To this day, it amazes me how different my mother was with my dad than she was with her kids. It was fascinating, experiencing them together. Best friends, confidantes, lovers. Both had things in their young lives that left them, in some ways, broken. Dad always wanted to take care of others. Mom strove to do what she could to help them avoid discomfort, even if it meant taking an incredible amount on her all-too-willing shoulders. They made a great pair. (Alas, not so hot at team building, which seems to explain a lot about our family.)
Mom & Dad were each others' salvation. Dad never made a decision without consulting Mom, including whether or not he should start his own lumber business after the place where he was an executive burned down. Mom knew Dad would work for someone else if she felt that was the financially best thing to do with , but she also knew that none of the offers that poured in offered him the opportunity to what he loved - both mill work & design (he was incredibly gifted at both). They struck a remarkable balance that worked well for the two of them.
Okay, I admit it - Mom was never assertive with Dad. She didn't have to be. The two naturally played off each other. Neither diminished the other, neither sought to dominate.
So, it wasn't that Mom forgot all her assertiveness skills when Dad passed too young, just shy of 63. She'd never learned them. She certainly didn't assert herself with Gran over the 25+ years her mother was widowed & leaned on Mom for making life work. It wasn't any wonder she wasn't assertive with her children - she didn't know what assertive was!
Until she read How To Be An Adult, Chapter 2.
Be clear about your feelings, choices, and agenda.
Ask for what you want.
Take responsibility for your feelings & behaviors.
I'm not surprised that Mom felt she needed to take a pause after reading those three characteristics. Looking back, it amazes me she continued her reading at all. Because those three were utterly foreign concepts to my mother.
From what I heard over the years - especially the things I heard off-hand, imbedded in stories told, in the smallest memories of Gran - Mom's life from her late teens had nothing to do with anything she wanted having legitimacy. It was all about Gran, all the time. Imagine that, from the time you're 19 to 45.
And, being Mom, she had to make it okay fine sane.
There's no describing how much reading How To Be An Adult in tandem with Mom helped me, too. There was my mother, in upper & lower case, right in front of me. Not allowed to show real feelings, be open, ask for things directly, give a different opinion, consider her own interests, say an inconvenient No, act as if she deserved... anything.
We talked about that first page at Barnes & Noble/Jenkintown, over coffee & cinnamon scones. As much as I had recognized Mom on that first page of chapter two, Mom had also seen herself. It shook her up.
It also gave her hope. Mom saw as unique in her challenges, an unfathomable aberration.
Perhaps it was very day that I took her by the hand & marched her over to the extensive Self Help section, firmly stating, "Mom, if there were countless others in the same boat as you, there wouldn't be all these books!"
That gave her hope. There were others who felt as swamped as she did, there were things she could do to change. She wasn't alone. And things could get better.
While reading that first page of Chapter 2, got a sense of how David Richo created a safe place for someone like Mom to read about assertiveness. He doesn't pile blame on parents or others. It's about the reader, and the reader getting healthier, developing a greater sense of wholeness. And it's often just common sense.
Writing about this, am awed at how Mom could not have changed, no matter what she read or heard or saw, if there wasn't a part of her already wide open for a better way. I played Stephen Covey on the trip down to DisneyWorld, but it was Mom who lightly touched my arm & asked, "Play it (that part) again." I suggested reading How To Be An Adult together, but it was Mom who made it happen, who the book down after reading the first four lines of Chapter 2 - and picked it up again.
The concepts might have been foreign to Mom, but the hope she got - at 90! - for a bigger better healthier life was clearly not.
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