Getting near to "Mothers Day" always is lovely, I have such wonderful kids and they all make such a fuss of me, mostly undeserved I am sure.
But as it is looming, it makes me think about my own Mother, the one that adopted me that is, (well, bought me actually!) She was a very complex and difficult woman, a singer with a lovely contralto voice. She should have been on the stage, I am sure she was a frustrated actress, but she compensated for not being there by being a perpetual "performer", you never knew who she really was, and certainly you could never believe 99 per cent of the stories she told. I suppose in my way I loved her, she was all I knew. But she was extremely cruel, a passed master at emotional blackmail and guilt and shame inducement. She frightened me more than anyone I have ever known.
She was totally obsessed with the catholic church, and our lives revolved around it and it's calendar, in fact our home was a shrine in itself, statues and "holy" pictures everywhere,"the Sacred Heart" "The infant of Prague" "our lady of Sorrows" and a really scary portrait of a crucified jesus who had eyes that either opened or closed depending on where you looked at it!
Crucifixes everywhere, and even a "holy water" font at the front door that we had to "bless" ourselves with every time we went in (or out ) of the door!
Babies that had not been baptised floated around "Limbo" for all eternity. Hearing a ringing in your ears meant that the "Holy Souls" in purgatory were in need of prayers (purgatory being the place that you went to after death if you were not quite ready (good enough) to go to heaven, but not quite bad enough to go to hell)
If you prayed for the holy souls at their ear ringing request quickly enough, then you could chop a bit of time off your own purgatory!
We should revere the clergy, they were next to God and could do no wrong, they had "sacred hands" and it was a "blessing" every time one of them crossed your doorstep! (some blessing)
I could go on and on!
I can actually never remember her actually DOING anything for anyone, helping someone out, or giving to charity (Unless it was a catholic missionary!) Never remember a good turn, a sympathetic gesture, just endless judgment and bigotry.
I can't help wondering if she and her equally deluded sisters had ever got up from their knees and put as much effort into actually DOING something good for someone else, as they did drooling over the priests and the church, they could have been a real force for good, as it
happened they chose instead to waste all those opportunities for good and use their limited time on Earth feeding that voracious and insatiable monster which is the catholic church. And I might actually have better memories on Mothers day! (I might even have been a better Mother myself.)
I am however, in absolute awe of my two daughters who have both made a wonderful job at being Mums and will now pass that on to their children, and because of them that wretched circle is well and truly broken!
So when the day actually gets here I will really have something to celebrate!
I have always found the whole "inner child" stuff a little strange and a bit silly. But as with most things that I take a dislike to, I often find the difficulty is with me rather than "it"!
I have no contact with people I knew as a child really, apart from a couple of very close cousins, certainly no-one from school or teenage years!
Hardly surprising when I think how disturbed I was back then, quite crackers actually! a raging alcoholic self harmer with lots of very dark secrets that I HAD to keep hidden! In those bleak days I sabotaged most of the relationships I had.
I also moved away from my home town at sixteen, and then later made only "duty visits" to my adopted Mother until she died.
But this week I came across the FB page of someone I started school with aged at 5 in 1952! She was a girl I had a lot of very happy early memories about, dancing around her living room to Doris Day songs, signing her plaster when she broke her leg, and generally playing like proper little girls!
It was a real "blast from the past", and not the dreadfully unpleasant memories that I normally get! And it was lovely! she still looks as pretty as she did then, she was always the prettiest girl in our year, but was also always too nice to be jealous of!
We ultimately went to different secondary schools, and our paths crossed only occasionally at college, but my main memories are when we were little girls.
I don't know if she ever knew of the mess I was, thankfully I don't think she was ever exposed to it, but she may well have heard stories!
We didn't know each other as adults, although I did bump into her once on one of my "visits" about 48 years ago!
I have no doubt she has had her demons to overcome as indeed have I, but I still think of her as the pretty little girl who was my friend, when we were still "sugar and spice and all things nice"!
I was so pleased to see her name, I dropped her a message which she replied to straight away.
I don't have too many experiences like this, and in fact one of the things that hurts is the inability to enjoy good memories of the past without them being tinged with the bad stuff.
I am sure she can't know how much that simple connection has meant to me, and I don't know if we will meet again, but she gave me back a glimpse of a long lost happy time, before all of the crap, and for a while I was a little girl again! Wow!
My somewhat hedonistic and rather shallow sister in law, thinks I should retire and have some "quality time", She thinks I should take a leaf out of her book and have five holidays a year, "twice to Ibiza (pronounced incorrectly of course) 2 cruises, and a trip to Lanzarote"! She seems actually to feel sorry for me and suggests that I am missing out!
She couldn't be more wrong! Not to "crow", and although I am not at all special, I have been privileged to do so many things that money simply cannot buy! In my capacity as head of a teaching organisation,I have personally taught 14,000 amazing healthcare workers, teaching all over the UK, and the USA, I have spoken in the Italian parliament, the Polish parliament, the U.N. three times, addressed a crowd of twenty thousand people, received a "Lifetime's achievement" award for my work in addiction, an "Inspirational Woman of the year" award for Human rights, I have been to tea at the House of Lords three times, taught for the staff of 128 UK prisons, and military mental health . I have been privileged to speak at many inspirational gatherings like the launch of "Aid and Abet " in Scotland, International women's day, Secular Europe day, Freedom of speech rally, and more. Rallied and danced with my wonderful deaf and speech impaired friends from The Provolo institute in Verona several times, and in Rome four times. As well as being co-founder of Survivors Voice Europe , I am on the board of trustees for the charity "Godless Grace Foundation" I am a patron of the "Pink triangle" and I have real solid friends in Italy, Holland, Poland, America, Australia , Nepal Canada, Hawaii . I have been involved in important research, co -written a book and am three quarters through the next one. I have six kids, three grandchildren, an incredibly talented and supportive husband and a beautiful black Labrador! Poor me!
