THIS HAPPENED TO ME

I Would Never Be Free Until My Mother Died

A truth that was hard to admit

As I looked at the images on The Wild Unknown Archetype Cards I was most drawn to the Seed image. Like rings on a tree. Expansion and growth.

A reminder of where I come from.

The seed in the centre. Like a truth that lay deep in my heart. A truth so hard to say out loud. “I would never be free until my mother died.”

I came from the seed of my father buried in my mother’s womb. Emerged from her dark cave filled with potential.

But my mother would always try to keep me from growing. I had to fight for every step forward.

When I think of a seed, I can’t help but remember the year 2016.

The year started out on such a positive note.

I’d been exploring intuition and had designed an eight-class program, “Drawing on Intuition”. It was a drawing class with the focus on each participant getting in touch with their own intuition.

I offered the pilot program for free. One class a week from 10 to 12 in the morning, on Wednesdays. A small group of four women attended in my home art studio.

The previous year I had stopped speaking to my mother after a horrible incident (one I need to write about) where I had had enough and was determined not to speak to her again unless she apologized, and I knew an apology would not happen.

In January of that year, I received a phone call from my sister informing me my mother was in the hospital.

I learned she had fallen on the same day she’d gone to her youngest brother’s funeral. After the funeral, she’d had a headache, took pain medication, and went to bed. When she woke, she thought it was morning and took her insulin, and started cooking oatmeal for her breakfast.

She then slipped on one of the many mats she had throughout her house and fell backward, hitting her head. She pressed the button on the medical alert alarm she wore around her neck and her nephew living nearby arrived at her home.

He phoned my sister, and she arrived and called an ambulance to take our mother to the hospital.

Weeks later, my sister informed me the doctors did not expect our mother to live. My youngest daughter suggested I might someday regret not speaking to my mother before she died and offered to go with me to visit her in the hospital.

After we visited my mother, she miraculously revived, and I was back in her life again. Only this time I was maintaining strict boundaries.

What followed were months of meetings with social workers and hospital staff to determine what would happen with my mother.

My sister suggested this was our chance to get her out of her six-bedroom house, our childhood home, which we now both owned — another twisted story of secrecy and betrayal that I’ll someday need to tell.

We had a home assessment done. It was condemned and gave us even more reason to keep our mother from going back.

My sister and I and my close friend emptied the contents of my mother’s home. Moved our mother’s most precious possessions into a one-bedroom apartment.

A team of support workers took my mother to the apartment to determine if she could function on her own.

It was clear during the home visit that my mother could not live on her own even though she thought she could. The social worker advised us to have a medical assessment done.

The results of the assessment declared our mother mentally incompetent. At some point before all this, my mother had assigned my sister power of attorney.

Our mother was not happy to hear she was going to a nursing home.

By the end of the month, after setting up our mother’s apartment, we had to dispose of everything in it.

All this took place before the end of May when my husband and I headed out for our planned across-Canada road trip to be in British Columbia for our grandson’s first birthday.

We’d do no nighttime driving. We allowed a week to drive there, one week in BC, and another week to travel home. For three weeks, hotel rooms were our home.

My left knee had bothered me with all the work I’d done dealing with my mother’s home and apartment. During the drive, the pain and stiffness became worse. Arriving in BC I could barely walk.

When I came back from BC, I experienced a fibromyalgia flareup. Nonstop, full-body pain. My family doctor put me off work.

I saw a chiropractor. Physiotherapist. Acupuncturists. I kept searching for relief.

The chiropractor felt anything she did would only increase my pain.

It became a waiting game.

While off work, I was drawn to hanging objects — wind chimes. Beads, like seeds, were my go-to for healing. I sat in a quiet room, alone, in a meditative state of creating.

As I strung beads, it was like putting together pieces of a puzzle. Trusting it would all come together. Trusting the process. Living in the moment. The Now.

My fingers touched the various textures of beads, string, strips of leather, broken jewelry, items that no longer served their original purpose. As I no longer could live the life, I’d once lived. As my mother could no longer go back to her home.

I gave these broken items a new life. Giving myself a chance to start over.

Drawn to seed shapes, I searched online for all the various shapes of seeds. Then created them with air-drying clay, and hung them from broken pieces of chain.

On visits to see my mother, my friend and I stopped at a beach and she helped me collect driftwood. The burned pieces of wood were my favourite. Pieces that had survived a bonfire. Survived something that had almost destroyed them.

When I’d been in therapy in the 1990s, I’d once visualized wind chimes surrounding my personal space so that nothing could enter without my awareness.

I made paper beads. Tassels. Wrapped glass with wire or yarn. Breaking objects down to create something new.

It was about trust and timing. I wasn’t sure I’d return to the liquor store job where I’d years earlier suffered a workplace repetitive injury that led to fibromyalgia.

My mother celebrated her ninetieth birthday in August and days later, a nursing home became available. She still didn’t want to go. But my sister and I could not take care of her. We also couldn’t afford any other alternative.

At first, doctors thought our mother’s rock-hard abdomen and discomfort were another bladder infection. But it turned out to be fluid and terminal cancer.

Where her cancer began no one knew. But the doctors thought it was most likely ovarian. They gave our mother days to a few weeks to live.

The scheduled date for the release of my first memoir, Floating in Saltwater, was the last day of September.

The day my mother died.

Talk about timing.

I reread my just-published memoir, Floating in Saltwater after my mother’s death. The stories of my childhood, the seeds of what would grow and be repeated, playing out in future situations.

I wondered how many times I had looked forward to the day she’d die. The day I felt I could finally be free. Free of all the problems and difficulties she brought into my life.

I knew most would believe it was a horrible thing to say, but it was my truth. My truth of a life with a difficult mother.

Death would allow me to let her go.

To feel no more guilt for not being the daughter she’d wanted.

We had failed each other. She hadn’t been able to accept me. I hadn't been able to accept her.

We had forever tried to change each other.

It was over… a period… a dot… another seed.

A chance for a new beginning. A different period of growth.

I needed to tend to my needs as if I was a seed. Care for myself. Do what I needed to grow.

This was the longest period of time I’d ever been off work. I was unsure if I would ever return. But what else would I do? There seemed little choice.

So, I kept making wind chimes while I recovered from my longest flareup and tried to figure out my life.

In December of that year, my employer reached out to me and offered a return-to-work deal. Two four-hour shifts a week. I agreed, against medical advice. But I felt I had to get out of the house and move on.

I’m still drawn to the seed image and wondering what’s next for me.

2022 had been a year of letting go… of retirement, coming back to writing on Medium, releasing another memoir, and dismantling our family photo albums. And my recent decision to let go of my artist and author website.

In the past, I sowed the seeds to first become an artist. Sowing/Sewing. When I first started my professional art journey, it was through sewing.

I sowed the seeds of a new life. We reap what we sow.

One seed I’m planting for the new year is the seed of selling my artwork again. Since I began writing, my artwork has taken a backseat. Neglected.

I do not want my children to be stuck disposing of all my artwork. It is time to let go. Allow it a life out in the world. For others to love and care for.

The seed of hope and change.

Does the seed hold any special meaning for you?

What might you plant this year? What might you want to grow?

If you are looking to explore your inner world through symbols and archetypes, I recommend The Wild Unknown Archetypes to help you connect to your inner self.