Sunday, May 8, 2016

Toxic People...

Mother's Day in the United States is an annual holiday celebrated on the second Sunday in May. Mother's Day recognizes mothers, motherhood and maternal bonds in general. 

Organized by Anna Jarvis, the first official Mother's Day was celebrated at St. Andrew's Methodist Church in West Virginia, which holds the International Mother's Day Shrine. Previous attempts at establishing Mother's Day in the United States sought to promote peace by means of honoring mothers who had lost or were at risk of losing their sons to war.

In its present form, Mother's Day was established by Anna Jarvis with the help of Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker following the death of her mother, Ann Jarvis, on May 9, 1905. On May 10, 1913, the House of Represenatives passed a resolution calling on all federal government officials (from the president down) to wear a white carnation the following day in observance of Mother's Day. On May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. The next day, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war. In 1934, U.S. President Franklin D Roosevelt approved a stamp commemorating the holiday.

Carnations have come to represent Mother's Day since Anna Jarvis delivered 500 of them at the first celebration in 1908. Many religious services held later adopted the custom of giving away carnations. This also started the custom of wearing a carnation on Mother's Day. The founder, Anna Jarvis, chose the carnation because it was the favorite flower of her mother. In part due to the shortage of white carnations, and in part due to the efforts to expand the sales of more types of flowers on Mother's Day, florists invented the idea of wearing a pink carnation if your mother was living, or a white one if she was dead.

The commercialization of the American holiday began very early, and only nine years after the first official Mother's Day it had become so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become, spending all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the celebration. She decried the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter. She was arrested in 1948 for disturbing the peace while protesting against the commercialization of Mother's Day, and she finally said that she "...wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ..." She died later that year.

However, Mother's Day is now one of the most commercially successful American occasions, having become the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States[ and generating a significant portion of the U.S. jewelry industry's annual revenue, from custom gifts like mother's ringsAmericans spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts—like spa treatments—and another $68 million on greeting cards.

Every year it is the same thing going from holiday to holiday but shortly after Easter, begins the hunt and advertisement for Mother's Day. I get emails, entitled "see some of mom's favorite gifts," FTD ads boast about the "perfect" flowers that Mom will love, TV commercials begin and all the greeting cards and candy come out. But Mother's Day is not the "perfect" holiday for everyone. While it is true that we all have a mother, not all of us are blessed with good mothers or even a mother that will acknowledge or accept your existence on the planet. Not everyone has the "June Cleaver, let's bake cookies after school" mother. While there are all different kinds of mothers and children and each one is different, to the adopted child, Mother's Day takes on a whole new meaning,

As soon as you figure out what the words "you were adopted" mean, you begin to wonder why. Why did my mother carry me for 9 months and then give me away. Was this her choice/ Who was the father? How did she feel being pregnant with me. How long was she in labor? Did she hold me? Did she look at me? Did she wonder what happened to me? Did she ever think about me? How did it feel when I was kicking in her belly? Did she love me? Did she have any regrets? Then comes in all the other questions, like do I look like her? Do I have her eye or hair color? Do I have anything that I do that is like her? When you look in the mirror, you don't know who you look like.

One of the most amazing things to me is the fact that everyone tells me my three girls "look so much like me." Now, that I have 2 GRANDgirls, I can see they look like their moms and then in turn they look like me. How amazing to grow up in a house where you look like the people in your house. You have photos of past relatives that you may resemble. This is something I never had. I never had anyone tell me I look like my mom or my dad. Now of course I know who I look like and all the genetic traits that make me who I am. It was and still is amazing to me the amount of things that are genetic and not learned behaviors.

So I can say with a clear conscience that I 'broke up" my relationship with my mother. Yes, it was my choice and it has been the healthiest thing I have ever done for myself. For some reason greeting cards don't have a traditional card that reads " thanks for giving birth to me and not aborting me, but it is the best thing that we don't have contact with each other" card. I can say that "breaking up" with my mother was not something I did without thinking long and hard about my decisions. It was a relief and heartbreaking at the same time. For my own sake I could not have this toxic person and her family in my life. Not that they had been much of a force in my world to begin with. Of course there are three sides to every story; mine, my mothers (not her daughters as they were not even around during most of our time together) and then the truth.

I kept trying to engage in the "mother/daughter" relationship but I seemed to be the only one trying. I naively thought that she would change or meet me halfway. I kept trying and hoping for a different outcome. I had expected a relationship that she was not capable of giving to me. I felt this was my fault and somehow if I was better or if I tried to love my mother more it would make everything all right. I knew for myself I had to stop caring and expecting a relationship that was never ever going to happen. Imagine the shock when I came to realize that my thought "that birth mothers have to love their babies" turned out to be a horror story and I was one of the key players.

So now, I have a mother that is living and I her child, am living but no relationship. People tell me to forgive and forget. I say there are things that you simply cannot overlook and sweep away. There are things that people do that are unforgivable. I will state clearly that I reached out to my mother while Heather was still alive and in ICU. My mother did not respond to me. My daughter was dying. Her granddaughter was dying and there was nothing. At that moment things were done and there would be no turning back. Choices were made and I am okay with mine.

I appreciate my mother for not aborting me, but lets be truthful abortion was not legal then. She did give birth to me and gave me away. I can say that I am the person I am today no thanks to her at all. I have three daughters and two GRANDgirls that did not have her as a toxic influence in their lives. It is my mother's greatest loss that she never had a relationship with Heather. I am glad that she doesn't share my memories of Heather. The second greatest loss is she never had a relationship with me. The problem is I am someone who stands up for herself, I don't take the backseat to anyone and I don't allow toxic people to stay in my life.

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