Grow Your Own Mother

Last week on vacation I read, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Karyl McBride, PhD. It is about healing and growth for daughters of narcissistic mothers. McBride writes about the persistent feeling of never being good enough and the invisibility that accrue to women whose mothers were on the continuum from self-absorbed to full-blown narcissist.

Part of the recovery that McBride suggests is developing an internal mother who is all the things that one’s real mother was not able to be. 

So, at the beach I began to envision what that new mother of mine might be like. I began to imagine borrowing parts of other women—and some men—to grow my own mother.

To be fair I did include many of the great qualities of my own real Mom: passion, curiosity, charity, physical energy and humor. But, as I walked the beach, I began to name the people who I would include as I grow my internal mother.

I added in bits of Georgia O’Keefe, May Sarton, parts of some good friends whom I’d want to have as part of my eternal mom-in-me. I also added in my two grandmothers: Josephine and Sophia. I never met them, but I knew of them.

But could I pass up a grandmother named Sophia—wisdom—in building my inner mother? And Josephine, my maternal grandmother) who was a professional a poker player and the neighborhood “reproductive health advocate” (she helped women in poverty to limit the size of their families.)  As I walked the beach I wrote the names of these woman in the sand, physically co-signing the new mother-in-me.

I picture this mom-in-me growing kind of like one of those pills you drop in water to delight a child. After soaking up lots of water the foamy pill blossoms into a seahorse or dragon. Now, soaked in lots of saltwater—both ocean and tears--I am growing my own mother.