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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: stepmom relationship

Sharing our Stories in Community

13 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by ardisanelson in emotional needs, encouraging each other, losing mom too soon, stepmom relationship, the healing journey

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As one of the authors in Journeys to Mother Love, I’ve been eager to read the stories of the other eight authors in the compilation. I could particularly relate to the story, “When I Feel Forsaken,” by Catherine Lawton. My story, “Walking My Mother Home,” is about the final two years of my mother’s life and the healing I received ministering to her during that time.

When I read the passage in Cathy’s story about the death of her mother, I took note of how it affected her. Cathy’s mother died when Cathy was 28 years old, before she was ready to lose her. She wrote that now she’d “never be able to know her mother as a person” and develop an adult “friendship” with her. Those words struck me. Although my mother lived to an old age of 78 years, I had “lost” her emotionally when I was only six, after she had a nervous breakdown.  Like Cathy, I never got to know her as a person, yet I never thought of it in those terms until I read her words.

That is the beauty of telling our stories—the good and the bad. They can impart a nugget that we don’t expect for someone else. Those nuggets can be life-giving.

My mother wasn’t someone I could ever share my inner most thoughts or feelings with. Because she couldn’t model that for me, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that with her or with others until much later in life. By then, my mother was too far gone mentally for us to communicate in that way. Fortunately, like Cathy, I had other women who “mothered” me and helped me to get my emotional needs met.

As sad as it may seem to realize what I missed from my mother (not knowing her as a person), I also realized two positive outcomes in the process. Over the past few years of my mother’s life, I wrote letters to her. Although she couldn’t write back, I think she was getting to know me as a person. She must have recognized this as a gift because she was very attentive during my visits, even after all those years of my abandonment of her.

Secondly, I realized that the Lord did give me a mother who I have been able to know as a person. I’ve had a stepmother in my life since my divorced father remarried 38 years ago. I never lived with them or called her “mom.” But we have become close.  We know each other in a way that I never got to know my own mother. It’s been a life-giving and healing relationship.

There were other parts of Cathy’s story that resonated with me as well, but I mention the above nuggets to show the value of sharing our stories. I gained an insight about myself and my journey from reading Cathy’s story. I know God wants me to integrate that into my heart for my own healing.

So I invite you into community with me and the other eight authors of this compilation. Your stories are important. You have a voice. Let the Lord use your story to inspire or bless someone else in an unexpected way.

Pick a story from one of the nine authors in Journeys to Mother Love. How did you relate to that story? Or share your own story.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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A Journey to Stepmother Love

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in childhood memories, emotional needs, letting go of anger, stepmom relationship, the healing journey

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Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, giving and receiving, Healing love, mother and daughter, unresolved hurt

Step-mother-love-01I was nine years old when my parents divorced. I’ll never forget that day. After hearing the news, I ran into the woods behind our house and cried my eyes out. “Why? Why? Why?” I cried to God.

Those repressed memories surfaced a while back in a therapy session as I got in touch with the little Ardis who was hurting from the trauma of this event. I’ve processed this before, but this time I remembered something new. I remembered that I told my father I hated him. It became one of those pivotal moments in my life when I decided I had to be a BIG girl and stuff my emotions.

I surfaced from those woods, calm and collected. I WAS a big girl. But try as I might, that anger at what was going on between my parents was still there. Both of my parents soon remarried. I lived with my mother and stepfather thousands of miles away from my father, who had retained our family home as part of the divorce settlement. The only time I got to see him was on summer vacation periods. His remarriage was so short-lived that I never met his new wife and never even considered her a stepmother.

When I was 13 years old, another woman came into my father’s life, and he remarried again. Inside I’m sure I was devastated, although I never talked to my father about it. I was desperately searching and longing for his love and approval. After they wed, my summer visits were spent at her home. My days were long, lounging around the house watching soap operas, and taking care of her dog—not much fun for a teenage girl. Yet I continued to worship the ground my father walked on.

My stepmother treated me fairly. I don’t remember being mean or unruly with her. I never called her ‘mom’, only by her first name.  But to hear her tell of this time in my life, I get a very different story. It’s a story about an angry, lazy teen that didn’t do much of anything, and made her wishes and demands known to all within earshot.

The healing of that turbulent angry young teen took many years of deep spiritual growth and recovery work. And when my father passed away two years ago at the age of 94, I had already forgiven him and learned to accept that he could not give me the kind of love I had longed for.

But it was the love of his wife, my stepmother, which really helped to fill that hole in my heart.

Over recent years, we have spent countless hours on the phone, talking about adult women issues, and sharing our hearts. She has been a big supporter of my writing and always wants to hear about what is going on in my life.

Interestingly enough, what brought us together was the empathy and compassion we both received from an understanding of what it was like to live with my father. They were married 38 years.

As I got healing for my father wounds, I was able to come alongside her more as well. She endured long suffering as she cared for my father the last several years of his life. She sacrificed. She toiled. And when he passed, she asked me to write his eulogy, and gave me and my siblings carte blanche on how to run his memorial service. It was a huge gift to me.

My stepmother celebrated her 80th birthday recently, with a huge party of friends and family. While I barely knew any of them, my family and I traveled the 150 miles to celebrate with her. She’s been a pillar of strength for me to lean on these past several years. I owe her that much in return. After all, while I didn’t recognize it much over the years, she has been to some degree the mother I never had.

We had a rocky start, but this journey to stepmother love has been worth the wait. Happy Mother’s Day, MOM!

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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The Law of Love

09 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, forgiving yourself, God's healing love, healing after abortion, losing mom too soon, stepmom relationship, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Tags

Abortion, Forgiving yourself, future hope, God the Father, Great Commandment, Healing love, Miracle Baby, Post-Abortion Healing

"Death Was Cheated" - newspaper clipping

Ellen Cardwell, a “miracle” baby “born” after her mother died

Is the pre-born baby a “person” created by God with a soul that will live forever? Two of the stories in Journeys to Mother Love touch on this subject.

Ellen Cardwell shares the story of how her mother died suddenly while taking a Sunday afternoon stroll when she was pregnant full-term with Ellen. A popular attitude of the times was that the unborn baby should be left to die with the mother. A caring doctor, though, performed an emergency operation on the deceased mother and took the baby out, resuscitating her to life. The story appeared on the front page of the Oakland Tribune (see photo above).

For Ellen, the mother/child relational healing she experienced later, had to do with relating to and forgiving her stepmother, who had led Ellen to believe she was her birth mother.

In another memoir included in Journeys to Mother Love, Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton tells how, as a frightened, pregnant college student, she chose abortion—and then the resulting emotional pain, cancer, and barrenness she experienced when, in a loving marriage, she longed for children.

The mother/child healing aspect of Kyleen’s story had to do with her “relationship” with the unborn, aborted child who she came to think of as a person with a name; with her relationship with her stepchild; and with her own need to forgive herself.

These are both powerful stories. They show how important to God is every person he creates. And though we are called “mortal beings” because our bodies will die, there is a part of us that will not die. These stories also show that we are each individuals but tied together with bonds stronger than death.

When it comes to personhood and abortion, I believe we should vote and work for just and biblical laws. But I also believe that man’s law and God’s law are not the same. It is a worthy goal to want man’s laws to be based on God’s laws. But it is not the main goal. Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law. And he said that the greatest commandment was to love (see Matthew 22:37-39). When we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, we also love what he has created.

I’m thankful the doctor in Oakland, California honored God and the life he created when he allowed Ellen to be “born”; and I’m thankful for the love and forgiveness the Lord has given Ellen for her mother and stepmother, and for the hope she has of fellowship with them in Heaven.

I’m also thankful that God the Father welcomes into his presence the babies aborted and robbed of a life on earth. And he has shown his love for Kyleen by giving to her children to adopt and love as well as peace concerning the child conceived in her own body, whom she anticipates meeting face to face in Heaven.

The second part of Jesus’ great commandment is that we “love our neighbors as ourselves.” When we live by that law of love — and see our mothers and our children as our “neighbors” — our stories are transformed.

~Catherine Lawton

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Perfect Parenting

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by finishingwell2 in forgiving mom, God as our parent, mother wounds, stepmom relationship

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Family, Forgiveness, Modeling the faith, Parenting styles

"Death Was Cheated" - newspaper clipping

Ellen was the “miracle” baby “born” after her pregnant mother died suddenly during a stroll in the park

My parenting style is very different from Mom’s and Dad’s. In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of being raised by a stepmother and only finding out when I was grown that she wasn’t my real mom. That was one of the disappointments and deceptions that I finally was able to forgive (with the Lord’s help), so that we could “finish well.”

When I had my own children, I was sure I could do better than my parents had. So I tried my best to give our children a firm foundation mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

In spite of my good intentions, I wasn’t the perfect parent, either. My children now tell me how they felt on the receiving end of my parenting. “You were strict,” they say. “You were really naive.” etc.

With experience comes understanding. When I was young, I couldn’t understand my parents’ viewpoint because I hadn’t walked in their shoes. Now that I’ve been a parent, too, I can look back and empathize with their struggles as they tried to make the best of what life had dealt them. And, it’s easier to forgive their shortcomings, as I hope my children will forgive mine.

My grown son encouraged me by saying he saw us seeking God and modeling Christ to him and his sister, day after day. And it’s because of that example, that he belongs to Christ today. That’s the best outcome we could have hoped for.

We can’t claim any bragging rights for that, though. God, the perfect parent, lit the flame in his heart and our daughter’s, too. Now, as part of His family, God is maturing them as only He knows how. Thank you, Lord.

~ Ellen Cardwell

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