23 Comments
Mar 14, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

Happy birthday to your mom! I’ll always remember celebrating this day with ya couple years ago. I’m glad you shared part of her and yourself with me. Jeri

Expand full comment

You look a lot like her.

Expand full comment

Thanks for sharing this. Your mother certainly was a beautiful women, and clearly had everything else, too. You're are indeed fortunate...

Expand full comment
Mar 15, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

Thanks for sharing your journey , your insights…. Your yearnings! We all share the Pisces stars ⭐️.

Expand full comment

Thank you for tackling what is a delicate and complicated subject for many of us. My mom has been gone for 16 years and I miss her deeply but I struggle with understanding our relationship and I don’t know why. Hoping to figure it out one day.

Expand full comment

Jan, our mothers and their memory help us internalize who we are (consciously and unconsciously) on so many levels.

We grow and become who we are because of our mother.

Expand full comment
Mar 15, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

Wow, that is very similar to my relationship with my mom.

Expand full comment
Mar 15, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

Jan, so glad you wrote about your mom. Brains, gumption, and beauty! It fills in more of the picture you’ve been sharing with us, and you tackled it with grace, honesty, and love. It’s so hard to write about our parents, and especially then to put it “out there.” My mother is the person I’ve known the longest and understand the least. Thank you for sharing your mom with us!

Expand full comment

Thank you for this tender piece of writing. I suspect that most women struggle with their mothers because of the mirror that they hold up to their own lives. I felt more comfortable with my father, too, but my mother was my source. I remember clearly a day when I was 40-ish and suddenly realized that the inside of my mother's body was my first home.

Expand full comment

What I am sure about is that the world is going to explode since women are trying to be indipendent and more similar to men. Feelings are a rare stuff, kids are without a guide and everyday more lonely and violent, men are confused and often feel to ne a woman. I think that a woman must be a mother and a wife, because these are the roles she were born for. Not to mention that mothers must be paid a lot to act this fundamental role. I will be the first one to support women in getting what they wish, whatever it is. But nobody will ever convince me that a mother's hug is better than a valuable pink manager. A mother is better than everything.

Expand full comment
Mar 17, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

I’m late reading this, Jan, but as I read your post about your mom, I thought of something that has been with me both as a daughter and a mother: there seems to be a kind of necessary blindness that a keeps our mothers strangers until we ripen more ourselves. I’ve often wondered if/when the day will come that I feel seen, not only as a mother but as a person, by my son who is now middle-aged. Then it hits me how much I truly never really knew or understood about my mom. We were closest when I needed her. I’m not as much like her as my sisters are and sometimes she tells me this. It feels --not great -- but I see what she is trying to say underneath it all.

In your remembrance of your mom, it sounds as though you have come closer to her and I firmly believe this can happen even after the parent has died, as your mom has. My brother who was estranged from my father for years, sang a song he wrote at my dad’s funeral that spoke to this: there is nothing between you anymore and love, that complicated emotion, can grow in the space left behind. A belated happy birthday to your mom.

Expand full comment
Mar 19, 2022Liked by Jan Peppler, PhD

Wow! You and Jeanne definitely look like your Mom.

Beautiful words Jan. I adored my Mom but didnt truly appreciate her words of wisdom until after she was gone. So many days I just want to hear her voice.

Thank you, again, for sharing from your heart

Expand full comment