As Elsa watches her mother, Margaret (Faith Hill) herd cattle, she sees her as a woman – not solely a mother – for the first time: “I watched her ride and I didn’t see my mother. I saw a woman. And the woman was magnificent.” Jan 16, 2022
(from the TV Series and Yellowstone Prequel “1883”)
The other day, my friend mentioned that she attended a funeral of a man who had died. When he was alive, the man was passionate about two major hobbies in his life. My friend said that the man’s wife announced that she planned on continuing with his hobbies as an act of keeping him alive in her heart. My first thought was that this was sweet, and romantic, and loyal, and beautiful. But my second thought was, “Wow, this is what we women do so much of the time. We take on the passions and interests of our lovers and of our families and we often whittle our own passions and interests down to mere afterthoughts, to the point that we often forget what these passions were at all.”
I’ve witnessed it again and again, in myself, and in other women whom I know. We are the supporters and the nurturers, so we become “the soccer moms” or “the football moms” or “the wife of the esteemed So and So”. And our own interests and hobbies which are what make us unique in this world, often get relegated to the bottom of the list, the first things to get cancelled and crossed off when the calendar gets filled. And we are okay with this. We are the ones who do the crossing off. It makes sense to us. How could a book club or an art class be more important than supporting our loved ones at their functions and activities? We slowly diminish our own selves and we take on the role of “family cheerleader/supporter/bolster” to the point that our whole identity is wrapped up in other people’s lives and experiences. And without those “other people”, we are a little lost to ourselves. And they don’t know us as much more than an assistant to their own needs. And at the very worst, we start resenting others for this type of martyrdom, when they never asked us to do this for them in the first place. We start resenting others for what we have done to ourselves.
While watching the episode of “1883”, where the teenage daughter shockingly realizes that her own mother can ride horses and herd cattle every bit as deftly as she can, we see that the daughter is filled with awe and pride. Up until that moment, the daughter has only known her mother as “the mother”, the supporter of her father and of the family. She is in her late teenage years when she first comes to the realization that her mother is a woman in her own right, filled with talent and skill and bravery and regality, all outside of her role as the matriarch of their family.
When talking with my husband about this phenomenon that I’ve noticed and pondered, he said that he witnesses many men losing their individual identities to their careers. He has known many men who get their entire sense of self, solely from their job titles and thus, he knows men in their late seventies, with enough money stashed in the bank for five lifetimes, fearful to retire. They are so wrapped up in their jobs, that they don’t know themselves without these duties, responsibilities and titles. They don’t know themselves without the role that they play in their careers.
I’m not saying any of this is bad, per se. We have to make sacrifices and prioritize our lives in ways that make sense. We, of course, must be responsible to our responsibilities. And our life roles and our responsibilities are often things that we are passionate about. Still, aren’t we also responsible to nurture and to bring about the most innate, creative, unique version of our own selves into this world? It is our own unrepeatable, distinguishable self who initially attracted our lovers to us. Our children want to know the sides of us that exist beyond fulfilling their needs, especially as they become independent adults. Watching us fulfill our own interests, gives them permission to do the same thing, guilt-free. Our children want to fully understand their own DNA, by witnessing the fullness and uniqueness of us, from whence they came. We owe it, not just to ourselves, not just to our loved ones, but also to this world, to this one experience that we co-create together, to really explore what uniquely fills us with passion and desire and meaning and purpose. We owe it to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to this world, and to its Creator, to explore and to prioritize and thus to become the fullest expression our own unique spark and mark that we make in this world, outside of any roles or titles that we take on, throughout the journey. We must be as interested in what makes us tick, as individuals, as we are dedicated to the support roles which we play in life. Otherwise we cheat ourselves and we cheat others out of how amazing and astonishing this experience of Life, that we all share together, can truly be.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.