Our mothers. Those unique, challenging, loving, fallible humans. There is rarely a relationship that we will enter into which is more complicated than the one we have with our mothers. And truthfully, it doesn't matter if they are birth mothers, heart mothers, adoptive mothers, intellectual mothers, spiritual mothers, the mother's we needed and didn't get or the mothers who showed up everyday even when we worked hard to push them away. These are deeply tangled emotional spaces.
My mom died three years ago during COVID and I can say that there was a grief I experienced that I had never felt before. It was a daily punch in the chest. I thought I had more time. I thought we had more time. She was a hard woman to understand. There were times when she was incredibly loving and supportive juxtaposed to times when she was insensitive and uncaring. She was deeply demanding and uncompromising, and also soft and sensitive. There were times when she was brutally honest and others when she cloaked her words in obvious falsehood. She was creative and artistic and with that, also mercurial. She was confusing.
My relationship with my mom was tough. I loved her fiercely and despised so much of about how she showed up for me and my siblings. We fought. We went without speaking. We were unforgiving. But I think that all happened because my mom had no support from other women. She was isolated for the bulk of my childhood in the home and had few friends. She had strained relationships with her mother and siblings and their presence in our lives was chaotic and unsettling.
The women she had "friendships" with were competitive and negative. I remember one of her "friends" coming to the house with boxes of donuts after my mom had been working really hard on losing weight (through disordered eating). She brought them deliberately because she knew that my mom struggled with both depression and an eating disorder. That level of cruelty was shocking and obvious to someone who, at the time, was nine years old. It showed me early on that many women could not be trusted.
It is interesting to me that when I reflect on my life with women, I see similar patterns that I saw in and learned from my mom. I too have gone out of my way for women who had no intention of loving or caring for me. I too have spent time worried about the wrong women and how they thought about me. I too have chased after unhealthy relationships and turned my self into an emotional contortionist to avoid the pain of abandonment by these women. And yet. The abandonment still happened. The pain still came and with it a deep sadness and loneliness. This pain and sadness ushered in feelings of never being good enough to have relationships with women that were authentic, trusting, and safe. My mom felt that too.
And as I reflect on this upcoming Mother's Day, I understand that building The Holistic Hive was an act of love for my mom. I wanted to create a space that she never had for women like her and like me. I wanted to build a safe cocoon for us to explore our strengths and shore up our difficulties. Where we could tend each other and be tended too, equally.
And I wanted to do that for all the moms I talk to daily who struggle with the "mom tests," the sleepless nights, the worry, the exhaustion, the stress combined with the deep joy, love, and awe they feel about their children. Being a mom is so hard. We expect them to be miracle workers, healers, therapists, guides, teachers, nurses, warriors, disciplinarians, superheroes, always available, always present, always connected. There is no other role that women play that is more demanding than being a mother. And we just expect that they should be good at that without support.
But just like a beehive, the Queen needs her attendants. She needs the commitment of other women to include to herself and her children. She needs the love, respect, care, and attachment from women who see her queenliness but also see the woman, the inner child, and the angry teenager that informs her harmonious rule. So at this hive, we help polish up and straighten those crowns so that our Queens can continue their reign.
Here's to strong women: May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.
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