{"id":59554,"date":"2018-04-25T10:38:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T15:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=59554"},"modified":"2018-04-29T04:14:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T09:14:26","slug":"am-i-a-mother-in-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/parenting\/am-i-a-mother-in-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I a Mother-in-Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"
I think about that role a lot<\/div>\n
I have an inborn need to connect to people<\/div>\n
I want very badly to be a successful mother to our beautiful children<\/div>\n
raising them to be passionate, contributing, giving and happy people.<\/div>\n
After the death of my first child all I wanted was life<\/div>\n
I wanted children so much that it hurt<\/div>\n
Anyone who has endured loss knows what grief feels like<\/div>\n
Anyone who has struggled with infertility knows what yearning feels like.<\/div>\n
Having lost a child and having struggled with infertility the blessing of children was and is very sweet<\/div>\n
yet\/and children grow up and become their own people.<\/div>\n
We encourage them to be independent free thinkers<\/div>\n
We share our values<\/div>\n
We love freely and unconditionally<\/div>\n
We want the best for them<\/div>\n
We take the role of responsibility very seriously<\/div>\n
We struggle to withdraw ourselves to allow them to thrive and<\/div>\n
when they do we feel successful<\/div>\n
we feel happy<\/div>\n
we feel fulfilled<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We pray that our children will be loved and find meaning in their lives and their relationships<\/div>\n
We let them go and hopefully<\/div>\n
we walk with them down the aisle,<\/div>\n
dancing down to the chuppah, which represents their new home.<\/div>\n
The cleaving of our child to another is a loss and a gain<\/div>\n
On one level we lose them,<\/div>\n
we move them forward into the future with another by their side<\/div>\n
My inborn instinct is to continue to mother my child yet after marriage they are intimately connected to another and that is and should be their primary relationship<\/div>\n
My role as their mother is less defined<\/div>\n
It seemed so easy when they were little and needed us for everything<\/div>\n
We cuddled and took care of everything.,<\/div>\n
held them when they cried and kissed their bonked heads<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
With age we became more of the ‘director’<\/div>\n
guiding and helping<\/div>\n
Then they truly become independent and make their own thoughtful decisions<\/div>\n
we can’t protect them any more<\/div>\n
we don’t really know what their inner life is<\/div>\n
we can’t solve all their problems<\/div>\n
we can’t make the struggles of life go away<\/div>\n
we also can’t ignore that sometimes life is hard<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The best we can do is get in the trenches and hold them<\/div>\n
lovingly<\/div>\n
silently<\/div>\n
there is much comfort in being present and available and continuing to unconditionally love in the face of not being able to ‘fix’ the problems<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When our child gets married our role is to support their new relationship<\/div>\n
to affirm their choice<\/div>\n
to love the new child<\/div>\n
to leave space<\/div>\n
to m’tzamtzem ( tzimtzum)- withdraw to make space for another<\/div>\n
to give<\/div>\n
to love<\/div>\n
to trust them<\/div>\n
to be silent<\/div>\n
Silence existed before the world was created- before words,<\/div>\n
maybe in that place of silence we can hear the voice of others.<\/div>\n
The goal is connection and relationship<\/div>\n
Our in-law child is new and has come from a different family dynamic and yet<\/div>\n
more than anything we all want acceptance and love<\/div>\n
It cuts both ways<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When my mother died shortly after the death of our child I didn’t want a replacement mother<\/div>\n
My mother-in-law is generous and loving,<\/div>\n
she is affirming and praising yet<\/div>\n
I was so bereft of my own mother that her love fell on deaf ears<\/div>\n
I wanted my mother<\/div>\n
I wanted her so badly<\/div>\n
I wanted her to praise me, tell me I was great and that my children were great,<\/div>\n
that she loved what I was becoming and who I was<\/div>\n
yet she was gone<\/div>\n
fading into memory<\/div>\n
my life lay before me without her.<\/div>\n
I resisted being sad<\/div>\n
I had grieved my child which was completely and totally exhausting<\/div>\n
the last thing I wanted was more grief<\/div>\n
I wanted joy and life and laughter and sun<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Ones family is like a cluster of grapes- all bunched on one stem going through life together<\/div>\n
let’s seize the moments<\/div>\n
let’s live life fully<\/div>\n
let’s not sweat the small stuff<\/div>\n
let’s focus on what’s important<\/div>\n
let go<\/div>\n
sing and<\/div>\n
silently let it flow<\/div>\n
May Gd shower us with the strength to create the relationships that we want with each other,<\/div>\n
ones that are loving, affirming, respectful, kind and positive<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think about that role a lot I have an inborn need to connect to people I want very badly to be a successful mother to our beautiful children raising them to be passionate, contributing, giving and happy people. After the death of my first child all I wanted was life I wanted children so<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133580,"featured_media":59579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\nAm I a Mother-in-Love? - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Having lost a child and struggled with infertility, the blessing of children was and is very sweet, and yet children grow up and become their own people.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/parenting\/am-i-a-mother-in-love\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Am I a Mother-in-Love? 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