Mothers who leave - part one

I met a beautiful woman recently. She crossed my path for only a few brief moments but in those moments I realised I had met a kindred spirit. …

We all have things that we do, consciously or not that may cause pain to another or to ourselves … things that mark us. Sometimes we are marked deeply like a line carved in rock with a nail and a hammer, a mark that may take years to change and at other times the mark we make is lighter like a line drawn in the sand; there one moment, gone the next.

Those lighter marks may make us feel uncomfortable for a few moments or even a few hours, but they disappear soon enough and they are quickly and quietly forgotten. However, those lines carved in rock do something to us on a deeper level. They lay in waiting like sleeping volcanoes in the depths of the mind, ready to erupt at any given moment. Sometimes they are carved so deep that even on our death bed as we are taking our final breath, those deep carvings rush to the surface like burning lava and we die drowning in guilt, sadness and pain.

In our daily lives, if left unattended, slowly but surely those deep marks gradually take little pieces of our “self” away. Robbing us of our freedom, our laughter and our creativity. The process is like a disease creeping through our life force slowly killing off fragments of our deepest self as it goes.

I for one know that I have these very deep marks … many of us do, but over the years I have been working hard to ensure that I do not consciously add to these marks, making them deeper. This is a challenge when the pain in your heart is so intense that you think it will burst and when every time you open your eyes to a new day guilt floods into your depths along with every drop of sunlight.

There are few things I think that really make a woman feel like this day in and day out; I would say when a woman loses her child she would feel this way, or when a woman cannot protect her child from harm she would feel this way and believe it or not the woman who turns away and leaves her child behind no matter how valid the reason, well she also feels this way ... how do I know?

Because I am her and that beautiful woman I met recently, well she is “her” too and for a few brief moments when our paths crossed and we quickly and quietly shared our story I was reminded that I am not alone, that I am not a “bad” mother and that I have a story to tell.

I will tell it … I just need more time.