"Supermoon" 2013
June 25, 2013
My birthday was yesterday. A friend of mine observed that many of her friends are going through a particularly emotional time at present and she wondered if the so-called "Supermoon" that occurred over the weekend was to blame, since our bodies contain so much water that we could be affected the same as the tides. We wondered together if those of us born under the moon sign of Cancer were even more affected.
Last night and this morning I had an "epiphany," which I believe was brought on by a combination of the season finale of "Mad Men," during which Don Draper seems to be "breaking open" (a Tara Brach term) to his troubled past, and a birthday that required me to ask my children at 5pm if they even had a card for me. My 14-year-old daughter gave me a card, on which she had added the words "Thanks for always cleaning up after us and always being there." Suddenly I saw myself as she sees me - the maid! I then "broke open" myself and realized that it was not my children's responsibility to appreciate me on my birthday, and that the life I have been leading, during which I do my best to go on every school trip, bake brownies for every bake sale and volunteer at every event, was really me trying to make up for a childhood in which I had a single, working mother who would not have had the opportunity to do any of these things. The epiphany was also that my children had not asked me to do any of those things, but I had done them for myself, as my friend wisely put it, to heal the "wounded child" within me. Did my children want or even need this level of attention? Probably not. Would I have even wanted that much attention as a teenager? Probably not.
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