by Justine Greene
Dear Mom,
‘Did we know how to have a real conversation with each other?’
On the eve of my birthday, I wonder how many times I’ve thought these words in the thirty-nine years we had together, and during the past 15 years since you died.
click to enlarge
On the day I was born, I learned that you were consuming a box of Turtle’s chocolates with your dear friend Elizabeth, and were playing the final round of “What should we name the baby, Benjamin or Justine?” I think you must have felt relieved having a girl. You needed a girl. You needed me as a replacement of sorts to your dear mother, who died not long before I was born.
I write today with sadness about what we were never able to say to one another. We were so close, and yet the older I get, and the more I grow as a person, the more I feel lost by not having known you in a deeper way.
Looking back, this is what I wanted to ask you? What are you afraid of? What do you think of me? What did you do wrong in life? What did you regret not doing? Were you proud of me? Why is a softer you forbidden? Why did you never release me from your neediness? Why didn’t you ask me about me? What do you think made you, you? The list goes on.
I’ll be working on some of these unanswered questions soon when I attend a weeklong retreat for people to delve into their past relationships with family. Right about now, I could sure use some motherly support from the great beyond. I’d like to invite you to join me somehow, next week, on the beach, in the forest, in the circles in my tears, into this conversation. Maybe in the end I’ll stop wishing to know the answers to any of these questions, but I do need to figure this out for myself.
I want to move away from my fifty-three years-old story and believe wholeheartedly that everything is okay, that you still love me, and that, at last, I will be able to be myself without your story having so much airtime.
I write this with much love and respect, as I believe you know. I just need to be free of honouring you, at a sacrifice to my future self.
Talk soon.
J
Justine Greene is our Wizard of Operations. Bringing her clarity of mind and warm heart to each day, Justine ensures flow in the day-to-day running of the organization. She is so grateful to our retreat participant community for doing their hard work. It is an inspiration to our staff team to seek to do their work as well.