MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
FINDING MOTHER<\/p>\n
When I first set foot in my current home back in 1993, I\u00a0looked around at the huge picture windows, the brick fireplace and the sunlight\u00a0streaming in and I knew I was home. It felt so right and I exhaled deeply. I\u00a0didn’t know I\u2019d been holding my breath. I had spent a great deal of time\u00a0searching for mothering, the kind that wraps you in warmth and tenderness, and I\u00a0believed I would eventually find what I was looking for. I just never imagined\u00a0that it would arrive in the form of a house. Support and kindness show up in\u00a0many different and surprising ways.<\/p>\n
I had an unusual childhood since I left home at fourteen\u00a0years old to pursue a career in ballet and I never lived with my parents again.\u00a0My mother (she allowed me to follow my dreams but she would never have won a\u00a0prize for warmth) became absent and remote and I felt disconnected and\u00a0powerfully alone. That was when I came to understand that loneliness is not\u00a0emptiness. Rather, it\u2019s the hard presence of an absence. It has heft and\u00a0substance, it\u2019s tangible and inevitable. It\u2019s a part of being human and it\u2019s a\u00a0powerful motivator to find the things that represent mother to us.<\/p>\n
I sometimes imagine that if I had set up my life\u00a0differently, if I had prioritized marriage and family over my career, I would\u00a0never be lonely . . . until a friend with a wife and three children told me he\u00a0was deeply lonely and couldn’t seem to get out of it. I guess it really doesn\u2019t\u00a0matter if you are alone or have a large family, loneliness is a part of the\u00a0human condition and we each need to find a way to tap into our inner compassion\u00a0to deal with the pain and suffering it can cause.<\/p>\n
Maybe for some people, loneliness doesn’t exist. For me, it\u2019s\u00a0real, whether it terrorizes me or feels like an old annoying friend that tags
along when I don’t want it near me. At these times, I know I\u2019m not the only one\u00a0who wants a mother figure to nurture me and assure me that everything will be\u00a0okay. It could be a close friend, a sister, a partner, a trip to a wonderful\u00a0place or a good book. For me, it\u2019s my house, my mentor and a few close friends.\u00a0And most importantly, it\u2019s the mother that lives in my heart. Not the angry one\u00a0who scolds and find fault. I\u2019m talking about the good mother who forgives\u00a0everything and embraces me with steadiness and compassion, no matter what I\u2019ve\u00a0done or how I feel.<\/p>\n
My father used to call my mother \u201ca good lookin\u2019 tomata.\u201d\u00a0She was undeniably beautiful but I saw her more as a tough cookie. The point is\u00a0that we don’t all have loving or living mothers. She may have loved and guided you,\u00a0but she also might have died, abandoned you, abused you or showed a disinterest\u00a0in you. She may be absent for one reason or another, but that doesn’t mean we\u00a0are condemned to live without mothering. We are all entitled to have the thing\u00a0we call \u201cmother\u201d that lives inside of us. We just have to get used to developing\u00a0her and acknowledging her. When we figure out how to recognize her and make\u00a0room for her, when we listen and accept her presence, we can find the warmth and\u00a0safety that is our birthright. When spiritual teacher, Ondrea Levine, lost her\u00a0beloved husband, she said she needed to learn to hold her own hand. When we find\u00a0a way to do that, we can also be there for other people who need the same kind\u00a0of love and loyalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In my search for support and soothing, I came across a
Buddhist definition that speaks to me. \u201cTouch each being as your beloved child.\u00a0Like a mother who protects her child with her own life, one can cultivate a\u00a0heart of unlimited love and compassion toward all living things.\u201d Including\u00a0ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s physical or in the abstract, what does \u201cmother\u201d\u00a0mean to you?<\/p>\n
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MY WEEKLY BLOG FINDING MOTHER When I first set foot in my current home back in 1993, I\u00a0looked around at the huge picture windows, the brick fireplace and the sunlight\u00a0streaming in and I knew I was home. It felt so right and I exhaled deeply. I\u00a0didn’t know I\u2019d been holding my breath. I had spent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}