posted November 28, 2009 07:01 AM         

I think in the healthiest relationship that a mother and child could have a mother would never turn to a child for empathy nor support in personal struggles or issues. It is absolutely natural for a child to feel empathy toward and supportive of a parent, and it can be unrealistic to expect that a mother would never have a difficult time personally in the presence of her child.

Originally, children are innately shameless and honest and can be confused to the point of pain when people around them are less authentic in their behavior than themselves. It can happen that the best a mother can manage sometimes is to attempt to hide her personal pain from her child in some way.

Her child may be fooled by such a display mentally but not emotionally and at such a time the emotional information is not addressed and sinks into the child's subconscious to be dealt with at a later time in whatever the way. People can reach adulthood and find they feel an immense sense of concern or even guilt about their mother's personal well being and yet not recall her ever turning to them in any obvious way for support.

The memory of the empathetic awareness of the mother's suffering can break through at some point later in life in the form of dreams like the one you describe.

And the part about paying you to go to your job, I think of that as kind of accurate if looked at again in the context of childhood rather than adulthood. A caring mother, just by caring, can make it possible for her children to be able to go out away from her into the world and do something. If she cares, then, like anyone who cares, that is what she is doing with the resource that is her life, her time on this planet, her opportunity to choose what she does. A caring mother does pay, and that is how.