Today I want to share with you a story about Corrine.
Corrine was one of the worst cases I’ve ever seen in regards to codependency, especially with her kids. When I met her, Corrine was in her late 30s. She had a series of relationships that were intensely brutal and deeply painful. Eventually, this led her to connect with the worst codependency of her life.
She was treating herself so cruelly and abusively that Corrine was literally suicidal.
Yet, she couldn’t stop going back to her. And, she couldn’t understand why she was so addicted to such toxic relationships which were crushing her soul and making her internal dialogue less than cushy. In fact downright ‘negative nancy’.
It took Corrine 33 years to address the lingering notion that you are not in bed with anyone other than yourself, not your partner and not your kids. Why is it that they don’t teach you straight out of school to marry yourself? You see, Corrine was beautiful internally, but she always felt deeply flawed, never smart and hardly ever worthy of anything more than her morning coffee. Corrine always felt like everyone else was succeeding beautifully and really believed that some people just had it all and she was always the girl that felt small and unseen, while most of her friends could have any man that they ever wanted. Corrine confessed to me that she had never known what real love was because she had never internally completely felt it for herself. She had always allowed dysfunction in her relationships. She had no concept of what a healthy loving relationship could be.
Corrine was led to believe that healthy love only ever existed for other people and often romanticised what it would feel like to be in love with the ultimate partner; HERSELF, but Corrine most often came up empty. In fact, she often felt like she was battling the war inside her head and after the thousands of $ spent on healing therapies she was starting to believe that she would morph into Mother Maya Angelou; BUT with every step forward there felt to be uncontrolled and unparalleled steps right back.
Corrine often felt like she was a super attractor to the worst narcissists that god ever blew breath into and so, with every painful experience of her past, she would do more inner work for her future; ploughing through tons of therapy - some mainstream, some wu wu, some bottom-up and some top-down soon realising that she will always be completely dedicated to personal development.
Her quest will be to master her relationship to thy self and her relationship with thy others. None the less she was getting very impatient and was certain that she had done enough ’inner work’ and that she ‘should’ be rewarded with her perfect partner, herself, which in turn would make her children step up and honour her with respect to.
It came as a shocking realisation that this wasn’t the truth at all.
I’m going to give you some bite-sized ways in which I believe that 75% of the time, us mothers are scrambling around the place like a monkey with chaotic monkey chatter going cray in this pandemic that we live.
Why? is it that our children only know one word, Mum! Did they all just happen to forget the name dad altogether?
Can it be said that us ‘Mumma bears’ are in a bad mood most of the time? We are exhausted, energy depleted, living the role of stay at home mum, working mum, study mum and so many other archetypes us mums wear. The mere thought that our kids cant ask or call to someone else existing in the house makes you want to grab a bat and belt the nearest wall!
Holly mother of cow, can any other mother identify coronavirus with solitary confinement?
And then when you have deep ad prolonged thinking time in solitary it’s then that we can be really still and look within sitting still with our inner landscape, the rubber finally meets the road and it’s clear that perhaps we co-created our own doing all along.
It’s even more primal when you identify that 99% of who you have become is a compulsive caretaker for all the minutes, hours and days of your life.
Always the parent and never the parented, this was my childhood experience. I was and still am a childhood caretaker. When a child has to act like a parent, it deeply affects them for life. Why is it that when a little girl has never really had two sound parents of her own that we have to be responsible for our parents, as children grow up in this reality they grow up to be compulsive caretakers as adults.
Did I co-create such dependent children that they have learnt the only way to connect for my love is by calling my name a thousand times a day when their dad sits on the lounge scrolling facebook right next to them? I feel like a single parent.
Yes, they show u raw and untethered in so much love, they teach me inspiration, with them I access the love and joy in innocent abundance. My babies help me gain a clearer perspective on the woman and mum that I want to be, they help you step up and step out of your shit and show you the work is never done.
A spiritual student for life. My babies help me notice the moment. What is actually going on in their little hearts?
But when caretaking becomes an unhealthy equilibrium it might be time look at the illusion of your delusion and go within and in this ‘coronacation’ that’s exactly what this insane existence makes me do.
