Daughters and Mothers

Iza and Amadea, most likely 1991

Opening to the present moment, it’s the day after our daughter Iza’s birthday. This is Iza and I in a different time. Yet you can see the relentless focus we both can bring to a given moment. What were we looking at here? No idea. We do still like to look at stuff together, more inner than outer these days.

Daughters and mothers often see things quite differently. This is for sure true of Iza and I. I value her perspectives, the things she sees that I don’t.

Most likely this photo is a treasured favorite precisely because of the rare resonance it captures in that time in our family lives.

Being the daughter of a mother

It’s a delicate dance, honoring someone else’s reality and not ignoring one’s own. My 96-year-old mother Margie and I get in her car for Mom’s Mondays, not infrequently a little rough around the edges. One or both of us will be grumpy, tired, resistant, whatever. I’ve learned not to bring up anything controversial in the first fifteen minutes or so of a drive, until we establish some sort of resonance or at least acceptance of our current condition, driving around together.

This year, after all this time together, I noticed an astrological improbability: the planet Mars in both my mother and my natal charts are at the exact same point in Sagittarius. For us this translates to, the road is our friend. We may start a Mom’s Monday disheveled, uncertain, at odds, yet we’ll slowly ground together into the adventure of the present moment. Three deer poised cautiously just outside the trees on edge of the road up Pecos River canyon. The lilacs all over downtown Santa Fe blooming with tremendous abundance this month. The oddly painted railroad cars parked at the Lamy train station under the giant cottonwoods.

Being the mother of a daughter

For Iza and I, there are different agreements. Walking and talking we can say things to one another that can’t be said easily sitting in a room. One of our agreements is to listen unconditionally, for the same amount of time each walk. We protect this guideline fiercely. This means on any walk, when we turn around to go back, it’s then the other person’s turn to talk. (If we’re doing a circle, we agree on where the midpoint is.) Reflecting what one hears is valued. Saying what one thinks and feels is a priority for us both.

As the parent of a grown child, I’m still learning to let go. Our friendship is precious to me. Yet our freedom to be involved in our own lives without one another has to be honored.

Mistaking protection for love

When a child is small, one needs to be so vigilant, so protective of any danger. That expression of our love can get hard-wired into our circuits to the place where, even if our loved ones are adults, it is hard to let go. I’m so attached to Iza’s happiness; I still want to create ways to protect it. Yet I can’t. I have to trust that Iza knows better what she needs than I do. This seems to be working out okay for both of us.

Being a parent is beyond biological

As I write this, I think of the many loved ones who’ve never had kids in the biological reproductive way. To me it looks like if one brings that same unconditional love, humor, connection, to a friendship with a younger person, the lessons learned are equally deep. The way the young person doesn’t do what you want. How sometimes your insights are valued, and other times ignored. For sure, if you are connected in this way, it is a priceless role – for them and you. And all of us, as a community. Being a parent is beyond biological.

Remorse, guilt, apologies

In any deep and long-lasting relationship, mistakes are made. Tibetans and Westerners tend to look at this differently. My teachers would often say, if you have remorse for a mistake, and vow that you will not make this mistake again, then confess or apologize in the way that is needed, that’s it. You don’t need to hang on to it.

In my own life, I think I’ve tended to attach more to my mistakes than my successes in family life. As a Westerner, guilt over past errors is easy to come by. Yet in my own experience, remorse and apology do seem more fruitful for long term happiness with loved ones.

Finding one’s own way

Iza and I worked together for a year and a half a few years ago. It was so fun. She uplifted the processes of the Ayurveda Polarity Therapy & Yoga Institute (my small school here in Santa Fe), and brought her incisive wit to workshops and Instagram videos. Yet much as she appreciated Ayurveda, she knew it wasn’t her path of work. Now as a licensed counselor at a community clinic one on one, while also working with people in an addiction recovery program in the evenings, she’s in the middle of who she is.

My mother Margie is also where she needs to be, lying on the couch, watching Gunsmoke on TV. The medicinal vibes of Matt Dillon soothe her soul.

I sense it’s time for me, as a mother, and a daughter, to find my own way, to open to whatever’s next in my life.

A moment in time, part of our family gathered: me, Mom, our sister-in-law Nancy, my younger brother Dodd, Gord, and Iza in 2022 (Not pictured here: our sisters Steph, Lisa, and Cindy, and many loved cousins and grandchildren)

Wrapping one’s mind around what has not yet been imagined

If you do not grasp at either true or untrue but settle within the nature of mind, then the mind is not obscured.

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, commentary by HE Garchen Rinpoche, p. 85

Not latching on to my ideas of what’s happening, what I’m attached to or appalled by, I can see there’s a more spacious way to be. Some of the happiest moments are in this state.

Leaping to May Day Strong: no work, no school, no shopping

I invite you to relax in that spacious state, the openness of this last paragraph, Then, ridiculously, I invite you to look ahead to next Friday, May 1st. If you’d like to join those of us standing together for May Day Strong in support of democracy, here’s more info. In Santa Fe the gathering will begin at 4:30 pm.

Bio: I’m a Polarity Therapist and Ayurveda health educator practicing in Santa Fe, NM. My most recent seasonal cookbook Easy Healing Drinks from the Wisdom of Ayurveda is on special here.