Honoring My Mother

I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother this week, probably brought on by the passing of my friend’s mother two weeks ago and the approach of Mother’s Day this coming Sunday.  Last weekend the friend who just lost her mother, another girlfriend and I, all good friends since early grade school, got together for an afternoon visit that lasted well into late evening.  We talked and talked sharing a lot of stories about our very different early adulthood situations. While we all live within 20 miles of each other we pretty much parted ways after high school graduation as part of the “individuation” process, I suppose.  A revelation that we all came to that evening while catching up on the last 40 plus years, is that we had each been envious of each other. They were envious that my family’s lifestyle was more abundant financially and I was envious of the attention, closeness and affection they received from their parents within their smaller nuclear families. We had spent a lot of time in each others homes and couldn’t help but notice differences in family lifestyles. After sharing our jealousies last weekend, we had a good laugh and swore that we will be friends forever.

I honor my mother this Mother’s Day as she inspired me to pursue my dreams with courage and tenacity - she modeled both well.  I know she would be cheering me on now even knowing it’s a little crazy to begin an internet business at age 60 when I’ve always been afraid of technical concepts.  I can still hear her saying the quote, not sure whose it was, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.”  By my translation, that saying meant to follow my heart and to try anything.

My mother, bless her heart, tried so hard to be the perfect mother, the good wife, the great cook, charming hostess and so on.  She worked really hard taking care of our large family and pretty much wore herself out, dying at the age of 69.  She had some regrets that she didn’t work outside the home and always wondered how it would have been to have had another career other than taking care of a home, my dad and 5 children.  That was a huge, huge job and she did it well.  Thanks Mom for all your encouragement to find myself and to do what makes me happy.