Like Mother, Like Daughter
The Innate and Complex Bond between Mother and Child
As a doctor in the Russian army during World War 2, my mother-in-law traveled by horse from camp to camp along the front. Her bed was under the operating table. She told me that almost every day of the war, she had to amputate soldiers’ limbs – almost always without anesthetic.
She shared this with me in a Botanic garden in Israel when I invited her to “be present” rather than locked in to “war zone” mode.
“Ima (Mom),” I told her, “You’re not on the front. You’re in Israel in a beautiful botanic garden with your daughter-in-law and grandchildren.”
Chutzpa is a word that comes to mind. I was a young mom bent on helping a woman in her eighties emerge from battle.
“What do you know of where I am?!” she exclaimed more than asked. Then she told me about the amputations. “And do you know what they ALL cried?” she added. “Every one. We’d give them alcohol and I’d begin. At which point they began to scream. ‘Mammatchke!’ (Mommy!) they’d cry. ‘Mammatchke!’ until they passed out.”
That conversation opened me to the depth of the mother-child relationship in a way I had not previously grasped.
One of the teachings I have found most useful to my clients is that whereas our parents are the mother and father of our bodies, the Holy One Blessed is He and the Shechina are the Father and Mother of our SOUL. It frees our earthly parents up from responsibility for our wellbeing as adults and therein opens the path to greater peace and joy both in ourselves and them. It also opens us to the healing power of surrendering to a G-d who is both all-powerful and intimately involved in our lives.
What are your thoughts on the undercurrent of our relationship with our moms? Of how to manage and heal it, allow it to flourish?
Want to explore more? If you’re in the LA area, I’ll be speaking on “Like Mother Like Daughter” at 8 pm this evening, 8835 Key St, LA, 90035.
FREE
#Mother #Relationship #Daughte
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Dear Shimona, thank You very much for Your work, I can sense from far away that the Light is flowing through it, and reaches people around You, at least those who are similarly interested in the Light, and when ”2 Sparkle of the Light who is G.d” meet, then there is some extra beneficial effect to be experienced, sensed, maybe because some sort of so to call it ”mirror activity” occuring there and then; about Childhood and Parenthood though, despite I agree that we shall recall to be ”Children of the Light who is G.d” (Consciences), I wonder how to deal with a primary Relationship that was somehow traumatic (this may have occurred for specific reasons, that G.d knows and that we, as Consciences know: we had to learn some lesson and/or deliver some lesson, and in order to bring ”more Light” in the World, and inner Light is Good or Love, and outer Light is Strenght or Power, otherwise, inner Happiness plus outer Happiness), that leave some Wound at different levels of oneself (Mind, Psyche, Generativity, Body: the expressive Vehicles of the Being who one is, a Conscience or Sparkle of the Light), and how to overcome these never really properly addressable and/or healed Traumas, in order to be more able to properly focus on the Light who is G.d (otherwise it seems somehow difficult to connect to G.d; there are disturbing Thoughts, Feelings, Sensations, Perceptions that hinder the flow of the Light, that distract the Being from focusing 100% on the Light); Love and Power or, Good and Strenght to You, us, every1, simultaneously, and eternally-and-infintely, and inner plus outer Light/Happiness.