Queenie D: After a life time of writing, what do you think really pushed you, inspired you to tell this story to the world?
Alexa: When my mother died – and the way she died – shocked me into just stopping every other thought process. I had to write this book. I think the compulsion of a writer or artist or photographer or whatever to capture an event through their art is as powerful as any animal instinct.
Queenie D: You obviously had a very conflicted relationship with your mother. Do you think that the people we become are direct results of our upbringing? To what extent do we have control over how these situations influence our adult lives?
Alexa: I wonder about this all the time. I'm sure I would not be as sick as I am – and would have achieved career success – had my mother not emotionally abused me and had instead been supportive, or had someone else close to me been sane and supportive. Yet I also believe that as an adult, I'm responsible. Jung says that outside the field of ego awareness – out where all our complexes are running around – we're NOT responsible. It's an excellent but impossible question. There is help for those of us who did not have loving support as children or who were abused, but that takes money. If I could afford help from someone who practiced EFT or EMDR, I could probably get past my past. As it were. If there is someone who can afford either of these psychological practices, they would probably benefit profoundly.
Queenie D: You've met some interesting people in your life. Who was most memorable to you and what made them so?
Alexa: One of the more interesting people was a New Zealander named Peter Balin. He'd traveled all over the world, he painted, lectured, had had amazing experiences, and was brilliant in different ways. When he was in Mexico he wanted to visit a certain Mayan village but every time he would pass an Indian and asked if he was going the right way, the Indian said yes, and he never got there. He finally realized that they thought it was impolite to say no. So the next time he tried to find the village, he asked a passing Indian, "If you were going to this village, which way would YOU go?" He also always offered a perverse take on things that I loved because I had such a strong Good Little Girl side. When he was in some Latin American country, I forget which one, he was on a bus that soldiers stopped. They forced everyone out of the bus with their guns. I'd have cowered in terror. He got angry and told them he was from New Zealand and they better not mess with him and so on. He intimidated them, and they let him get back on the bus. Of course that perverse side of him was so extreme it finally came between us in our friendship.
Queenie D: If I look at this objectively, as a story, it seems to me that you had somewhat of an obsession with your mother's influence and control over your life. Do you think this is a result of being an only child of a divorced couple? You have just each other to focus on so you become the heart and soul, which of course entails anger and resentment, of each other's lives?
Alexa: Of course, if you're taking your cue from the story, remember that the focus of the story was my relationship with my mother. That was the story. So aspects of my life that did not have to do with her were not included. On the other hand, yes, I shudder at the word "obsession," but certainly her influence was intense; and yes, I do think it was partly because I was an only child of a divorced couple for precisely the reasons you suggest.
Queenie D: Do you think your mother truly didn't think she was affecting you as she did as a child? In the part about her mother slapping them because "where else can I take out my anger?" as she says to her children, your mother seemed totally unaffected or concerned by that behavior. Is that simply a "pretend it didn't happen and it won't have" technique used for survival?
Alexa: When I look at small children today, I cannot imagine doing to someone that vulnerable what my mother did to me. But I know she was not vicious, just horrifically insecure. No, she did not know what she was doing because she had never consciously experienced what she must have been feeling when her own mother slapped her or presented her sister as "the best" of the siblings. How can someone who is oblivious to their own deepest feelings be conscious of the feelings of others? This is what I mean when I say I don't know where personal responsibility begins and ends for our behavior. We can't eliminate responsibility and yet I cannot say she was responsible for her behavior because she was controlled by psychological forces beyond her awareness, let alone control.
Queenie D: In retrospect, do you place any blame on your father for the intensity of the relationship between you and your mother?
Alexa: I hope I'm clear that I'm not blaming anyone for what happened to me. The quest is to deal with it if it takes your whole life, which unfortunately if often does. As you know, certain cultures allow several lives to deal with our issues.
Queenie D: When some people read about chronic health issues such as fatigue or thyroid problems, they don't see the seriousness in how life-debilitating it can be. Were you victim to this attitude at all in your life?
Alexa: It was always a problem. Humans simply don't understand something they haven't experienced themselves. People always thought that I just wasn't trying hard enough. As I say in my book, even my best friend of many years told me, "The more you do, the more you can do." When I tried to do more and only got more exhausted, she simply didn't believe what I told her about my experience. And of course I internalized this attitude, feeling that I was faking it. Later, along the same lines, it was difficult for me not to blame myself for my failure to save my mother from the nursing care system, especially for making decisions based on fatigue and the lack of judgment that comes with inadequate sleep.
Queenie D: How can you mentally move past the treatment given to your mother in the homes? Does it make it hard for you to forgive and forget? Is the goal of this book partly to make others aware of what goes on, especially with the elderly that don't have a voice or an advocate in their corner?
Alexa: As Gandhi said, forgive but don't forget. It's actually hard for me to forgive, too. But I'm not angry – at least consciously. But I do want to warn people what this aspect of our health care system is about. When I was younger, I was always proselytizing in my writing. It was pretty boring. Then someone told me to just tell the story and let the story show what you want people to know. So I told this story, and people really get what happened to my mother, which was definitely part of my goal in writing it. Although my mother's abuse and death in the nursing care system only covers about a quarter of my book, that is what people respond to. I think this is because I really captured my mother's and my personalities and our story prior to her entering that system, so by the time she gets there, the reader is totally empathizing with what happens to her. You can only make tiny dents in the world, but these little dents of new awareness give me some sense of relief. I feel I've really accomplished something.
Queenie D: I'm sure writing this memoir took a lot out of you emotionally and physically. Do you plan to pursue publishing any other works?
Alexa: I'm actually starting another memoir – about me and my bird, Captain Kirk the Parakeet. This will include more transformations I went through after I finished MY MOTHER'S HOUSE. The working title of my new book is MY LITTLE BIRD: A Memoir About A Girl and Her Bird, Her Mother, Her Bird's Vets, Her Transformations, and A Possibly Fatal Error. In the next week or so, I'll be posting a few early pages on my website, alexawolfonline.com, along with links to bird rescue organizations, bird info., etc.
Queenie D: Can you give one piece of advice for mothers and daughters in general as to how they can be friends instead of enemies even after they've hurt each other?
Alexa: As you may have gathered, I can't be brief about anything. I won't give advice, but I will say that what my mother and I built a good relationship on was a foundation of love that always underlay all the crap. I've noticed in friendships that a basic, core commitment to truth has to be there in order for two people to overcome the obstacles that inevitably arise in relationship. I used to think that commitment to truth was necessary. But maybe mother-daughter relationships are different. My mother was never able to see, or admit, either her abuse of me or her own experience of abuse as a child and teen. I had to let go of my need for that in order for us to evolve. Then, ironically, as you read in my book she somehow transformed without conscious effort and was, in the end, able to see certain others of her own behaviors a little more clearly, to the point that we could laugh about them. Again, that transformation in her and in us came from the foundation of love. Maybe I will give a little advice after all. Love and truth have to be there to some degree – varying with each individual circumstance – for a bad mother-daughter relationship to transform. When it happens, it is wonderful; but sometimes, tragically, the essential elements just aren't there, and no one should feel guilty if they can't make it happen. If my mother hadn't had to conquer cancer, she might never have made the inner changes she did that in turn made our changes possible.
0 comments:
Post a Comment