Mother’s Day is upon us and we must find a way to honor our mothers in a way that shows that we love and appreciate her contributions to our lives. Having said that, it is sometimes difficult to look back and face the complexities in our own nature that made life tough for her, especially during our adolescent and often rebellious period.
I recently spent time in the Mexican State of Veracruz as part of a business trip. Along with work, there was also a series of meetings with friends that I had not seen in a long time. Among the friends is a family I had not had contact with for almost two decades. Back then, the mother had three daughters and a son. Now she has grandchildren the same age as their parents were when I met them long go. Much of the conversations centered on motherhood as the now grandmother had seen her girls grow up to be wives and mothers themselves.
There were several moments of comparisons between the daughters’ motherhood experiences and that of their own involvement with their mother growing up. When I first met them years ago, the children were beginning their adolescent stage and had the problems that came with trying to find one’s place in the world. We agreed that the burst of a rebellious nature was a constant at that age.
Those were the issues the daughters had with their mother when they were in their teen years.
During our light conversations, we talked about the fact that history was repeating itself in this generation. There were humorous moments about matters with very serious underlinings.
I came away thinking that the cycle of life never fails to have much the same moments for children and their parents, particular the mother who is a constant in the life of a family. I thought of my extensive study of the mother figure as an archetype that changes her role depending on the important periods in the growth of her offsprings.
I particularly thought of Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (1955), a book that brings together the evolving dynamics of a mother’s role as it relates to her children. In the book she is called “great” because she is both positive and negative, good and terrible depending on her children’s’ development and life experience segment.
Infancy sees the child and the mother on an intimate course where the baby’s view of the world is nurtured through the eyes of the mother and everything appears good. That is followed by a series of stages that outline a gradual separation of identities.
Adolescence is the most important, dramatic and sometimes brutal period of a young person’s life as it represents the personal physical and psychological effort to reach the goal of growing up. There are moments in this process where the mother (and father) becomes an ogre figure that needs to be overcome to reach that goal.
It is a very dangerous time that often even threatens the stability of a family. In this time, the mother continues to offer love, compassion and sacrifice eventhough she may appear otherwise to the affected.
For those of you who are adolescents, do not despair as mother loves you despite your feelings of repression, rivalry for affection, frustration and sometimes a sort of hatred. It is really about you fighting the epic battle young individuals must.
Mother’s Day honors her love for us. It is an opportunity to give some back.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of laVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
