Things my mother gave me

I am reading this book that I got from my professor, Energetic Boundaries by Cyndi Dale, and in it she discusses the energy that children get from their mothers.  She explains that children are supremely connected to their mothers' energy up until the age of three and sometimes even after that if a healthy boundary is not established.  You know that whole safety/security attachment thing that is consistent with so many psychological stage theorists.  The book also speaks of epigenetics or the changes in our genes over time usually due to environmental influences.  In specific she notes how things like failure, addictions, diseases can be passed on over time.  The thing that I found interesting about the two thoughts was that while I could give a million ways how and why my mother and I are different, I could give you a million and one how we are alike--despite circumstance. I won't go into those reasons but the thing of note is that we take things with us.  Whether intentionally or not, we end up with things that we cannot cognitively recollect but that we know on a level that is far more superior and which rules supreme, our energetic level.  I was reading the blog of one of my best friends and she mentioned her toddler had a bad dream, the content of the dream reminded her of the birthing experience and she grew curious as to whether he was affected by it or if he was dreaming of it.  While I am positive we will never know the truth, I found myself wondering in that moment who was comforting whom?  Her son who felt the knots in mommy's stomach, or her who through love and cuddles created a cocoon of warmth for her child.  Maybe it was both.

I pulled cards today and the 2nd one I pulled with thoughts of him and oddly enough it was the "Wealth" card.  What stuck with me was this notion that we are born as equals with nothing and we depart in that say way.  What we are given is being loaned to us by existence.  In that sense, everything is borrowed.  Money, love, time, energy...nothing outside of me is mine.  But what of love?

The thing about motherhood is that you carry that being inside of you for 40 weeks, and as they leave your body and enter the world, they never really do at least that is what a mothers heart suggests.  There is that theory, also, that suggests we were born with four arms and four legs and we are but half of one whole searching for the perfect being to complete us.  And while it is a novel idea, nothing in my body agrees with that truth.  Again I ask, but what of love?

Marriage. Social construction.  Weddings. Pagan rituals later given religious significance.  Love. Everything.  I do not think love needs marriage nor do I think that marriage necessarily signifies love.  I mean that is the big hope, right?  That is what we want but it just isn't always the case.  To me marriage to me is proof of an ability to commit more than it is love.  Love does not need a display or proof (does it?).  That doesn't mean I don't believe in marriage or weddings, it just does not mean to me what it (perhaps) means to other people.  And the main reason I am dead set on a very private wedding.

I didn't get that from my mother.  She gave me a lot of things but privacy and reservation are not some of them.  Its interesting the thing of the continuous cycle of things.  The giving and taking, the gifting and receiving, it begins at our beginning and never ends.  So I guess that's love.  Finding someone you want to toss the ball back and forth with forever. Someone who keeps good company (because they carry all of that) someone who makes good choices someone who leads a rich life. And I suppose the best way to measure that is by finding someone who also sees how whole they are.  And you know it doesn't hurt to note how he treats his mother.