A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Dorothy Caufield Fisher
Hi, Friends. I’m thinking of you, feeling incredibly grateful to have you in my life and as I celebrate the weekend as a mother with my family, I’m remembering a great article that I read so long ago. It appeared in Parents Magazine in 1986 and its title read “Mothers Need Mothering; little kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from hugs and a kind word of support”. It was written by Phyllis Theroux and when I Googled her name, I see she has since gone on to publish all kinds of books and articles. I couldn’t find the original article that so moved me at a time of my own vulnerability so I’m just going to type it out for you from a very bad copy that I saved in my “Mother’s Day” folder. The only thing I would change is the title. I much prefer “Mothers and Fathers Need Mothering”. I hope you all read it (moms and dads) and feel the message as a warm quilt of comfort. It’s all about the importance of supporting each other, reaching out to ask for help when you need it, and understanding that together, we’re better. Ours is an amazing community of friendship. Thanks for all you do for me and each other. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. Xoxoxo Roleen
Mothers Need Mothering
Little kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from hugs and a kind word of support
By Phyllis Theroux
Not long ago, a friend of mine came to visit for the afternoon with her infant daughter. I did not need to be reminded, as I was by her story, that there are a lot of different kinds of mothers and mothering situations in any given community. But as I listened to her talk about her life, her needs, and the future needs of her baby, who was busily decimating an apple with a new front tooth as we talked, I realized, once again, how dependent women are upon each other in order to survive.
There are numerous ways to sum up the essence of motherhood, particularly in the early years, but all of them involve a description of being at the receiving end of a hundred direct or implied requests for aid, comfort, and support services on any given day from our children. One is always automatically adjusting a cramped foot in a stroller, changing a diaper, or spooning a mouthful of mashed bananas into an open mouth. We give, give, and give some more.
Yet, if there is not, somewhere, on a regular basis, a spoon held out to the mother herself, she is in trouble. The vocation of motherhood is often sentimentalized—perhaps to perpetuate its existence—but women are not angels. We need, on occasion, to feel the protection of somebody else’s wings. As I listened to my friend, an older, single mother without a job and dependent upon the largess of her baby’s father, her circumstances seemed less serious than the fact the she seemed so entirely without mothering.
Her own family lived thousands of miles away and, from what she said, wouldn’t have been much use if they had been next-door neighbors. The baby’s father, while giving support of a financial and, occasionally, an emotional kind, could not be counted upon for the long haul. Her career, terminated by pregnancy was something she thought about—rather vaguely—when the baby was sleeping. And as for herself, it was clear that she had put herself last on the list of people who needed to be taken care of. Other than the intense love for her child, which cast a still–rosy glow upon her situation, my friend had no emotional safety net. Apart for her child, she was alone.
The state of aloneness is, primarily, a psychological condition. To feel its horrifying coldness—as I have on occasion—is to experience an eclipse of the sun’s rays that ordinarily protect us. A rush of freezing air congeals our consciousness. Regardless of our outer circumstances, we feel the worst of feelings; we are disconnected, isolated, not safe—the very emotions that cause “night terrors” in children. But mothers can have night terrors, too. And as I listened to my friend, who was not complaining in any way about her situation, my instinct was to connect her up with friends, or with unknown support groups that only existed in my imagination, and, conversely, to disconnect her from the notion that she had to present a perpetually brave front to the world. Every time I tried to look as if everything was under control, it backfired, and every time I yelled for help, help arrived.
“. . . And you’ve done it alone” is a compliment that as many times as I’ve received it, I’ve tossed it back as inaccurate. The times I’ve felt alone can, fortunately, be counted upon one hand. I was a single mother for half the time I was rearing children and the number of people who have helped me and my children would fill the pages of a small New England town’s phone book. And I’m not done mentally adding new names to the roster. Yet, I am aware that not everybody has my “at the mercy of strangers” instinct. The stiff upper lip is alive and well among too many mothers, and yet nobody can be nourished through a compressed mouth.
I have a few stories that support my belief that mothers have to ask for mothering. The first involves a woman who was not a particularly close friend but whose children were friends of mine. And so, several times a week, we saw each other, usually in a car, picking up our sons from her house or mine.
One evening, around five-thirty, there was a knock on my door. It was Sylvia, who was ashen-faced. “I have an enormous favor to ask of you,” she told me.
I couldn’t imagine what “enormous” meant, but I said, “Sure.” She then said, “I’m on my way home from work, but I’ve got a terrible migraine headache and I can’t go home until it’s over. Could I just spend a few minutes on your bed, with the lights off, until the headache is over?” Obviously, I said yes.
I called her babysitter to say that Sylvia would be delayed a little, and ran upstairs to puff up the pillows, tuck her in, and pour her a glass of soda to relieve the pain in her temples. I cannot remember a time when I felt so happy to oblige. That was, as I recall, the first time that I was asked to mother a mother, and I felt extremely flattered that she thought I would be willing. A bond was forged that we have to this day.
In my own life, I have thrown myself upon friends for the same reasons—an overwhelming need to be taken in and protected for a few hours. Once, in an extremely emotional period of my life, a friend insisted that I stay overnight in her spare bedroom. I arrived to find that she had prepared a tray full of tea, cookies, and a spread of junk magazines to read. In between trips to her bathroom, where I threw up with anxiety, I rested, knowing that I had in the next room a solicitous guardian who was, in effect, my “mother.”
After moving from one house to another, which involved months of physical and psychological energy, I suffered what my real mother would have called “a partial” (nervous breakdown). My disorientation in the new, unfamiliar house caused me, literally to feel dizzy. It was my friend Winnie who sized up the situation and announce the she was going to spend my first night in the new house with me. And she did. And I continue to be grateful. The number of past times that other women have wrapped me in protective warmth are directly related to my present sense of well-being.
Finally, there was a time when I decided, as a joke really, to form a support group called Parents Without Promise. For three or four months, six or seven women met together—usually in my house—to confess our sins, air our doubts, support each other, and—this was important—hoot with laughter over the illusion that all of us had been caught by one way or another: that it was actually possible to be perfect parents. Sometimes we didn’t talk about children at all.
Ultimately, the group dissolved because it was difficult for us to find even one evening a month that was entirely free for us to get together. Yet we had achieved our purpose during the short time we were an entity: to give aid, comfort, and support to each other and let each other know that we were all more or less working in semidarkness as far as being a parent was concerned.
There was one meeting that had a surprise visitor, my accountant, a 62 year old man, who came several times a year to help me with my taxes. I had double-booked the evening by mistake, but when he walked into the room full of women, and I explained who we were and why we were meeting—to alleviate our worries about being parents—-he blinked, set down his briefcase, and said solemnly, “I can relate to that,” And the next thing anybody knew, he had cosily ensconced himself upon a sofa and begun to relay his own particular story of parenthood, which had had its share of pitfalls, some of them ongoing. It was one of our more memorable meetings, proving—-among other things—-that fathers need mothering also. Yet there are too many parents who go to bed without it. Don’t!