Here are the wonderful photos of wildflowers on the desert my friend Rusty Storbeck took during this April and May. Most of the flowers are so tiny they are smaller than his pinky fingernail. I chose 5 to post with my story. I love all his photos, so it is not easy to choose which ones to post, you can see his other wonderful photos hereAnd here is the story I wrote this past Monday, the day after Mothers Day. It is not a conventional mother/daughter story but it has a very happy ending...
I connected to my Higher Self at end of ‘91, a few years later I discovered I can communicate with anyone in Heaven. It’s on the same frequency.
I do have a beautiful relationship with my dad in Heaven, altho mostly I like to stick to my Higher Self. I took it for granted I would be close to my mom too when she went to Heaven, but a week after she left the world, this past October, I found out she disinherited me. I shut the door tight on her after that and never thought I would open it again.
This is the story of how she got me back. I am glad she went to all that effort to do it, because it is a new wonderful joy in my life.
My mom who is in Heaven now wants to be friends with me now. She wants to restore our relationship, she wants us to be close and loving. This is an actual experience. It started right before my birthday in early April.
We had only had two or 3 conversations because of my reluctance to be in relationship with her. I am not sure if bitter is the right word it was more like I was really done with her.
I had spent my whole lifetime in relationship with her. The relationship had lacked a lot and been difficult the whole time.
But after my dad went to Heaven I really wanted to be there for her. I wanted to give her everything. She no longer had my dad so I decided I would be the one to give her everything.
For that to happen we had to be peers and friends, equals. So when I first went back home I tried to put the relationship on this new footing. I wanted to let her know she could no longer control me, she had controlled me her whole life. So I refused to let her control me. She insisted on controlling me. She put up a stunning amazing relentless fight but she could not succeed. She could not succeed because I was doing all this for her. The result is she went to war with me for the next 16 years.
I had done all this so I could give her constant unconditional love, which is exactly what I did give her for 16 years. Every thought for her happiness. But she spent those 16 years hating me and punishing me for losing the fight, and her last act was to disinherit me, by that she won the fight.
Everything about everything was totally bizarre. It was like watching someone have a fight with themself or with an imaginary person. She was treating me like some awful enemy, when in truth I was a completely loving devoted daughter.
So you can see how when it was all over and she was now in Heaven, finally having all the fantastic unalloyed happiness I always wanted for her, and my responsibility for her happiness was over, and her last act had been such a horrid one, to deprive me of my dad’s money and make it clear she did not love me, I had really had it with that girl.
It had been 16 years of her horridness to me. I was just so relieved the relationship was over. It seemed like an awful burden I was now relieved of. Altho occasionally when I came across something on the web I knew she would love, a photo of an animal or a flower, something she loves— for 16 years I had emailed her anything and everything I thought she would love. That habit persisted. I would come across something and think “my mom would love this” and by reflex action to want to send it to her.
The habit of wanting to make her happy and giving her pleasure never went away. Bill’s sister sent me the other day a photo of a dove taking care of a baby puppy. This is the kind of thing my mom would love and my first thought was to send it to her. It was the one thing we all share, me and Bill, Bill’s sister Mary, Bill’s mom Irene, and my mom, our love for animals.
My first contact with my mom in Heaven was just before my birthday in April. I let her talk to me, and all she said was how deeply deeply sorry she is for how she acted and how much she wants to make it up to me, how much she wants me to forgive her and to be friends with her again. It was such a heartfelt apology, it was so sincere, that at the end of that conversation I relented. I let her buy me a birthday present.
I had seen a skirt and blouse on the web which was not on sale, it was new arrival, and it was expensive and I wanted them. But never would I have bought them for myself.
But she said “let me buy them for you, they will be my birthday present to you.”
“It is such a perfect present” I said.
I came in the house and ordered them. I must have been lying on my outside couch in the sunshine when we had this conversation. And I have been wearing that skirt and blouse, and each time I put them on I do think “it is my mom’s birthday present to me.”
Here is what went on in the second conversation:
We had a second long conversation about two weeks ago. I had just watched Real Housewives of New York City. So much went on in that show which was so interesting, all the dynamics between the women. This conversation with my mom began again with her expressing her deep regret for how she treated me, what a mistake she made, her tremendous desire to be close to me and friends with me now. She really really really wanted a second chance, a relationship.
I was very reluctant to give it to her. I really was thru with her. But she got me over that hump when she said “I know you will give it to me Anne because of your kindness and generosity.” That melted me.
When my mom was in the world she had never acknowledged I had any attributes of any kind. For her entire time in the world the only attribute she ever expressed value about was cleaning my room, she always wanted me to clean my room.
Even when she had already moved to California and I was in Tucson and we were in our horrible last 16 year cycle, she would become very exercised in her email about me cleaning my room.
All her other emails were one very cold abrupt sentence. But when Bill went to California one Christmas to be with his sister, I mentioned I had started to clean my room and she got very excited and involved.
Obviously I don’t believe our time in the world being an end when we leave it, because here I am now starting a new relationship with my mom and she is in Heaven. But if I did believe it the epitaph which I would choose for her would be “she always wanted me to clean my room.” That is where her real values were and so naturally I was always a failure as a daughter and human being in her eyes because I didn’t clean my room.
So I was very touched when she said “you will let me have a second chance because of your kindness and generosity.”
I guess in Heaven my mom is aware of and values other attributes in her daughter.
And after that I melted and we began to converse. We talked a long time about what had happened in the tv show I had just watched. I was dying to talk about it all with someone. My mother told me all her perceptions. That was very interesting. We had a wonderful gossip about it all.
It was the first time I had ever gossiped with my mother. In the world she had zero interest in that kind of thing. We never once talked about anyone. My brother had left his wife a few years ago and moved out and moved into his own apartment. And my mother had not even bothered to tell me.
I found out 3 months later by accident when I was talking to his wife (Betsy). That’s when I found out they separated and I thought she had thrown Jimmy out. I had no idea he had left her.
This is major family gossip! Nothing like this had ever happened in my family! How can my mother not mention it to me! Not even be willing to talk about it with me!
She was very close with my brother’s wife, Betsy, they had beautiful relationship, and they talked about it all the time. I guess my mom was encouraging her.
I guess my mom got thru those 16 years of making war on her daughter by being so close to her son and her daughter-in-law.
I always knew this was going on, but I was into unconditional love for her, I never let anything she did get to me. All I wanted to do and all I did do was to give her constant love.
I never put two and two together. I never realized the cold horrid emails to me were designed to show me how she felt about me, and when she would put in them such loving enthusiastic things about Betsy, expressing her love for Betsy, I never knew that was to dig at me more, she really was a manipulative bitch in every possible way. Altho thank god I never saw it at the time, because all I wanted to do was to give her love. And of course all the love I gave her saved me from everything. Nothing she did to get at me ever penetrated.
My constant unconditional love for her kept me in a cocoon. Plus I always had all the love of the Universe from my Higher Self, so my mother’s lack of love and understanding was more like a gnat flying into my face, she was just an irritant.
And maybe that bothered her, that everything she did to “get me,” didn’t get me, my flow of joyous love to her was never disrupted. She figured out how to get me in the end tho, she disinherited me, she took my share of my dad’s money and gave it to my brother. It was her final act, and by that she succeeded in doing what she had wanted to do for 16 years. She won the fight. And she destroyed our relationship, she made it crystal clear she was breaking up with me.
So you can see why, now that she is in Heaven and she realizes she made a huge mistake, she is not having such an easy time getting me back.
She is in Heaven now, she no longer needs my unconditional love. She has universes upon universes upon universes of unconditional love. She is drenched in love, she is enveloped in love, her life in Heaven is an incredible endless waterfall of love.
The 3rd conversation, how my mother got me back :
Of course I still love my mother, there is no way for me not to, she is my mother. And I am completely happy she has all this love and happiness now. It is everything I always wanted for her. For me it is a happy ending. My mother finally got everything I ever wanted for her and far far more.
But she no longer has her daughter. It never occurred to me I was depriving her of anything because she spent her whole time in the world making it clear she didn’t want me, that I had nothing to offer her. The idea that she wants me now perplexes me.
Because I am willing to let her go. But she has her heart set on getting me back. The last time I talked to her was yesterday afternoon. It was the 3rd time. And I was much rougher with her at the start of the conversation than I had been before. I had been rough with her at start of conversation the time before. I had said “OK you can have a second chance but don’t you pull any of your old shit on me now!” And I would not let her call me Annie at first either, my baby name, my family name. I said “maybe you should call me Mrs Pyne.”
But she persisted in wooing me. And we did spend 5 delightful hours conversing about everything under the sun.
Yesterday was the roughest I ever was at start of the conversation. I was so rough that I was sure there was no way to get over the hump, “What can she possibly do to get me over this hump? It is impossible.”
I had thrown it all in her face, everything she had done. What my friend Teresa calls “unburdening herself.” I had never done that before with anyone ever. I held nothing back. There was a long silence. And I thought “it is impossible, there is nothing she can do to get me back, it is impossible.” Altho I did know in Heaven all things are possible. I just could not see how she would do it.
It’s very interesting how she went about it and it WORKED!
The first thing she did was to divide up two eras.
The long era before she went to war with me— She said “you paint a blacker picture than it was. It wasn’t that I never loved you, our family just had regular ups and downs, we were a normal family. You just went thru what everyone in families goes thru. Your dad gave you so much love, I gave you so little, but it balanced out, it is like this in all families.
“If we had not had that war and I had not disinherited you, if everything had stayed the same, when I went to Heaven you would have chosen to forget the bad and just remembered the good and there was a lot of good.”
And she did go over everything she had given me, all the gifts. How she taught me to read, so I had all that joy of reading her favorite children’s books. How she had taught me to swim so I had all that joy of swimming.
And later when the conversation continued when we were in the swim pool, she pointed out she is the one who found Old Forge. She knew about it because her brother and sister had been counselors in a camp there. So it had been her idea from the time I was 3 months old to spend every summer there and to buy that little cottage.
She said “everyone else came to Old Forge, all Daddy’s sisters and their kids, because our family was already there. And then Daddy told his other school teacher friends and they came too. But I am the one who gave you your beloved Adirondacks.”
After that the fix was in. Because nothing made me happier than my summers in the Adirondacks.
She had started out the whole conversation by saying “I could not have been such a bad mother as you make out because you were such a happy girl. How could you have had such a happy childhood, such a happy early life, if I had been that bad a mother.”
She tried to remind me of some nice times we shared, she took me for ice cream soda at Woolworth’s after we went clothes shopping at Macys. But none of that really worked till she hit on the big bonanza, the Adirondacks. That was a great great great gift she gave me. I loved my summers in the Adirondacks, it was a gift from heaven.
When she began dividing up the two eras, she did admit how horrid she was in the second era. But again she changed the focus, so I could have a different way of seeing it.
She said “all you wanted was for me to be happy during those years after Leon went to Heaven,” and she pointed out how much I had given her.
She said “my big brother too wanted to take care of his baby sister after her husband went to Heaven, he had zero relationship with me my whole life, but Gus knocked himself out those last 16 years to give me everything.” (Gus is her big brother)
“Look how protected I was!” she said, “Gus was giving me everything! you were giving me everything! Jimmy was giving me everything. Every one of my family members was devoting themself to my happiness.”
Her point was basically that I had succeeded in what I had set out to do. If she had not denied herself the joy of loving her daughter for those l6 years, they could have been glorious 16 years. And apparently she was receptive enuf to my love and gifts, that taken in toto with what her brother and son were giving her, she actually did have a nice last 16 years. Her only lacks in it were what she deprived herself from and that I could do nothing about.
But it was nice to find out I had succeeded. The beautiful end to it. Her disinheriting me turned it all into a failure, but I think it really helped when she showed me it had not been failure.
It had been my deepest desire during those last 16 years to bring her happiness. And she did show me all the ways she had been happy, all the ways I had succeeded.
We had been lying in bed having this conversation. A few minutes later Bill said “get your swimsuit, I am taking you to the pool.”
But before we left for the pool she had said “I am your sister, Anne, now you have a sister, you never had a sister before, and I am expert at being a sister.”
It is true. The one my mom always loved best in the world was her big sister.
“I will make it up to you. There is a lot I can do for you. I can buy you lots and lots of treats, I can buy you presents, and I can help you get many of the things you want, I can help you have them.”
And she named some of the things I want and said how “she wants to help me have them and she can.”
We must have reached this point when I got in the car to go to the pool, because she was still saying to me “I am your sister, I love you” in my mind all the way to the pool.
Which she continued to say as I was swimming. And it was a short time after that in the pool that she reminded me the Adirondacks had been her gift to me. And that meant a lot. It sealed it.
When I first arrived at the pool the young lifeguard greeted me so warmly and said “you look pretty.” I realized my conversation with my mom was making me very happy. And it is true I arrived walking on air.
And she said “today is Mother’s Day, when you get back home order that pretty silk blouse you saw and that little summer dress, it is my mother’s day gift to you.” And I did come home and order them .
I have a hunch a real breakthru has happened. I think the next conversation with her we might take off where we left off. That awful hard hump for me to get over seems to be dissolved. It is certainly an incredible thing I am having a beautiful relationship with my mother now... and I can see how it will bring a lot of new joy into my life...
“What a great Mothers Day!” I thought.
I can't tell you how happy it makes me to love my mother again...
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