Mother - A Champion of Love

(This piece, titled 'Mother's Legacy' was a creation from various objects which remind me of my mother and is available at www.ursulaschneider.art )

Dear friends, 

I want to speak to you today from the depths of my heart and soul. (which is basically where I almost always speak from, but this place is a bit deeper and more vulnerable today)

I have had a rough day, a few days really, because often, these sorts of things build. Finally, all the pain began to spill out. I was considering what it was that I was feeling. Why was I feeling it? What in the world was going on?

It's been a dry season in my art life, in the sense that I've been putting quite a bit out there, but not much has gotten a lot of response. I'm active in a lot of art communities where the whole purpose is to share one's art, views other's art and generally share warm thoughts of encouragement that the art has merit, that the art sends a message, etc, etc. It's a place to go to feel good, because who doesn't want to feel good about what they are doing in the world? Yet even there, I'm getting next to no engagement on the pieces that I feel the best about.

Artist's, I have learned, do have a few unique characteristics, or at least this seems to apply to those artists who share their work publicly. We want our work to be seen, enjoyed and appreciated. It really is a large part of the motivation. 

At the same time, we are in a constant fight to make art not 'for' others, but for ourselves. We want it to come from our depths and express something simply because that something has a need to come out and be out of our bodies and in the world as a separate entity. This battle presents some challenges as not every piece of art will resonate with someone else and may get zero attention. Yet every piece of art feels as though it is our soul out there riding on the wind for all to see and pass judgement on.

And this is where a Mother comes in. Or could come in. Or maybe should come in. Because if you have a Mother who will champion (a person who fights or argues for a cause or on behalf of someone else) your every cause, then even the ugliest piece of art you can produce, she will gladly slap a gold star on and share it with the world as the best thing evah! 

Right? 

Isn't that what a good mom does? Because her kid needs to know that they have value and that they bring value into the world and that SHE thinks they are absolutely amazing. That's the stuff that human beings are made from. Whole humans are made from a Mother's love in very real ways. Yes, a father's too, but I've rarely heard someone say that their father accomplished this particular thing in quite the way a Mother seems able and prone to do.

And this brings me to the place I was today. I was in the place of remembering, or more accurately, not remembering a single time when my mother offered me words of encouragement. Not one time do I remember her telling me 'You can do it! You are a wonderful person! You are strong! You are good! You are smart! You are lovely! You are talented! You are kind! You are all things amazing!'

Not one time. 

As a result, I think, I have craved words of loving encouragement all of my life. The times when someone has tried to be motherly to me, while they may have been kind, they have never been able to gush over me in the way that a mother does over her own child. I've not had that person in my life who tells everyone they speak to how accomplished I am or how smart or funny or clever or whatever else. And I am NOT alone in that distinction, not by a long shot.

A child doesn't need her mother to be measured, or careful, or stingy with her words of praise. A child needs her mother to be over the top extravagant. Not so much because the child IS all that, but just because that is what love does. Love is generous and grandiose and frivolous with its accolades, because Love can hardly help exclaiming the virtues of her object.

So yes, you can feel sorry for me. I need the empathy. It's hard realizing that you don't have a champion and you never will. But also, will you please take what I've said and see whose life you can apply generous, overflowing, overwhelming words of love toward? Because you can bet that there are lots more people like me whose mother didn't know how to give them this kind of love and who desperately need to know they have a champion shouting through the microphone about the wonders of their kid.

And, the other thing you can do is this, if you don't have a mom such as I've described, know that I am sorry, from the depths of my soul, because I know that is painful and has lifelong repercussions.

Finally, learn how to be that for yourself. Learn how to be your own champion. Learn how to sing your own praises, to love YOU, to celebrate YOU, to be an advocate for YOU. Learn how to gush over you like you wish your Mom would have done and then make yourself a treat, get a snuggly blanket and a cup of hot coffee or tea and bask in the glory of knowing that you are loved, that you are loveable and that you are never truly alone in the world because you have the company of a truly awesome human being with you at all times. YOU!

I send my love to each of you reading this. Whether you had a mother who you think was all that I've described we need, or whether you don't. I send you love because LOVE is what will heal this world. LOVE is what will bring the changes we need to see. LOVE is what we are made for. LOVE is what makes us WHOLE.