Exploring those emotions

This is what I was waiting for, but hoping wouldn't happen.

In my usual work, I am dealing with situations where children have dysfunctional or non-existent relationships with their parents. Abused, neglected, and foster youth usually have a complicated relationship to their biological parents.  I can deal with that.  Sometimes, it is difficult because I have empathy for those children.  In many ways, I can relate and I want to relieve their pain. I wish there was a way to reassure them that despite that, they can find happiness and feel whole.

One of the hardest emotional challenges that I am encountering right now is interacting with a family with such a strong female figure.  She is such a supportive and encouraging mother figure. Her life is for her children. And this makes me feel internally uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable in a way that has nothing to do with her, but everything to do with myself.

Years ago, I would be upset every day about the relationship, lack thereof, or abusive nature of the relationship that I had with my mother.  Every night I would cry myself to sleep.  I never thought I could be happy.  But here I am, happy and embracing life.  I hardly ever spend the time to truly contemplate the relationship I have with my mother.  It simply isn't an issue. However, watching my boss with her children is like attempting to rewiring my brain as to what a mother is.  It physically makes me uncomfortable to attempt to associate certain behaviors with a mother. I am relearning a role and how to react, in a family, with the person who holds that role.

This isn't even an issue about parenting styles, or personality, but roles. My conception of what a mother is is being overturned, and during this process I am forced to reevaluate what I know a mother to be.

For the first time, I looked to see if my mother was on facebook.  She publicly posted about her homeless, convictions, and trouble with drugs with an exuberant tone. She was never really my mother. My entire life would have been so different if I had a loving and supportive mother. But I am thankful for her.  I never would have graduated from Stanford if she hadn't shown me what I was capable of.  During my graduation weekend, I didn't even think of her once. In fact, my only college memories of her are when she called me on the first Parent's Weekend of my freshman year to tell me she hated me and how I was such a bad person, and when she sent me a doll that she had received from her father when I was going abroad to Germany in my Sophomore year.  Otherwise, the memories are connected to activities she engaged in back home, disconnected from the life that I made 3,000 miles away from her, that only crept back in when I visited New Jersey.

I need to reconfigure this notion of a mother that I have, but its not going to be easy. Yet, I know it will be one of the most worthwhile experiences of my life.