Thank you for visiting my blog. I’m glad you are here.
What I want to tell you is that I was scared when my writing coach asked me to write the “mother of all blogs” blog post.
But I pretended I was brave and told her enthusiastically “What a great idea!”
Great for….
Her?
Me?
Us?
Nobody?

What I want you to know is that I don’t even have a mother so how in the hell can I write
the mother of all blog posts? Well, you should know that I have 2 mothers.
TWO MOTHERS!!! Twice the mothering. So that makes me an expert, right?

If it was that easy, I wouldn’t be overthinking this.

I lost my first mother the minute I was born. She’s not dead, but sometimes I wish she was.
She is the equivalent of soul pain to me.
You know that deep dark secret pain that you know is there but never acknowledge?
You know that if you really let yourself think about it long enough, you’d be sure you had
looked Satan in his eyes, and he sucked every bit of your soul from you?
Death eater soul pain sticks to your guts and waits in the dark to ambush you when you are at your weakest.

Then when I was 2 weeks old, I was assigned a second mother. I became a place setting in
a different china pattern. She’s not dead either, but I used to dream about her dying all the time.
I’d wake up with tears streaming down my face. My body would hurt. I felt scared. I didn’t ever
tell her because I thought she’d give me back because dreaming about your mom dying is not nice.
I also never told her the part of the dream where I was at the funeral and everyone was hugging me.
The hugging and attention felt good and made me feel loved and happy. The acknowledgement of
my loss felt deserved.
I wonder now, which mother I was crying for and which mother loss I was hoping would be acknowledged?

I was recently researching synonyms for pain and loss and found this gem:
"Mutterseelenallein"
Here is what the article said about this word:

”This word is the 'mother' of all German words for 'loneliness.'
Even though the word sounds like a typical German word - or rather
three German words pasted together into one long German adjective - the term
derived from the French idiom "moi tout seul," meaning "me all alone."

When the Huguenots, a group of persecuted French Protestants, fled to
Germany in the 18th century, they used the term "moi tout seul" to describe
their feeling of isolation and dislocation from home. But the Germans
misunderstood the phrase as "mutterseelen" (mother's souls) and added the
word "allein" (alone) so that the phrase would make sense to them.

When you're "mother's souls alone," as this German adjective literally
translates to, there is neither your mother nor any other soul around you.
Whenyou're "mutterseelenallein" you're not just alone, you're completely,
utterly, alone.

While being all by yourself can be great - picture yourself on a lonely beach with
just your book, a hammock and a delicious cocktail -
"mutterseelenallein" usually has a more existential, negative
connotation and can be used as a synonym for isolated, abandoned, or desperate.””

So, you see, giving birth to something is so terribly scary for me. It is scary because I
came into the world with birth meaning death. Mother means alone. Alone means
death. If I birth or mother something, it will die.
Just like I felt when I was born. I was alive and dead at the same time.
I knew that my world had died. That I would never be safe.
I learned that anything good would be ripped from me
just like I was ripped from my mother’s body.

The picture below is me with one of my children at 2 weeks old. As I imagine
my blog, I picture it as my baby that I’m holding. That I’m giving it all the love and
attention and protection it needs to thrive. It is separate, but still connected to me.

I’m slowly learning to mother myself. It feels good, and scary and unknown.
It also feels right and real and safe.