Mothering Without a Map, and Feels in Journal

I’m still sad. I still feel melancholic. I am still down. But, I feel a lot better, today.
DH and I had a pretty intense weekend. lol. It started out in crisis. Ended with sober and honest expression. So pretty great, all in all.
It’s sort of weird to be one to really enjoy a crisis. Not as in, this is SooOoo much fun- but as in, well it’s exciting. And the obvious is, it’s an opportunity for change. Especially when the status-quo has been a real grind, change in a better direction is incredibly welcome. I just had the thought that, maybe my intense year and a half of therapy was a mistake. As in- I made a butt load of real, impactful and foundational changes in very quick succession, while my life partner did not. So the catch-up time lag is frustrating, annoying, etc. And I feel impatient. But I also have accepted that it will take a long time. I have decided to be happy with his promise that he will work toward the ideal that we mutually agreed on. And he has. But I can still feel annoyed and frustrated and impatient. It’s okay to be ambivalent.

Mothering Without a Map, I picked up because I was feeling curious about it. It is mostly just a collection of letters or personal stories of undermothered mothers. I am perpetually curious about this topic. And of the experience of well-mothered mothers, too. It is one thing to intellectually understand what a mother does… but try doing it on an intellectual standard, only. It’s very difficult, if not impossible.
One thing that has very much come into focus right off the bat is my communication. I noticed that the stories, writing, dialogue, are all very soft; feminine, warm, comforting, nurturing. I never really even thought about it before, but I now realize that I do read and almost exclusively enjoy the male writer. I have read women but in a very different context; usually research, thesis, evidence based books. Never a novel, and never anything personal.
Ah, no. I have read the Clan of the Cave Bear series. That was a woman? I think. Yes. Jean Auel. So there is the exception, perhaps, but I think still, those books were more historical novel, and certainly I don’t remember any telling warmth, feminine tone, or the like. Maybe it’s the content.
Anywho, I thought through my own Genesis and evolution of communication. I am, I think, naturally en extrovert. I am, naturally, a say-it-like-it-is, assertive, blunt, no punches pulled type of communicater. Now, that was really strongly derailed, almost destroyed even, when I was about 8. About 8 is when I started writing, also.
So what happened was, I was shut down in the eyeball-to-eyeball communication and that overflowed to paper. I was never taught or given a chance to go back and develop conversational skills. So I tend to bring a lot of writing and reading grammar or style into my speech. Which I mean. Yes, I sound smart. I am eloquent. I use big words. But I can’t really connect with people. I have no idea what it would mean to sound reassuring or comforting, or motherly. I mean I never heard a syllable of example from my mom, and my own exploration was strictly impossible. My dad talked a lot, and he used very technically correct speech. So again with the smart, eloquent, etc…
You know it’s really quite ironic, now that I am recalling my mom’s attitude about talking, conversation and speech. She had this very… “I may not be exact or correct, but at least I can communicate with everyone, connect and understand.” She said so very frequently about her work. She’d tell me “all you have to do is know the right people, and be on their good side, to be a success,” and even as she would make me listen and watch her practice for her presentations for work, I never received a moment’s thought that maybe I, the little child, needed her to educate and show me her prowess in presentation and communication. She prided herself on and bragged about her ability to connect and understand… to her little child whom she catastrophically failed to understand or connect with.
You know there is no end to this kind of cruelty to a child, because it really does create hardship, pain, and confusion for decades, if not the child’s life. Child abuse is the gift that just keeps on giving.