I caught the middle of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on TCM last night and that morphed into my deceased mother showing up in my dream. I was looking down at a lunch counter (at 17 I worked as a 'grillman' for lunch counter at Woolworth's) and there in all her former glory was my mother, sunglasses and all. Oddly, she resembled Liz reprising her role, blousy, hair w blond highlights and as I noticed her, she stood up and climbed up to where I was watching her. It turned out we were both on a bed, in the air or a loft, but she lay down in a fetal position and said she wanted to just stay there, with me.
This is only her 2nd appearance since her death in '06. As the dreamer best knows her own dreams I would say its a role reversal of wishful thinking, as I'm under alot of stress lately. As a woman incapable of showing emotion to her children in life, its strange to sense longing in her in death.
As I attempt to move closer, physically and emotionally to my children, my daughters in particular, the voice of my mother often seems louder than my own. And that truly scares me because I am not her in any remote sense, physically or spiritually.
Growing up in an emotional vacuum left me craving and distrustful of being close to anyone, even my children. And this 'disease' has been passed down...in different forms to each child. I see them struggle with me and other relationships, to one another, while redefining me as someone in their lives, late and in some ways too late, not wanting mothering and me trying to mother...and it so often feels impossible to explain in words to them that what I needed from my mother is what I'm trying to give them. It took me years in and out of therapy, reading, studying to learn what was, what is what might have been...what can be fixed or not, healed or left as a hole in the heart.
Line from Virginia Woolf movie last night..."Mourning is just an extension of self pity" ...after a point, it is.
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