Birthing Teachers
I wonder sometimes if all women who give birth, give birth to their teachers. I know that’s what’s happened for me. And, of course, there are all kinds of teachers… methods of instruction vary greatly. And, of course, also, there are all kinds of students… and all kinds of lessons as well.
I had entered into marriage, having spent most of my life up till then acting as an in-house babysitter for my numerous younger siblings. Consequently, I was fully intending not to have children. As far as I knew, children were nothing but an annoyance that demanded constant attention. The man that I married had also not wanted children so, most likely, had I not been the woman that I was at the time, I would not currently be the mother two grown children and would, perhaps, still be married to their father. Perhaps.
The woman my children’s father married is a world away from the woman I have become. The woman he married — and the mother of his only two children — was an out-of-control, promiscuous, lost individual owing to the un-addressed events of a dramatically unfortunate — if not actually criminal — childhood. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t tried to get help for my ‘issues’; I had. It was just that the only people I had to turn to for help were people who had been recommended by the very people who were causing me to need help. Their complicity was immediately apparent to me, (an ironic way to put it).
My determination not to have children was considerably lessened once I entered into marriage because my inability to refrain from sexual activity on the fly seemed to be beyond my control. More than anything, I had not wanted to fail at marriage. I wanted to be a ‘normal person,’ but that was something it would take me decades to realize could never happen… I am who I am and that happens to be… different from most folks. At this point in my life, I am grateful for that. I love who I am… I even love who I was when I was so broken… and I love all the therapists and the teachers who helped me get to this point, most especially, the two teachers that I gave birth to.
There are different kinds of teachers, as I’m sure you know. There are the ones that seem almost as if they might hate you but are, in reality, just trying to make you the best student that you can be. And then there are the kinds of teachers that you might dream of having, teachers that seem to accept you and your limitations at such a depth that you almost feel as if you are learning everything on your own, as well as feeling that you are amazing at it. The chance workings of the world brought me one of each type. The tough one came first… and the tough one is still the tough one, over forty years later… and I, apparently, still have much to learn in order to even figure out what it is that I’m learning. So, I have a long way to go.
The one that accepts at me and my limitations probably knows that I still have a lot to learn… but doesn’t treat me that way… and I have to confess, I prefer this approach. Experiencing unconditional acceptance feels wonderful. Having endured the kind of childhood that creates you as a dysfunctional mess of an adult is a big lesson all by itself. For me it was a lesson that cost me my chance to raise my own children, which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing for them because it took decades of focused therapy and healing and even a supposed-to-be fatal illness to turn me into a decent human being. That illness, in particular, was my third teacher; it’s never too late to learn, after all!
Some days, I have to confess, despite my best efforts to ‘live in the now,’ I look forward to graduation… but I suspect that’s down the line a bit more. I also strongly suspect, thanks to my most recent lessons which were lovingly provided, that at least one of my teachers still has a lot more to teach me and I am looking forward to that, albeit with some degree of trepidation… you know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know, y’know?
