MOMMA LOVE ---EVERYONE´S GOTTA HAVE IT

"Momma Love" everyone´s gotta have it.


A slow-moving yet moving movie (how´s that for illiteration) "The Weeping Camel" illustrates that in the animal world as well. The baby camel was rejected by it´s mother and near death until the Mongolian folks began playing violens and singing to it--they threw a couple of spells and magic and the momma camel began to cry as she fed her nearly starving baby for the 1st time without kicking him or running away. Dammit if I did not cry too. At first I was pissed at the slow pace of the movie---then I opened up right when the momma camel did. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE AFTER A CUP OF COFFEE--you will kill yourself. Wait until your in a *super* mellow mood and not drumming fingers compulsively on the table.



We know that babies need mother love and touch or they devolope "failure to thrive" as some kind of defense mechanism of opting out of a cruel world. I believe even adults get a form of "failure to thrive" if they do not provide the nuturing to themselves that mother´s do to their children. "Failure to thrive" as an adult is depression and a lack of luster for life. It is the old man sitting at the bar staring at his empty shot glass . It is the old bitter woman who gave up her dreams for her family or husband. In the worst case scenario, it is the person who commits suicide because life no longer holds purpose.



It occured to me that as adults whether we have lived in a dysfunctional home where the "momma love" was not adequate, OR in a home where it WAS adequate, part of our job as an adult is to provide ourselves our own "momma love" and not look for it in another human (other than our momma´s---they never stop being a momma).

My daughter who is in middle school often complains of bullies, or teachers who punish her for things she did not do. I told her gently "I would love to be at your school and be your advocate---but you are old enough to start being your own advocate. When I cannot be there for you, you have to stand up for yourself. No one will be a better advocate for you than you yourself. I did not learn this until I was 40. Just think, if you learn this now at 13 you will have 27 years of life much easier than mine."

How many of us look for someone else to stand up for our rights as adults? Sure, it is nice when someone notices and does this, but that is them being "nice"---it is not really anyone´s job to rescue us once we are adults. If we are looking for rescue constantly then we enter co-dependant relationships. Sometimes in crisis we *do* need rescue and help from others. I am not speaking of this. I am speaking of daily nuturance that we should give ourselves once we are adults. Our societies and religions do not help here---they reinforce this. Think about Christianity---the whole idea that we are sinners and we need to be rescued. Even UFO believers often believe and hope for "rescue". Would we not be stronger if we gave ourself our own nuturance and pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps? If we had the attitude that we "save ourselves"--even if it DID turn out that someone else did end up doing that, we would still be living a better life if we had that attitude. Be a "momma" to yourself. Pamper your self when you need it, forgive yourself when you need it, take breaks when you need it, cry when you need it and above all, love yourself and stand up for yourself.



I have met grown men who look for girlfriends to give them mother love and they wonder why their marriages grow sour.

I have met grown adults still fussing over the fact that their mother´s were inadequate and that is why they are "having problems now"---usually by seeking comfort in obsessive ways and sucking off the energy of other adults.

I had a wonderful conversation today with someone who has a lot of insight, and he stated that his mother now in her 80´s resents her life and the fact that she never played music like she wanted to. She gave up her dream for her husband and children thinking that was the unselfish thing to do. Yet she stopped mothering herself and became bitter and passed this attitude to her kids. I shared with him how sometimes I felt guilty for being around like-minded spiritual people---like I am somehow betraying my husband because he is so skeptical that he actually hates some of these things and gets angry. Yet, if I do not seek out spiritually like minded people on occasion I begin to wither away. I feel hopeless and depressed---being with like minded people is a way to "mother myself". Mothering yourself, just like the little camel, is a way to stay alive. You cannot exist without what nutures your soul---and you are the only one who knows what that is and that will give yourself permission to do it.

This is not all black and white, right? It is a continuim. Everyone is interdependent whether they realize it or not, and if you are part of a "family" then what you do will affect all the others. But each adult family member should really take care to "mother themselves" so that they will not "wither away" as that will do no one any good and pass some nasty ways of relating to your children. I will throw in here that I have met some people who take this to the other extreme and only think about their needs irreguardless of how it harms the family. Like all things, and as the Native American´s say......it is the middle road, and living in balance.

There is a technique in hypnotherapy where you do a "conference" with all the parts of your personality. You usually have a rebel there, a judge, and various others, but there is always a child. The child must speak about unmet needs in this session and usually cries and needs nuturing. Often there is some baggage about how their needs were not met as a real little child. The key in this type of therapy session is to address the pain, address the need for nuturing, but then allow the person to have a part of self that will nuture that child like a real parent would.

Lastly, I would like to add that historically, in our patriachal society---even if we view "God" as loving, our culture often depicts this male God as issuing punshment. We have stories in the Bible about God punishing women forever with the pain of childbirth because one woman, Eve, who ate a fruit just to get knowledge. We have no archetypal mother in our current culture that we can turn to, but a punishing "male" instead. How wonderful it would be if we could turn to Mother Earth for our nuturing as well as our adult selves.

What if, when we needed some "momma-love" as adults, we not only allowed ourselves to provide that, but we ask for Mother Earth´s assistance and then spend time in nature in a hot spring, or sitting next to a tree, or taking a hike. What if we allowed that force to help us get our nuturing? Think of how that would help us as a society of "stressed out adults".

QUETZ