When One Has Two Mothers and Can't Stomach Being Touched by One or Both

I wrote a meme today that I thought was…earnestly sweet. I had been lying on the floor doing version of a breathing exercise Kent Bond had taught me where I imagine gentle purple light filling my back from the center of the earth as I inhale and golden light touching my belly on the peak of the inhale.

I was thinking of how when I do Reiki on people I can feel the energy bridge between their skin and my hands, and I was thinking how warm that feeling is, how wonderful.

I was wondering what it would be like to have that kind of touch and sensation with both my mothers. One whom I have not touched since my birth and the other I haven’t touched since she died.

When my mother was terribly ill with cancer, I crawled into bed with her and did Reiki on her back, on her arms, her shoulders, and it was one of my favorite times with her—both of us finally slowed into a kind of physical intimacy we’d never had before. I tried to pour I love you I love you I love you out my hands and into her body without the fears and angers and confusions that normally mixed in with my affection toward her, my mother who was not my mother by blood. My mother whom I claimed as mine but whose eyes and scent and temperament silently confused and infuriated me because all at once they were so foreign and so familiar. All at once she was always home and not home.

As I lay on the floor I imagined my mother sitting cross-legged next to me and sliding her hand beneath my sacrum. This was a little like imagining your fourth grade teacher giving you a head massage, but I went for it. It’s my imagination: I can see what I want. Then I thought about how sometimes when I do Reiki on people, I not only slide a hand under their sacrum, but I’ll lightly hold my other hand just above their lower belly, making a hand sandwich. I love doing this because I can feel the energy between my hands, and I can imagine a ball of golden light filling the person’s belly, healing them, calming them.

I thought I’d bring my first mother into the picture and have her sit cross-legged on the other side of me—my two mothers in a room together for the first time ever!—and put her hand over my belly. In my imagination, I decided to have my mothers gaze into each other’s eyes with love and acceptance. (Thank GOD for imagination. You can make ANYTHING happen!) My own mother had never shown a speck of interest in meeting or even helping me find my first mother, and my first mother had not shown a speck of interest in meeting me, so I thought it was excellent to have them there in my mind, together, trapped in my fantasy.

It was so pleasant. They nurtured me, and they loved both me and each other in this little mind movie I had going.

So I made a meme about this as a meditation and posted it on Instagram and Facebook.

I did not get the reaction I expected from that meme!! Most people were like YUCK!!! THAT SOUNDS LIKE HELL!!

If having one or both of your mothers touch you is intolerable, what does this do to your sense of well-being? Is it possible to fully love yourself and detest your mother’s touch? Does hating your mother’s (birth/first mother’s and/or adoptive mother’s) physicality lead to self-hatred?

I am so curious. I think if I had felt more comfortable with my mother’s skin—with how it felt to be touched by her—with how she smelled, I might be more…feminine. As it is, I feel a bit like a…block of wood. It’s subtle, but deep, deep down I think my body is frozen as in a big fat NO and I can’t help thinking this has something to do with the fact that my skin was not held by the skin that created it.

This is not something that’s a lot of fun to write. It makes me sad. I love my mom. When I was a child, the best way for her to calm me was to have me lie on my stomach so she could rub my back. I could not get enough of that skin on skin.

But, other than that, I did not love being touched by her.

And I feel bad about that.