can get you through just about any situation.

13. There is no such thing as too many books.

14. The world of the performing arts is magical, and befriending your place on the stage early in life will have so many benefits in all directions.

15. Buddhism is where it's at.

16. Music education makes life delicious.

17. Scrabble is sexy.

18. If you can't afford it, make it or make do.

19. The Earth is our Mother, there is no planet B.

20. Humour helps.

As challenging as it has been to make sense of the world as a person who first needed to recover from their childhood; I am grateful every day for my mother's grit and tenacity, her brilliant intelligence, and her amazing relationship with plants and the arts. Every day I am able to feel more compassion towards her as I try to understand the extent of her struggle. The uniqueness and depth that I enjoy as the person I am today, result directly from things being exactly as they were in the childhood I survived.

Thank you Mother Dear. I do love you so.

Copyright 2021 Zoe Xanadu