longing.
The latest class of VerbTribe just ended. This week, I will feature on 37days the writing of VerbTribe members in this most recent class. These excerpts are in response to daily prompts the class provides, and I hope you will appreciate the voices of these writers. If you’re interested in becoming a VerbTribe member, go here for more information on the next class that begins January 3, 2013.
Longing
–Lisa Cottrell
It is not so much that I have things I long to say, because I say them. It’s more that I long to be heard and deeply understood. I want empathy and understanding. I also want to help others learn how to suffer less and avoid the holes in the road I fell into and got stuck in until I finally learned how to climb out, with help. I long for people to really understand we cannot survive alone and in order to be healthy and thrive, we need real connection with others. I long for people to have the courage to reach out and ask for help and then take it when it comes. I long for people to get out of their own holes. I long for people to believe those who know when they warn them about another deep pit or bad road. I know some people have to learn the hard way and some never learn. I know that some people die from their stubborn independence. I do long to write books about what I know about survival and road maps for others.
I long for people to try to hear and understand how difficult it is to be raised without a mother. How hard it is to be a child and then an adult with an inadequate, self-centered father without boundaries, a raging grandfather, a depressed and abused grandmother, another grandmother who was obsessive and controlling, a string of stepmothers and girlfriends of Daddy, starting with a mean stepmother who was probably alcoholic. I do long to write those stories, to paint those pictures. Only a few friends of mine have heard enough of the stories and poems to really begin to understand the extent of my grief and the extent of the abandonment and betrayal of my childhood. I have worked so hard and for so long to heal from all of that and have done well, but I long to meet other women who lost their mothers at an early age, as often only those who have walked the same path have the understanding that feels so healing. I lost mine at 5 months. Do you know these women? Send them to me.
I have found the women who were sexually betrayed as a child and they are my closest friends, as they seem to intuitively understand things that most others don’t. I have found the recovering incest survivors, the recovering depressives, the women who have reclaimed their inner joy, the women who love women, the writers, the artists, the healers, the therapists, the truth tellers, the spiritual seekers, the nature lovers, the people lovers, the animal lovers, the art lovers, the food lovers, the thinkers, the world changers, these are my people. And I am still searching for the motherless daughters, not the ones who had her their whole life until she passed away when she was over 60, but those who lost her in their childhood, in their youth. Would you help me find her? I want to know what we share in common and if they can truly understand the hole in my heart, the sadness that will never end.
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P.S. Since writing this, I have reached out and found one other woman who lost her mother as a child (in addition to my sister.) If you are interested in connecting with me, go to my WebPage or find me on Meet Up under Motherless Daughters of Decatur, GA. I am also joyfully connected to my new VerbTribe friends in addition to long time ones!
