Bono?

I was talking to Robyn Gobbel (https://www.gobbelcounseling.com) about a video where Pink watches her daughter sing a song, and we were both marveling at what was going on between the two, between the mother and the child. Robyn said secure attachment is presence, contact, reflection, responsiveness, and delight. 

I want my mom back so I can do it all again. This time I’m going to tell her what I need: presence, contact, reflection, responsiveness, delight.

Delight. 

I want this do-over with my mom just so I can see what it would be like to be reflected in a way that felt complete. 

I want my mom to delight in herself more so I can bask in the light of her self-love. Real self-love is love and love is love is love. If she self-loved, she’d love everything around her. 

 Including me. 

And not in a desperate way. In an I love you because I love everything kind of way. This throws special and chosen right out the window. 

Bye.

I don’t need to be special or chosen when my mom is basking in delight because then I am delight and everything is special. Everything is chosen. Including me. 

An (adult) adoptee was telling me about how her mom worries, about how her mom says Be safe, Don’t go too far. Don’t stay out too late. The adoptee was saying that she feels trapped, that her mother’s fear is like a cage. The adoptee is married, lives in a house miles and miles from her mother’s house, but her mother’s fears makes it as if they live in the same small box. Her mother’s fears say You are not safe. They say I am not safe. They say I need you close so I am okay. 

 Adoptees think they are the ones with abandonment issues, but what if adoptive parents are just as frightened that they, the parents, are going to be abandoned?

I think my mother was terrified my birth/first mother was going to return. I think this was buried in my mother’s brain, and I think this fear poisoned the space between us, just as my secret desire that my birth/first mother would someday come back and claim me poisoned the space between my mom and me. Subtly. In confusing ways that looked like I am afraid to leave you because I might not come back or you might have disappeared. In ways that looked like I am so deep in this mask I can’t pull it off and be myself and This life is not my real life because you are not my real mother and that means I am not the real me.

I am hungry. I did not mean to write a blog post, but then Robyn said that thing and I started writing even though I was already ready to eat.

So I’m going to bring this to a close.

What happened with my conversation with Robyn was that I said I wanted Bono to be my mother. We laughed, but I was serious. I said that I was so deep in mother confusion I thought a male rock star could be my mother. 

 I think Bono would make a fine mom. He could teach me to sing. He could teach me to strut around and wear black. He could read me stories at night and rock me to sleep, sing me to dreams.

He loves himself so much, there would be plenty of room for him to love me, too. The two of us could sing Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and he would look in my eyes, and I would see him seeing me, and I would feel strong and fierce and real.

Of course I feel guilty about writing this. Of course I feel like I should say that my mom was enough, she was the right mom for me, and that I love her very much. And those things are true.

(Bono, I live in Sebastopol. You can come stay here any time. I have tons of masks. You can bring your whole family. Since you will be my mom, they will be my family, too. Everything will be okay. We can socially isolate together. And sing.)