It’s often not how it looks on the surface

My mum has brain damage — or more accurately atrophy of the brain. Which means that things that most adults usually notice — like whether or not their clothes are a bit smelly, or whether or not they’ve recently cleaned their kitchen — are no longer available to her as things to notice.

And she lives alone. Which is her preference.

When I was growing up, she was always meticulously dressed. Like TOO meticulously dressed. She obsessed about her appearance and used to tell me not to eat the chocolate and chips that she bought for my brother because I’d get fat and girls just shouldn’t BE fat. (So I ate them in secret when she wasn’t looking because #rebel and also #fyou).

And although there was a part of me now that was pleased that she’d become so comparatively relaxed about her appearance (the last time that I took her to the supermarket she laughed when she realised she hadn’t changed out of her slippers — pre-atrophy she would have been mortified), I was also feeling deeply broken-hearted about the fact that she had lost a part of herself what was SO her for so long.

In case you haven’t heard me screaming from the rooftops, I now channel a collective called Oron, Abraham-Hicks style. Which comes in pretty bloody handy when I’m struggling with something and need a second opinion!

So I sat down and did a channeling for myself to get Oron’s perspective.

Paraphrasing the mind-blowing answer that they lovingly kicked my arse with:

“Your mum has suffered from extreme anxiety for most of her life. It’s what led her to alcoholism and addiction. She is free from that now. And the fact that she’s having issues with her personal hygiene does not bother her. And she wishes you’d drop it.

She’s not the disempowered victim you’re seeing her as. She’s just as much the creator of her life experience as you are. The only ‘problem’ here is that you’re tying yourself in knots about something that you did not create and that you cannot control. Which is what you humans often do. So you can either keep tying yourself up in knots about it or you can stop. You get to choose. But you don’t get to create in her experience.”

Which was unquestioningly wise, but still hit me in the gut.

I can’t look at myself and my clients and think that we’re powerful creators but that my poor mum isn’t. In truth, she’s actually created the perfect solution for herself. She’s disconnected from a lot of her old fear and pain, and just because she’s done it in a way that I would not choose, that doesn’t make it wrong.

I’m going to repeat that.

Just because someone is choosing/creating something that I would not choose, that doesn’t make it wrong.

Doesn’t that apply to most of us, most of the time, if we’re willing to see it?

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My weekly visits to my mum are a lot less harrowing now. Just to be clear, I don’t LOVE that my mum frequently chooses not to shower and sometimes smells kinda yuck.

But at least I’ve stopped fighting it. Or I guess, more accurately, I’ve stopped fighting her.

Oron’s teaching is that although on the surface we can interpret things as problems, when we look at them from a higher perspective, they never really are.

That when we stop fighting the alleged ‘problem’ we stop blocking and wasting our own energy and that’s when we create the space for things to change.

And although in some ways I’ve heard versions of that before, Oron’s brilliance is that they can hold our hands and help us get from the ‘this sucks and is very MUCH a bloody problem!!’ to ‘Oh, okay, I see… maybe I can try to let this go a little’.

And they do it in a way that makes it easy.

Which suits me fine, coz honestly — I’m done with hard!