There are times when a holiday falls on the Sunday when I am planning to write a blog post, and sometimes it seems like I need to make mention of that holiday and honor the occasion with a post that's a bit out of the usual scheme of things. For Mother's Day this year I felt as if what I needed to write about was not just Mothers in general or specific, but the idea of what a good supportive Mother can be. In some of my email newsletters I've been receiving messages for the past few weeks, saying that they understand that Mother's Day can be a tough time for some people and that if I want to opt out of their Mother's Day emails I'm welcome to and they'll resume emailing me after the holiday. It was actually a very considerate and thoughtful thing for these businesses, companies and marketing people to think about, and though I wasn't bothered by receiving the emails, as I began to think about what I would write for this Mother's Day Sunday, an idea was formed that maybe what I needed to talk about was Mother's Day itself and Mothers, or what Mothers can mean for us in the most positive scenarios.
I was at an event the other night and an Artist who I met there was speaking with me for quite some time. He was very insightful and shared with me something that made me think of a number of Artists who I have known over the years. There is an experience I've had from time to time, and it's happened often enough that I've started to notice it, that when I give some Artists a compliment or encouragement they look very uncomfortable and almost as if it's painful for them to hear it. In the past few months I've had the opportunity to view some webinars and receive some training around the topic of helping people heal from trauma, and so I've become very sensitive to the fact that many of us are walking around with challenges and deeply hidden issues that keep us from living our lives in joy and the freedom that comes from feeling healed and whole as a person.
One of the things that has been striking to me in the webinars and written material I've been viewing is that trauma does not have to be something that is larger than life and outsized beyond the normal every day difficulties many of us face. Trauma in a clinical sense can be something that arises from an experience of not being loved and cared for and not being accepted for who we are when we are growing up. Because of my conversation with the Artist at the event, I started to think more deeply about the issues of trauma and the behavior that can so deeply affect people's emotional life, and I began to consider that it might be extremely difficult to be a child of parents who don't understand the way that this particular child views the world and how they express themselves and make sense of the world through their art. That led me to begin thinking that at times when I think that I am being encouraging, the very experience of hearing positive feedback could be deeply emotionally affecting some of the people I am trying to encourage, and that the experience of hearing praise when they had so often heard otherwise as children, could be bringing up memories and feelings that are confusing at best and possibly very painful.
Because it is always my intent to help and support and lift up with love, to think that I might be harming someone by being supportive and kind made me assess the things that I do and the way that I go about them in a much more careful way. And that led me to begin to think about Mothers and how important they are to our development as competent, confident, and comfortably comforted beings. That in turn led me to think of my own Mother, and to think of the way that I approach the work that I do and the interactions I have with the Artists who I know.
My own Mother was an Artist, and I've come to realize that after many years of just being aware that she was always creating something. She sang and played the piano beautifully, she was a wonderful cook whose cakes and pies and roasts and breakfasts, lunches and dinners were always beautifully prepared and elegantly and comfortably served. She drew and painted, made collages, sewed, reupholstered and refinished furniture, and designed the living spaces in our house that I grew up in with care. She told me once that some of her paintings had been thrown away when her parents moved out of one of their homes, and that ever since that time she had saved all of her own children's drawings and artwork of every kind because she didn't want us to ever have to experience that. As children and teenagers we were encouraged to learn instruments, write, read, perform, sing, draw and explore any art that interested us. I've played viola, violin, guitar, the recorder, harmonicas and the piano, and I've been singing my whole life, acting and writing plays since I was three, and sculpting with clay, drawing and making all kinds of art from the time my mother first put me on the floor in the middle of a large piece of white paper and gave me a box of cray pas and a large container of crayons to play with.
Over the years I've had teachers tell me that I wasn't an Artist because I didn't draw figuratively the way they wanted me to. There have been times that I've been pigeonholed into acting roles or sections of the choir or have been sidelined, and times I've been discouraged from playing the instruments I loved. Until recently I never called myself an Artist when people asked me if I was one because I carried with me all of the messages I'd been given by people who told me I couldn't draw or paint or sculpt. Now that I work with so many Artists, it's one of the most enjoyable experiences I have to be able to share with them how wonderful they are, and that is why I started to think very deeply about why it was that I needed to do that when I heard from the Artist I was speaking with that it can make Artists very uncomfortable to hear the kind and encouraging words that I so often feel are necessary to say.
One of the things that I have been learning in the workshops and webinars about trauma is that when we are working with people or speaking with people who have experienced rejection and pain in their interpersonal interactions, sometimes it is very hard for trust to be built. And if there is an absence of trust or an experience of feeling afraid or unable to trust, hearing something kind or supportive could actually put people on their guard and raise the question of what our motive is and why we are saying and doing kind things. As I began to think about all of these scenarios together, it occurred to me that the key to trust is time and the key to healing is time, and they key to helping people understand that our only motive is to help them see how uniquely beautiful and special they are is time. Time is also the key to beginning to accept and receive the love that we're given and it's the key to beginning to accept ourselves fully as we are. It is said that Time Heals All Wounds, and though I think that's part of it, I think that patience is part of it too. When we set out to nurture and to share love and care and encouragement, our ability to take the time and patience to really understand what another person is feeling can make all the difference in whether we are able to truly help and give the right kind of support. Patience and taking the time that is needed to let trust grow allows others the time that they need to feel comfortable to receive what we offer and share, and to respond in a way that helps us all become healed and whole.
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