Mastodawn

"If we stop idealising the maternal role or trivialising the assaults committed by women, it seems that incestuous mothers who abuse their young children actually represent a significant proportion of incest perpetrators. Monique Tardif and Bernadette Lamoureux mention various considerations that would protect our individual and collective conception of the maternal function. They mention both the resistance to recognising sexual manifestations emanating from women and their aggressive behaviours. Caregiving and nurturing affect the discernment capacity of both victims and their loved ones who face subtle or masked abusive behaviours."

p. 73 of "Le berceau des dominations", par Dorothée Dussy

#parenting #incest #adultDomination #adultism #mothers #mothering #publicHealth #domesticViolence #beliefs #incestCulture

PICS AND POSTS May 10

An Open Letter to My Mom | On Rest and Finding My Song

Dear Mama,

I know you are concerned about me. Whenever we talk lately, you mention my busyness and remind me to get rest. I have been listening and trying to heed your counsel. I am finding my way back to rest, not the superficial kind though. Not the simple pause between one workday and the next. Deeper rest. The kind that reaches all the way down into the soul and settles there. The kind where I set everything down. Not only the nine-to-five but the everyday scurrying and hurrying and the soul-wearying mental and emotional clutter that silences the song in my throat.

Perhaps, without realizing it, that’s what you have been reminding me—to not neglect my song.

And there’s something else I’m hearing when you urge me to rest. My rest helps you rest.

You have spent nearly your entire life working in one way or another. It began when you were just four years old, when you were left alone to watch your infant sister while your mother—my grandmother—ran an errand. You received that instruction and followed it dutifully. I have watched you live that life my whole life: always operating between the lines, never straying, always obedient to what is right and what is good. You have worked hard and tirelessly. To the exhaustion of your mind, your body, and your soul.

When you tell me to rest, it’s because you know exactly what a life looks like without it. Because you knew that life. And because you had two beautiful daughters—mothers also—taken before they could know a life of true rest, before they could set the load down, before they could find their song. Your deepest concern comes from that place of motherly love and protection but also from grief.

Your worry is valid. I have not rested well lately. Not exactly because of work, but because my mind and soul have been laboring, trying to manage the multiplicity of complicated and tangled things that have made me too exhausted to rest and live in my song.

I have watched you my entire life. Read your prayers scribbled on paper, notes written in the margins of Scripture. And from those pages, I have learned how to walk when the demands of life are heavy. I have learned how to shift the weight, and when to lay it down entirely.

I have also learned new things: the ache of silent endurance of pain has taught me that silence isn’t always best.

So, I am learning how to speak aloud the things that need to be named, if only to undo their hold on me. I’ve seen enough to know the things we leave unspoken are the things that keep us fettered.

A couple of years ago, you sent a birthday card too late that arrived right on time. I will keep your words to myself [they belong between us], but you reminded me of my purpose and my gifts. I return to that card often, to make sure I do not stay sidetracked too long.

When I look at my own son, I see a bit of me that I inherited from you—the gift of being unbothered by what does not matter and holding close what does. I am grateful for that.

[By the way, forgive me for the sins of my foolish youth, when I did not value you enough. I am still not sure how you managed to raise such a brat. 😂]

Thank you for pointing me back toward rest and song. I am listening now.

Happy Mother’s Day!