Saturday Stories # 15 Mother and Child Picture Prompt

Rediscover a love for fiction, because stories can change the world

These fiction stories are unedited, unfiltered, and written in 15-25 minutes. Please be aware that they may contain intense material related to emotional healing, trauma recovery, and redirected fears.

Written February 27, 2023 Multifaceted Journeys’ Living Your Purpose Group

The comfort of a mother’s hand in my hair, relaxing into her lap, her hand resting on my arm, knowing that I’m safe. I smile, settle in and close my eyes. She will know if there’s danger. She will protect me. So, I don’t have to protect myself. The sun streams in through the window and just for this moment the house is still. I am still.

I’m 8 years old, so I like to run and play, but after swimming and jumping on the trampoline with my cousins, I’m tired. We are visiting from out of state and my mom and I are sharing a room in my aunt’s house. I’m wearing a ring; my grandma gave me for my birthday. I feel a deep sense of belonging, not only because of my mother’s love, but because of my grandma, aunt, and cousins. I can settle in and feel the movement of the day become still. I hear my cousins laughing outside. I want to play, but I’m tired and I can rest here with my mother without feeling like I’m missing out. She scratches my head gently with her nails, stroking my hair, detangling it. I know that she won’t force me to stay so I can rest and settle into her embrace. Then I’m leaving this land for the land of dreams where there is liquid golden sunshine and limitless love.

Today’s Insights

 Today, March 3, 2023 is my mom’s birthday and while I had a rough time in my relationship with her growing up, we have both worked hard on our own healing and are now finding our way. I can have a relationship with her that I couldn’t as a kid. There may have been at times when I felt relaxed with my mom, but I don’t remember this. I remember being scared and on edge and mostly shut down emotionally. I longed for the kind of comfort that I saw in the picture prompt for this story. I am saddened that so many children don’t feel held and loved and have a lot of emotional baggage and trauma as adults.

I’ve heard that neglect and relational trauma can impact people at a DNA level even more deeply than physical or sexual abuse. What’s worse is it’s hard to recognize and heal from. This is why you cannot compare childhoods or experiences. Sometimes this type of neglect looks like a distracted parent who doesn’t understand their child’s needs. Often this is just a part of life that happens because we live in a society that isn’t built for raising kids in a way that gives them what they need. A lot of pressure is put on mother’s who now feel pressure to work, keep house, and raise kids, while there’s increasing levels of distraction and devices used by both adults and kids.

While misattunement from a parent is at times is bound to happen and cause a bit of a rupture or rip or wound in the relationship, it is the repair that matters that makes all the difference. If that relational repair is done well the parent-child or any relationship can be stronger than if the original wound hadn’t happened. I see this played out in my friendships where we’ve had ruptures that have needed repairing and now I feel closer to them. Before I didn’t feel deeply and connect to friends in a way that I noticed the ruptures because at the time I wasn’t able to form that level of attachment with them.

While the wounds from my childhood hurt and I am impacted and still healing, I’m incredibly grateful that my mom has made efforts to repair. She’s taken responsibility and we’ve talked through some hard things. I too have tried to open to where I need to grow and change and work on myself in this process. My mom has given me the gift of not forcing me to have conversations I’m not ready to have, similar to how the child in the story recognizes that she’s not forced to stay in the room with the mom. Some people never get the repair in relationship with a parent after a painful childhood. Some of them have worked to build chosen families of support. Some learn to rely on an internal family or connect with their spirituality. I hope that this story can bring a little ease and a love to those hurt inner children who so need a parent to tend to them, to keep them safe, and to relax into.

You’re Turn

If you wish to continue the story in your own creative writing or prose you can answer the following questions for fiction to continue the story or answer the questions for prose that can be used as journal prompts, for essays, or poetry.

Fiction Prompts:

• Write the story from the mother’s perspective

• Write a dream that the child has

• Write the a scene where the child is given the grandma’s ring

Prose:

• Is there a time that you’ve felt love from a parent figure, even if it was brief? Write this scene

• Turn this story into a poem

• What about what comes up for you and any emotions that you have reading today’s insights

• Write about your relationship with a child in your life

• Write about your relationship or lack of relationship with your mother

• Write about a rupture you had in a relationship and how it was repaired