It’s Mother’s Day, once again, and here’s to all us “She’s”:
She’s the whisper of the leaves when you walk down the street, the smell of certain foods you remember, every flower you pick, and the fragrance of life itself. She’s the hand on your brow when you’re not feeling well and your breath in the air on a winter’s day. She’s the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep, the colors of a rainbow, and the heartbeat of Christmas morning. She’s the place you came from, your very first home, and the map you follow with every step you take. She’s your first love, your first friend, even your first enemy, but nothing on earth can separate you. Not time, not space… not even death. She is always with you. She’s your Mother. She is Love.
Now, as regards the Jordan B. Peterson “female crucifixion” piece below, by no means am I proclaiming to be a saint or anywhere close to the mother of Jesus, but “crucified” I’ve been just the same with every breath they’ve taken, every move they’ve made since leaving the protection of my womb. Guess what, folks? I wouldn’t have had it any other way! This life that seems to be some type of martyrdom to so many others has been the highest honor, privilege, and calling of my life, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Meanwhile …
You wake up one day and you realize the person that you were meant to be is gone … you gave her up for people who don’t even see you … and there’s no time to grieve her because there’s too much damn laundry. You just wake up one day and you realize that half of you … maybe the best part of you … is dead.
NO! Just NO! I have not and will not ever allow myself to believe that a single one of my “sacrifices” has not been “seen, remembered, or appreciated” by the people closest to me, not the least of which are my babies, grown as they may now be. Besides, nothing I’ve ever been, done, or given for them has been a sacrifice. Being their mother is what I was created to be, and I don’t need a Macy’s Day Parade thrown in my honor to feel honored! Guess what, folks? I have, can, and will continue to bestow that seemingly elusive recognition upon myself like only a true queen can by continuing to walk in my “Power + Grace”! It’s who I am and what I was built for! Win, lose, or draw, it’s been a truly WONDERFUL life here for me thus far. Here’s to the next open chapters of GRAND MOTHERHOOD that are fast approaching!
My son started singing “Hold My Hand” at around age three, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to literally take and “hold my hand” as we walked through any public space we traversed together as he belted it out loud for the world to hear. Not long after, another one cued up while I was driving him to school one morning. “A Song For Mama”. Ugh! He reached across the console and “held my hand” yet again and I sobbed like a baby girl. Years later, it was our bittersweet “Mother/Son” dance at The Frog & The Butterfly. That being said, have any of you ever really listened to the words?
You taught me everything and everything you’ve given me – I’ll always keep it inside. You’re the driving force in my life. There isn’t anything or anyone that I could be, and it just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t have you by my side. You were there for me to love and care for me when skies were gray. Whenever I was down, you were always there to comfort me, and no one else can be what you have been to me. You will always be the girl in my life for all times. Mama you know I love you. Mama you’re the queen of my heart. Your love is like tears from the stars, yes it is. Mama I just want you to know lovin’ you is like food to my soul. You’re always there for me, have always been around for me even when I was bad. You showed me right from my wrong. Yes you did. And you took up for me when everyone was downin’ me. You always did understand. You gave me strength to go on. There were so many times looking back when I was so afraid, and then you’d come to me and say to me I can face anything. And no one else can do what you have done for me. You’ll always be the girl in my life. Mama you know I love you. Mama you’re the queen of my heart. Your love is like tears from the stars. Mama I just want you to know – Lovin’ you is like food to my soul. Never gonna go a day without you. {Boyz II Men}
So, imagine you’re an impressionable young boy—or even a grown man—who’s never had a mama to sing these words to. Worse yet, imagine you’re a boy whose “mama” just got up and bolted because she was a self-consumed, vile excuse of a woman who took the utmost honor of motherhood and spat both it and her children upon the ground? Meanwhile, it seems that lately “all men are the devil” is the flavor of the day, but I gotta tell ya, those words will bring the actual DEVIL out of me! Unless you can prove that you have, indeed, known every man who is now or ever was, then bashing “all men” makes you a moron and a bigot. More so than that, however …
Anything men can do, WE can do better!
Well, then SUCK IT UP Rosie The Riveter, come down from your sanctimony, and shove that fuckin’ hammer that destroyed “the heart of the home” as the world once knew it right up your “I AM WOMAN! HEAR ME HAMMER!” ass, ’cause with that train of thought …
Anything MEN can fuck up, WE can fuck up BETTER!
Hey, ladies? Sometimes, when you’re dealing with a “devil of a man,” the best thing to do is take a good hard look in the mirror. Have any of you ever stopped to consider that maybe you’re the one manifesting the devil out of him? Ya get what ya give. Know what I’m sayin’? And by the way, don’t forget where we came from:
THEIR RIB!
I’m an ecumenical abuser, my friends. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, so let’s stop pointing fingers at the other gender and do a better job managing our own “roles” and business.
For fuck’s sake, the last time I checked, most people don’t even know what they want or need from the opposite sex, and God forbid a man try to tell a woman what he needs, lest he be dubbed “weak”, shamed for showing his emotions, and emasculated for having (… drum roll, please …) “feelings”! I literally just puked in my own mouth!
We’re ALL human!
We’re ALL a hot mess!
We ALL make mistakes!
We can ALL be the devil from time to time!
The sobering truth is that the woman’s hand was meant to rock the cradle, not destroy it! We’re the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the stars and the entire COSMOS to the babies we carry. Even wild animals know this to be true and often do much better jobs raising their young than some of those “things” running around this bitch with wombs. I mean, HELLO? Do you KNOW where the black hole my husband finally succumbed to the night he swallowed that hollow point began? His “mother THING” threw him away the day he was born. Yet, even CROCODILE “mamas” instinctually know better than to either CAUSE or BRING harm to their nest.
But I’ve digressed …
Now, does a good, strong, emotionally wealthy and present father bear any value in raising a child? OF COURSE HE DOES! Do ya think I’m effing stupid? But you see, “mother love” is the fuel that supplies this world with the most valuable energy of all, and as that supply is steadily dwindling, huMANity is fucking FLAILING!
“Mama” is the only one who can make a human being, so “mama” is the one who wields the most power to SHATTER a human being irreparably. For every toxic “devil of a man” roaming this planet and giving “some men” a really bad rap, chances are that you can trace his fucked up ways back to the hands of a worthless “mama” who didn’t rock his cradle. Sorry. NOT sorry! It’s the Jean-Claude Van DAMN cold hard truth, and I don’tcare what anyone has to say about it.
I thank GOD for the truly good men in this world. I respect them, value them, worry for them, and PRAY FOR THEM! I cherish and HONOR men as the strong towers they were intended to be. You see, I am a woman who’s been lucky enough to have been loved by not one, but TWO of the most beautiful KINGS who ever walked this Earth (make that three if you count my son) and often thank God that I wasn’t actually BORN a man. From the moment they draw their first breath, they’re expected to bear the literal weight of the world on their shoulders, and “stay at home trophy husband” usually ain’t an option for ’em. It’s a brutal reality that so many women take for granted.
If you are a man-hating biotch, you are NOT my people. Actually? You’re gross and the majority of what’s wrong with this world we’re ALL fucking up. So, take your “toxic masculinity” double standards of BULLSHIT back home to your family, cook some fuckin’ chicken for the man in your life if you’re lucky enough to have one, and get the HELL out of my Diary PRONTO!
Oh, and one last thing …
If you’re a man who’s reading this right now and thinking that every woman in this world wants your head on a stake and for you to burn in an actual place called Hell, here’s at least one woman that “sees you”. I’m especially sorry if you’re a motherless son due to the unnatural cause of “her choice”. That sucks, it’s not fair, and there’s a silent tear eternally running through my soul for you every day.
While I am more than thankful to claim the highest honor of “mother” to two living children—a son and a daughter—and one angel baby in Heaven, I am ever so mindful, as I end this bittersweet day, that not every child got to celebrate with their mother today. As you’ve already read in the admonishment to his “mother THING” one year ago this day, the abandoned and motherless man I was honored to call my king began his painful descent into the darkness she left behind—a darkness that ultimately devoured him alive and ended the most beautiful chapter of my life.
It wasn’t your fault!
You didn’t deserve that!
So, with that, if you are a mother THAT—not “who”—has abandoned and forsaken a child of her own body, know that the unfathomable wound you left them with may never truly disappear. If, on the other hand, you are a child whose “mother THING” abandoned you, please know that, just like the battalion of mothers in this world who understood the magnitude of the job we were given, you are always in my heart, and I pray for you daily.
YOU are a gift to this world!
From the depths of my soul, I’m so sorry that happened to you. But remember this one thing always: Our Father in Heaven DOES NOT make trash! So, “Chin Up! Knuckles Out!”—and don’t let someone else’s abandonment become the measure of your worth. You are loved, needed, and valued here on this Earth.
The fate of a mother is waiting for children. You wait for them while pregnant, you wait for them when they return from nursery. Wait for them when they leave school. You wait for them when they start their life when they come home after a party. You wait for them when they come back from work so they can always find a hot meal. You wait for them with love, with anxiety sometimes with anger that immediately passes when you see them and you can hug them. So make sure your elderly mom doesn’t have to wait any longer. Visit her, love her, hug the one who loved you like no one else ever will. Don’t ever make her wait. Because they age limbs but a mom’s heart never grows old. Love her as you can. No woman will love you like a mother.
I recently stumbled upon the most beautiful passage about “the fate of a mother,” and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Stumble as I may have countless times in my motherhood journey thus far, the gift of all my children has been my highest calling and honor. But what do these words mean to you? You never waited for your son—he only ever waited for you—because you left him, like trash, to die in his own remains.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your “son” stopped living the day he was born. But it was one year ago today that the hands of Fate threw the final spin of the wheel that ultimately led not only to his demise, but to the end of the most beautiful chapter of my life. Looking back, I can say the very first hint of change in him was June 5, 2014, because that was truly the day the “rock” that was OUR Zack began crumbling. Slowly, subtly, yet ever so steadily, he began slipping down the hole that devoured him on January 11th that year. But it wasn’t really until May 12th of the previous year that he started coming apart at the seams. I remember that morning as if it were right now—exactly where he was standing, what he was wearing, the angst on his face, what he was saying, and the tears falling from his eyes. Suffice it to say, Mother’s Day 2019 marked the beginning of his end.
Still, on the surface, he seemed to have made peace with it all, so he moved on down the road. We made our own little family, and he left you all behind in his dust. “Their loss, not mine,” he would say—and he couldn’t have been more right, because none of you were worthy of his presence. Trust me when I tell you that, because of our professions, we knew plenty of people who knew them. The general consensus about all your other Williamsons—the ones you actually managed to want? “They’re selfish, shallow, greedy, social-climbing wannabes in one of the greatest shows on Earth.” Everything about Zack’s character was so far removed from theirs that no one who realized the familial connection could fathom it. Watching random strangers literally scratch their heads, and hearing what people would say about them, were among the highest compliments he ever received. He absolutely reveled in knowing that no one could begin to correlate him to “all of them.” But I’ve digressed. Suffice it to say, every Mother’s Day hurt him the most—even more than all the birthdays you forgot, as he waited year after year, phone in hand, for you to fucking remember him.
So, with that, today is bittersweet. Not a Mother’s Day passed after he walked into my life that I wasn’t cherished, celebrated, and placed so high upon the pedestal he built for me that there literally are no words. It was no secret to anyone that your “son” was hell-bent on making sure I understood how deeply he revered my role—not just in his life, but in my children’s as well, and especially on Mother’s Day. When we first met, he told me about his past and how not just you, but his entire “blood family,” had abandoned him for reasons only God knows. He was so ambivalent about the things you people had done to him, but it still outraged me to the core of my being—not only to hear the stories of his maternal abandonment and childhood, but to watch, live, and experience the abysmal things his “family” did to him. As for those other “Williamsons” you spat upon this Earth, who still get to live and breathe in the very same city where their “brother” slipped through the void? If a stranger met any one of them without knowing who they really were, they’d probably be impressed with the personas they present. But his truth is the truth: he spoke it, I witnessed it, and God watched every single bit of it. So congratulations, “mother.” You made self-consumed, dressed-up narcissists with plastic smiles and shallow hearts that only a “THING” like you could possibly be proud of.
Here’s all you really need to know now …
It’s Mother’s Day 2020, and 264 days ago your “son” shot himself in the head with a Springfield handgun and a hollow point bullet at just before midnight. You were nothing to him but a stranger, and what a shame you never knew what an amazing human being you threw away and the gift he was to this world.
Only God knows what was going through his mind in the very last moments of his life, and not knowing what that may have been will break my heart forever. Alas, he’s at rest now—finally at peace after the legacy of abandonment you chose to burden him with. But here’s what I do know about the things that lived in his mind during the years I was lucky enough to give him the only real home he ever had, and the only real love from a woman—other than his Grandma—that he had ever known:
Your “son” hurt us all with a broken mind and heart that were jaded beyond comprehension. “He must have had mommy issues” is what some will surely say, and sadly? IT WAS TRUE! He wasn’t quite two when you left him behind – him, and only him – but not your other kids, because for what good reason he could never understand you just didn’t want him like the others! You never turned back to see the tears that burned through his heart every day for the rest of his life.
When your “son” was just a boy, he had to sit in classrooms making Mother’s Day cards he never really knew what to do with. So he would tear them up and put them in the garbage as he left the school grounds, watching all the other kids being greeted by their mommies while he walked home to nothing, all alone.
When your “son” was just a boy, he would go to his friends’ birthday parties while his heart physically ached because you apparently couldn’t remember the day he was born. It was October 5, 1982, just in case you forgot—which, by the way, I know you did, since you never once called him on his birthday.
When your “son” was just a boy, Mother’s Day broke his heart into little, tiny pieces that none of us who really loved him could ever put back together. He cried for you. He ached for you. He longed for you. He dreamt of you. He disappeared inside of himself waiting for you to want him!
Despite all these words and my more than apparent hostility, I have forgiven you and yours to the best of my ability for all the ways you destroyed my beautiful husband, especially given that I wholeheartedly believe that the entire lot of you are truly evil:
I really can forgive anyone for just about anything, and as God is my witness, I HAVE! But I’ll just keeping taking people on a case-by-case basis. The Devil’s Own really do walk among us, but I’m not even sure they’re “people”. They’re a different kind of breed “thing” altogether. I’m not quite sure I’ll ever get to the point that I stop avidly praying that God really DOES sort us all out in the end. I’m just a mortal human, not a god or Jesus Christ, so I’ll just keeping asking for “forgiveness” for not being too excited about the idea of “mercy for the merciless”.
But never will I forget the last ten years of watching him try so hard not to break because none of you gave a FUCK about “the Zack of shit”—your “son,” their “brother.” You know, now that I think of it, there were so many things I was prepared to do for your son over the course of our lifetime, but having to pick out his urn was never one of them. It’s all good, though, because his remains will forever be mine, and not yours, because as he famously and repeatedly said to me:
Catherine, if they couldn’t be bothered with me when I was alive, then they don’t get to have me when I’m dead!
So, with that, Happy Mother’s Day to you, “mother THING” of my fallen king. May you sleep well this night and at the end of every Mother’s Day going forward that you’re able to enjoy with the other kids you did somehow manage to “mother”. Hold your hand over your chest now and breathe in all that you feel.It’s the still beating heart of the one woman in this world that was supposed to love my husband forever! Also? It is my most avid and fervent prayer that one day you will burn in ACTUAL hell!
IN HIS REMAINS
Separate. He sifted through the wreckage. He couldn’t concentrate – searching for a message in the fear and pain. Broken down and waiting for the chance to feel alive. Now in his remains are promises that never came. Set the silence free to wash away the worst of him. Come apart. Falling in the cracks of every broken heart. Digging through the wreckage of your disregard. Sinking down and waiting for the chance, to feel alive. Now in his remains are promises that never came. Set the silence free to wash away the worst of him. Like an army, falling one by one by one. {Linkin’ Park}
