By Judith Gayle

I WAS pleased to see that Venus had moved into Cancer to coincide with Mother's Day. It adds the possibility of a kind of warm, cuddly benediction on such a remembrance day. Like many such occasions in which we're conditioned to fully embrace the mythology and hype of the moment, the reality is often a disappointment.  
 
There are some inevitabilities to life, and one of them is that we all have a mother. Some mothers are wise and warm, some are distant and cool, some are overbearing and demanding -- and most are all those things at the same time. Edgar Cayce said that our relationship with our mother is the strongest link we have to another human on this plane. And I'd add, the most complex.  
 
Guilt and Hallmark Cards have more to do with Mother's Day than an actual outpouring of appreciation. All manner of neglect, indifference and avoidance comes due and payable on Mother's Day...for both parties. Perhaps if we didn't have to wade through so much illusion as regards our parents, this wouldn't be such a difficult day. I had to laugh during the first Republican debate when one of the candidates was asked about the war and launched into a message about how we had to get back to family values; for conservatives, the answer to everything can be found in family training. Of course, the family model he was referencing was the biblical one -- nuclear, with father as the "head," mother as the "dutiful nurturer" and children "seen and not heard." This is a kind of damaging Leave It to Beaver illusion we can't shake out of our consciousness. I worked with a teacher years ago who was raised by a single mother with two jobs -- he said that he resented her for not being Mrs. Cleaver all the years of his childhood. There is nothing simplistic about the parent/child relationship, and we need to stop pretending there is.  
 
Mothers are the first women we encounter on this planet. They are the Font of All Good for at least the first few critical years and set a pattern for how we will relate to every other woman we meet. If, by the luck of the draw or karmic dispensation or both, we get a good one, we are more likely to feel secure and safe in our childhood years, and we can later appreciate all it took to lead us through the minefield of adolescence. For sure, that deserves, at least, a card.  
 
Most of the extraordinary people I know didn't have good ones. Most of them had very flawed women raising them, selfish, manipulative or asleep at the switch. Much of their lives has been about resolving that essential wound and rising above it. It's made them self-reflective and self-reliant, given them a template for what is missing from their experience and a heads-up on what patterns need to be examined and discarded. It's made them strong. I'd guess that deserves a card, too.  
 
If we work at it, our mother becomes our friend at some point. It is at this juncture that Very Brave Women can feel free to pick up Nancy Friday's book, My Mother, My Self. I had a close and loving relationship with my mother, and I remember getting as far as the second chapter before my head imploded. I don't recall much after that; things got foggy. If you want to do some potent inner work, get in touch with your mother-dialogues. That mirror is too bright, too revealing...too honest for comfort.  
 
Yes, like it or not, we are reflections of our parents in most ways. Our mothers are less the authority figures than the ones that we turn to for unconditional love. As that's a hard concept for most humans to get a handle on, many mothers fall short in that department -- and that's a sorrow when you think of the Goddess-like potential inherent in the mother-child relationship. Mothers can be either healers or destroyers, and the latter would no doubt offer in their defense that they learned everything they know at the knee of their own mothers -- the perpetual loop of human dysfunction.

We need to cut our mothers some slack, I think. Forgive them their flaws. Nobody told them that they would be representing Goddess in our lives or taught them how to do that. It's an awesome responsibility, parenting. As parents, everything we do and say becomes our children's "default position" -- we are teaching them every moment of their lives. Maybe that's why some of us run, screaming, this time of the year. Maybe that's why Mother's Day produces a gut-clenching, headache-inspiring groan from so many. Still, parenting is a journey, much as is growing into adulthood. There isn't some place to "get to" on such a journey, no "perfect relationship" to work toward. Parenting is an evolution of consciousness that leads us to new understandings, mindfulness, amends, and actions.  

The original intent of Mother's Day was such a realization by Julia Ward Howe in 1870, at the close of our bloody Civil War. You may recognize the name as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." With her nation suffering the loss of so many sons, Julia came to realize that war had little to do with a mother's heart, and less with respect for her opinion. She resolved to change that, calling women together with these words: