What the six-year old Michele heard one person telling another was, "Camilla would still be alive today if she hadn't had Michele. She shouldn't have had her." My mother was well loved and truly missed when she passed on. On that day, what the little six-year old girl heard and meant it to mean was "I should have never been born." And that day, the little girl sat on a footstool in the living room, removed from the crowd, repeating to herself, "I should have never been born," over, and over, and over again.
Until somewhere within the room, someone else whispered a comment within another conversation. "Poor kids, what's going to happen to them now that God took their mom away from them." What the six-year-old heard then was (just like when you're bad and someone took away your toy to punish you) "I must have done something wrong, because God was punishing me and took my mom away. And I guess I'm not good enough, I don't deserve a mom." Now this was just reinforced over the years when, like everyone else, I thought I heard someone tell me I wasn't good enough. It finally got to where no one had to say it aloud anymore; I just said it to myself for them.
It didn't stop there. The six-year-old looked at loosing a loved one as being abandoned. It hurt to lose her mother and she didn't want to be hurt like that again. Mom was someone you could trust, and love, and have fun with, and just when you were secure with all that love, and fun, and trust, it was gone, and you were abandoned. What did the six-year-old decide? You can't give your love and trust to someone because as soon as you were secure in those feelings -- people died and you were left there -- abandoned, all alone again. And it hurt. And over the years, as each very dear loved one died; my father, my husband, friends and family, and so on, it just reinforced, "don't get close, nor feel secure with anyone, because eventually they will just die and abandon me."
This past weekend, while at a seminar, many things began surfacing. People repeatedly came up to me and in one way or another, thanked me for sharing my "Five minutes from victory" experience. Then my teammates repeatedly told me in no uncertain terms that I was bigger than what I was sharing. They accused me of holding back. They were seeing something I didn't want to see or acknowledge. If maybe I wasn't so bad or maybe I was good enough, I might be held responsible for doing something with the gifts God had given me. And also, I might have to stop making excuses for not doing some of what I was "up to" in life. In one incident, a woman was sitting next to me, and as I sat there quietly, she reached over and wiped a silent tear from my eye with all the love of a mother.
One of my friends saw me silently crying earlier in the day and motioned for a seminar leader because he thought I needed someone to talk to. I was just sitting there, with no emotion on my face. She re-assured him that it was O.K., and then, very calmly, walked up to my chair and whispered with her soft, comforting voice into my ear as she stood behind me, "It's O.K. Michele, you don't have to cry." This was the first time I could ever remember someone actually giving me permission not to cry. She didn't insist that I stop crying, or that something was wrong, she just said something that gave me the space to decide if I wanted to choose to react with tears or look for another way to stand in the situation that was confronting me at that moment. And oddly enough, in that instant what I heard was such a blend of her voice and my mom's voice that I couldn't distinguish between the two of them. But their voices, in that reassuring tone, made everything in the world right in that moment.
It just may be that more experiences of the memories of that day will surface in some future time (like bad little girls can't have fun) so I punish myself and don't allow myself to have fun yet because I've been really bad you know. I'm six-years old.
Now, I'd have to be totally blind if I actually thought I got it (the lesson) by myself. Thanks to everyone who touched my life and made the difference that has brought me to where I am right now. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. And a special thanks to those I haven't thanked in person yet.
If I were to suggest one thing, it would be to choose your words wisely where children are concerned - you might never know how they will interpret them because they might never tell, and most of us don't stop to ask.
On Grandma's back stairs with my hair wrapped in a towel.
