Carrie Link

FORGIVENESS

Those of you that follow my blog (and, BTW, not enough has been made of how much I love and appreciate that, thank you), know that in the summer of 2007 I "left my kids" to go find myself. I was in frequent touch with them through the telephone and e-mails, and saw them a few times throughout my self-imposed seclusion, but none-the-less, I was not in their minute-to-minute lives like "good mothers" are.

Then I came home and wrote a memoir about that time, my midlife "crisis" book, my Erma Bombeck meets Elizabeth Gilbert self-discovery book. And then I tried to pitch that book to approx. a million agents, and was told everything from simply "not interested" to "love your book, love your writing, love your humor, love your honesty, but can't sell this book, now that Eat Pray Love made it big, there's a glut of this type of book on the market."

But for sure, the comment that hurt the worst, was from the agent that said, "Your readers won't be able to get over the fact that you left your children." And although I knew that comment was highly subjective, I feared she was right.

And then that same agent worked like crazy to find me a different agent, and I knew that even though I had offended her by my premise, I had hit a nerve - a universal nerve?

So I worked to get over the fact that others would judge me, whether or not they ever read the book.

And for the most part I was successful in getting good with my own decision, having told myself before, during and after the exile that what I was really doing, in the grand scheme of things, was not "leaving my children" but setting them free, particularly my teenage daughter. I wanted her to have her own life, to be unleashed from the invisible choke hold of my unfinished business. I knew what it was like to be fused to a mother that "hadn't done her work," and I didn't want that for my daughter. I wanted whatever "demons" she had in her life to be hers.

Not mine.

But the guilt remained. What if the voices on the outside were right, and the voice on my inside was wrong - just self serving and WRONG?

I decided to find out. This weekend I asked my kids. I started with Rojo, since he was the easiest, and I was a chicken.

"Rojo? Remember when I was gone for a long time?"

He looked puzzled, like no, he really couldn't remember that time, but I persisted.

"That summer when Daddy took care of you instead of me, when I was in Sisters?"

He nodded.

"Well, I'm really sorry about that time. I'm really sorry that I was gone, that I didn't take care of you all those days. I'm sorry if that hurt your feelings. I'm sorry if you missed me. I'm sorry."

He just looked at me, love visible from every pore of his skin, and said, "You don't have to be sorry. Now what time do you want to have our games today?"

Then I moved on to Woohoo and asked her virtually the same thing. She said in response, "Hurt me? You didn't hurt me. You helped me. You made me stronger. You taught me."

"I did? What did I teach you?" I asked, really wanting to know.

"You taught me that parents have lives they're not just here to serve kids."

Then we went on to have our best heart-to-heart talk we've every had, followed by the warmest hug of my life.

And although this does not mean I won't still feed the "Leather Fund" (time on a leather couch with a good therapist), perhaps it's time I feed myself a little something too.

Forgiveness.



(Just noticed the date on the artwork up top, 1994, the year Woohoo was born. No accidents. We had our family prayer time this morning, each kid drew a card from the "Enlightenment" deck, and both kids drew cards dealing with what? Forgiveness.)


* Photo from: http://rtmulcahy.files.wordpress.com