Memories for Mother's Day

Having conversations with friends about our Mothers, since it is Mother's day weekend, I took the opportunity to walk through the past and here is what came to me... I wonder how I was fortunate enough to have ended up the me I am today. I wonder how you, mother, managed to instill love, respect, responsibility, and hope after being taught as a child so many other realities. How does one rise above the pain and self imposed shame of childhood abuse, the internal guilt of "why didn't I protect my daughters" and the societal belief that maybe we deserved it? How? Once in an intimate conversation you asked me If I could ever forgive you? It made me sad to realize that I had forgiven you years ago, and that you really only needed to forgive yourself. I could only imagine how you must have felt experiencing the same thing I did but living in a time when it was a big no no to share any family secrets and a time when people believed the story of "don't hang out your dirty laundry in public". I even shocked you when I told you I had forgiven the man, who I was raised to believe was my grandfather, who started the cycle of abuse... How could I not... As a boy being raised in Austria as one of Hitlers Youth. How could he have done better? He was programmed for pain, to give and receive. But you, you chose the high road. You rose above childhood programming. You taught love and instilled a deep sense of self respect and shared the truth with all your children that "we could be or do anything we believed we could be or do". When I take the time to sit with both of our pasts I am so grateful to the you of then and the me of now, and if I had to be born again I would still choose you. Mother.