My mother, with whom I have always had a troubled and difficult bond, recently texted out of the blue asking if she could ask my 26-year-old son, who works for Adobe, to connect with a client of hers (she’s an employment lawyer). Hoping that Miles could provide a lead to a job for her client, my response, given our intermittent contact (and my frequent and fierce protective stance toward my own children) was, “I don’t think it would be appropriate and would seem transactional, given that you aren’t that close to him.” Her response? “Ouch!”
My mom came from a poor and abusive household. The oldest of six kids, she became a proxy protector for her younger siblings while my grandmother fought off the drunken rages of my grandfather. My mother’s rebellion was to excel—in sports, academics, etc. She got a full scholarship to a small Midwestern college. In her innocence around sex and reproduction, she became pregnant with me her freshman year. She was 19 when I was born. Despite her youth, and my bipolar father’s instability (he was a mere 22 years at my birth), she finished college, graduated from law school, and has developed a successful law career that continues today at the ripe late-middle age of 75.
That said, the fallout of her early maternity was significant. Her ambition, while well-intentioned, meant I both had an opportunity for an amazing education (I went to great schools, checked all the boxes for successful launching), and also felt very un-mothered. In my own rebellion as a parent, I both overprotected my sons and kept them from her, feeling her level of engagement as a grandparent was both lacking and too sporadic. As an adult, despite my educational advantages, I sought not a storied, ambitious career, but to teach. I taught children from housing projects in San Francisco, preschool in Oakland and Berkeley, and later volunteered as a teacher for young children of asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico.
For all of my ability to analyze text and describe the theoretical effect of various schools of literary thought and historicism, I chose to be with the humans that I felt needed the most warmth, unconditional positive regard, and affection. In my parenting, and in my avocational choice, I sought to heal my own small self.
In fall of 2024, I went through the weeklong Hoffman Process at their campus in Petaluma. Hoffman and MEA have aligned to co-lead workshops with our respective curricula. Someone with experience of both said, “Hoffman is to heal your past…MEA will help make your future.” For me, Hoffman went immensely deep, and I am not exaggerating when I say that that week did for me what years of therapy could not. Just as a few years ago, in a deep existential funk, MEA gave me hope and tools for imagining a way forward in my life when everything was in flux and I was stuck in midlife transition.
One of the most valuable things that Hoffman provides (no spoiler alerts here!) is a profoundly emotional, active and actionable path to repair with your parents and/or parental proxies. Never has my younger self felt so seen, heard and held, in all her distress, confusion and sadness. Where Hoffman led to the reconstitution of my younger self, MEA (and my teaching there), helps imagine and envision what is next. What will we make of our lives with these past, present and future hopes and plans?
In therapy, there is the concept of rupture and repair. Sometimes the client (or the intentional therapist) will say or do something to throw the therapeutic path into disarray or chaos. It can be a manner of testing…“Will they still welcome me if I say this unconscionable thing, if I’m a bad client or don’t show up? Or, will the client still come if I confront them in a way I know will be uncomfortable or confronting?”
What I have gained from the dual-pronged approach of Hoffman and MEA is this concept of re:pair (my own weird punctuation!). I can still see my mother in the way I always have, as someone flawed and overly busy and dismissive of me. I can also see her for the child she was, and the ways she hoped she would surmount her circumstances and raise me with more. I can hold my own past and future in my own hands, determining what my wounds and strengths have given me, and what they give me going forward in my own life.
While our life path is tricky at times, I have more compassion for both my mother and myself these days. Rather than telling her what I don’t like or want from our communication, I recently told her what I affirmatively desire: we both speak, we share what’s up for each of us, we keep our calls regular and scheduled. There is freedom in this boundary, and some repair as I start to see myself as my mother’s daughter again. As someone wise once said, “Everyone is guilty, and no one is to blame.” We hold this imperfection universally. How do we re:pair with the selves we were, the caregivers who failed us?
-Thérèse
Thérèse is the lead facilitator for MEA in Baja, currently pursuing another graduate degree in psychology to help serve our compadres in Baja and beyond.