Accepting Family

07.05.2010

I’ve been really missing my mom this passed weekend. She moved to Lithuania 2 years ago and I haven’t seen her since x-mas ’08 and it’s a mystery when I’ll be seeing her next.

I long ago learned that I had to accept my mom for whom she is and, like parents with their children, I had to accept that she’s going to make her own decisions regardless of what others may or may not think. As an artist, she has always lived her life by her emotions and desires first which always made for a creative environment to grow up in but it had and does have its drawbacks.

This acceptance of a family member’s decision that you don’t necessarily agree with is very difficult. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but it’s very challenging for me to have to accept that certain things aren’t viewed in the same way as I view them. And I know that parents have to deal with this and their children constantly. If you see that your child is making a mistake, it’s important that you step back and let him/her make the mistake because how else is she/he going to learn? When your child hurts, you hurt. When your child’s happy and excited, so, as a parent, are you.

Our decisions affect more than just us. My mom’s decision to move has affected everyone that she knows and directly changed my (and my sister’s) life forever. Especially because a flight to Lithuania can’t be done over a weekend.

I don’t know how good I would be in stepping back with my opinions and the like if my child were making a decision that I don’t agree with. I’ve had to be in a mother role for most of my life and I think it’s contributed to my decision to not have kids earlier. The emotional entanglement involved in guiding and raising kids can go deep and when the kid goes against that guidance in some way, the decision can cut deeply. It’s because I’ve had to deal with a lot of decisions made around me that have cut deeply that makes me sometimes wonder how much of that do I want to willingly bring back into my life? How easy is it to differentiate between your child as the child you want to control and the child who is his/her own individual? How do you know when to let go and when to hang on?