Voice of Truth: 3rd Edition, May/June 2021

Three Strands MOTHERLESS: A JOURNEY TO WHOLENESS written by Cindy Southworth There is a calm after the emotional storm, and I realize I was only trying to connect with the only mother I ever knew.

Was there ever a time when I felt the love and protection of my mom? It’s difficult to recall. Mental illness claimed my mother when I was eleven years old. From age eleven I witnessed her living in the shadow of schizophrenia, and my memories are of her in bed or lashing out in angry fits of rage. She was admitted into a nursing home at the age of forty-five and remained there until her death at age seventy-six.

As a teenager, I did not realize I was missing anything. Those years were spent trying to shed any control parents had over me, so living life without Mom seemed freeing. It wasn’t until I experienced the pain of relationship rejection at nineteen that I realized there was no one to call — no one who really understood my emotional DNA. A few years later I was standing in my wedding dress waiting for the photographer, when I realized she wouldn’t be there to place my veil on my head and give me those last remarks a mother whispers to you just before you say, “I do!”

It was when I was lying in a recovery room being handed my gorgeous, wiggly, bundle of joy that I realized she wouldn’t be waiting outside to be the first to hold him or fighting with the nurse to get into the recovery room.

It was when I was writhing in pain from the removal of four wisdom teeth, with two little boys jumping on my bed that I realized she wasn’t coming over to take them so I could rest.

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