I think I have found the keys. They fit the three padlocks on the door behind which I have stood much of the last 17 years, my hand  wrenching the door knob. I've stood on my tippy toes much of the time, one eye shut, the other eye muscled open wide, peering out of the hole in the center of the door.

photo: copyright, Leisa A. Hammett

I am not the only mother standing behind a padlocked door, her hand grasping the knob. Like me there are other mothers clutching knobs that catch, refusing to turn completely. Our calves are taut as we peer up and out onto a landscape, wondering what it might be like on the other side of that door.

And, then, there's the Special Needs Mothers. A clan to which I also belong. Our door is extra thick, our anxieties ratcheted and amplified.

The doors behind which I and all those mothers stand–they are the doors of guilt. Mother guilt.

We have locked ourselves behind them. We have believed the lies of our culture:

"We must be Perfect. Our houses, spotless. Our careers, blazing. Our children, smart and success-bound. Part Martha Stewart! Part Helen Gurley Brown!"

We want to taste the freedom on the other side of those heavy, heavy doors….Our lungs are hungry to breathe deeply the fresh air, free of restraints, of the "shoulds" and "musts" that we've collected and allowed to padlock us into our own inner hell of guilt.

The keys I think I've found? The ones for which I've been searching all these 17 going on 18 years as a mother, a "special needs mother"? They are made of precious metals and each has a name:

Mercy. Grace. And, Compassion.

The war we wage in our culture with mothers–those in popular media and those down the street, in playgroups, the office, the pickup line–they are, of course, fruitless, born of the barren soil of our picked apart, depleted souls. Souls crying out for our own love. Our own Mercy. Our own compassion.

"So, you think you have failed your child, do you? Have you? Have you now? Have you really," questioned my teacher. "Is she happy? Is she healthy? Is she learning?"

Oh, Grace. Oh, Mercy. Oh, Compassion–I summon you to me. To the weary, worn spirit of every mother spent from picking the flesh from her bones in acts of self-loathing and criticism.

Media be damned. Those who criticize–likewise. It is only us, it is only within. It is only we who can rescue ourselves. You who can rescue You. And, it is Me who can rescue Me.

I will have Mercy. I will have Compassion. I will have Grace for You, dear Mother, when I have it for Myself as a mother….

And, oh, to teach our children the same self-love. What if, really, we all really did love Ourselves? There would be no wars to pick one another apart–mother wars or others. Because, we are all One, really. And when we do not love ourselves we cannot truly love another.

Oh, mother. You ARE Good Enough. You have loved your child. You have tended. You are not perfect, but then again, you are because you are a creation of the Perfect One. You have simply forgotten that….

Love Yourself. Liberate Yourself. Use those three keys made of the precious metals of Mercy, Grace and Compassion to unlock the door of guilt. And then Flee! Free yourself forever. Go now. GO!

This post begins a Motherhood series on "The Journey with Grace" during the month of May.