What is it about human beings that makes them feel like it's alright to treat other human beings like second class citizens based on the circumstances of their parentage and birth?
I understand Theseus, for I, too, was born to an unwed mother. And I have always felt like a blacksheep of the family, like a second class citizen within family systems bound by rules for membership that I have never met. And while I didn't come to feel that way all on my own, tonight is the first time that I have been able to separate myself from the burden of this truth, because the fact is that I was born into an environment that didn't want me, even before I was born.
And, yes, I was treated differently because of the illegitimate status of my birth.
This is not me feeling sad and sorry for myself. . . .these are the facts of the social environment into which I was born and the way that I was treated by a family system that just couldn't find it within their personal constitutions to accept the circumstances that brought my "shameful" existence into their pious and righteous world. And I suppose I should probably feel grateful that I wasn't raised as my grandmother's daughter so that she could continue to weave the deception of having daughters who would never have children out of wedlock.
It's just so insidious. . . .how these invisible beliefs formed long before I even had the capacity to question them still have the power to raise their nasty heads as masked intruders cleverly veiled by smoke and mirrors! But a person can not move on from an outworn belief until they are able to accept and integrate this "truth" into their experience.
So, I may have been born into an environment bound by rules that deemed my existence as "undesireable" and treated as if I were unloveable and unwanted, but this "truth" does not make it so. And my mother's family may have been limited by their personal or religious beliefs to accept my birth on equal terms with cousins who were born within a more "appropriate" and "acceptable" marital context, but that was their limitation, and not some inherent truth about my status as a human being and member of a family system into which I did not choose to be born.
In this moment I feel great respect for my mother, because it took a great deal of courage and personal fortitude for her to choose to have me, as unwanted as I was given the limitations of her family, and as unsupported and alone as I'm sure she felt.
As for me, it may take a while to uproot these weeds of poisonous belief that suffocate the garden of my spirit, but I will uproot them. . . .uproot them I most certainly will.