Self-Acceptance and Mother-Acceptance

Sometimes I'm frightfully slow.

I knew my mother has traits I dislike very much. I won't list them, out of deference to her, and maybe also because of last Sunday's sermon on that section in James about the tongue. Even though listing them would lend more power to my words when I say I also knew I could see hints of those exact same traits in myself. Where "hint" sometimes means "big flashing neon sign."

And it terrifies me. I am scared to death of being like my mom.

I didn't even used to like it when people said I looked a little like her. Part of it was that she had me later in life, and I didn't want to look like someone older like that. Shallow. But part of it was simply not wanting to be associated with her, not wanting to be like her at all. Because of the recent scanning of photos for my parents' 50th anniversary I've been looking at photographs of her at my age for the first time in quite a while, and it's a bit eye-opening. The physical resemblance is such a tiny thing compared to other resemblances, but just accepting and being happy about it as seen in those pictures seems like a step forward, to me.

What I never thought of before, somehow, is that of course I have trouble accepting myself, when I'm not accepting her.

I suppose I didn't realize how angry I still am with her until connecting it with how scared I am of being like her. What does it say of what I think of her, if I am so loath to resemble her?

Now, granted, no matter how much I value her intrinsically, as a person, I would still want to avoid some of her... mistakes. I think that's valid. But my reaction is a lot more extreme than that sort of caution justifies.

Sometimes I remind myself that I didn't start having kids at twenty years old, as though that fact on its own can protect me, as though it's a magic hedge that shields my life from hers.

The thing of it is, it gives a whole new meaning to the statement that holding a grudge or holding onto anger is harder on yourself than it is on the person you're angry at. Because it's not just the disadvantage of the anger itself inside me, that it hurts me more than it hurts her, it's that I can't accept the very qualities in her that I have in myself. And if I can't forgive her for those, how can I forgive myself?

I do want to see the image of God in her, I do want to see the beautiful and name it, to name her rightly. For her own sake, but even more now that I realize that if I can't do that, I can't name myself rightly, either. Not in full.

I am my mother's daughter, and I do look like her.

Alphabetized Book Reviews

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I think I shall make alphabetized lists of my book reviews. One by author, one by title, like Sondy used to do for Sonderbooks. I like that better than a search box -- depending on the search technology, it can be hard to be sure you haven't missed a book, to prove a negative. It's pretty easy with alphabetization. I can never remember whether Alexander McCall Smith is properly filed under "M" or "S," but all I have to do is check both places.

I don't post nearly as many reviews as I mean to, and at times I go quite a while without adding any new ones, but nonetheless, it's not something I'm going to stop doing entirely any time soon. It makes sense to me to have them organized by a little more than a loose chronology ("loose" because it doesn't necessarily even correspond to the order I originally read the books, or when I started writing about them).

Oh, and I hadn't noticed, apparently blogspot now has a thing about publishing pages as well as posts. I was thinking that possibly the next two posts would be beginnings of lists, and I'd create links to them in my sidebar, then update those posts as I added reviews. A little clunky, but it seemed like the way to go, using a blogging website rather than an independent website. And I like blogspot. But I guess now I won't be doing that. Still linking to each review and alphabetizing it by hand, since I don't want to go through all the trouble of finding an easier way, but that shouldn't be that bad, especially once I'm done with the old reviews. Besides, I'm not working at a bookstore or a library right now. If I can't mess with my own book organization, I just might go crazy.

Of course, if you're reading this on facebook, you'd have to click the link to the original post for any of this to be relevant. Clearly you should do that. At least, you know, if you've heard of a book, you're not sure yet if you're intrigued enough to read it, and so you think, "I wonder what Marcy thinks of that book?  I wonder if she's written a review of it?  Does she think I should read it?  I should go check!"  Yeah... I mean, I know that happens to me all the time. Ooh, or if you want to buy a book and you remember that I reviewed it and that if you buy it on amazon and use my link to get to amazon and purchase said book I get a teeny bit of money. It's never happened yet, but it could, darn it. Especially with handy alphabetized lists for easier reference. Uh-huh.