I am the eldest of three siblings. Having younger siblings has hurt me and deprived me of my mother’s love, and as a result I’ve become tight-lipped.
To gain my mother’s love and attention, I tried different approaches than my younger siblings did, but it didn’t quite work out.

I’ve lived my life trying desperately to regain the feeling of being loved enough, like I was before my siblings were born, when I was an only child.
In my perspective, women seem to believe that their loved ones don’t love or accept them. My mother tried hard to relate to me, but because I felt controlled by her in a hysterical way, I shut down harder and harder.
I kept thinking that her way of parenting wasn’t right, and I hoped to someday prove it to her that she was wrong.

As time passed, I got pregnant and eventually married. At my wedding, on the first day of my new life, I heard unexpected words from my mother-in-law. “My son was supposed to marry another woman.” Again, I felt unaccepted! The unbearable happened, and I cried on the spot in frustration.

At the time, I could only think of myself and couldn’t take the parents’ thoughts into account.　My mother-in-law was relentless in her bad treatment of me.
I tried to hold it together, but I was afraid that one day I would explode.
Several years later, when my husband cheated on me, my patience finally came to an end and I began to fight back.

To my surprise, my mother was more upset with my husband than I had imagined and tried to revenge on him for me. Too afraid to stay, he ran away from me and we divorced. I hadn’t intended to get a divorce, so I always remained resentful of this. But I realized that I was the one who wanted a divorce at the time of that humiliating wedding.

However, I decided that having a sibling was better than being an only child, so I persevered until my second pregnancy…and after achieving that goal, I began to fight back against my husband. In retaliation for his infidelity, my mother took over for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I actually had everything my way.

Until then, I had blamed my mother for everything, pretended that I was a victim, and even harbored resentment. After completing the Miross Life Course, led by Kaori Yanagisawa, I realized that my resentment was actually due to a misperception of my mother’s love.

During the humiliation that I experienced at my wedding, my mother endured patiently and kept smiling for me without making a scene. My belief that I was the only one who was unloved was one sided. This revenge was what my mother’s love was all about. My mother has already passed away, but I was able to rewrite the past and change it to “I actually was loved by my mother!”

Spring 2023

I went to see my father again this year around his birthday. As I posted last year, I found a picture of him holding me up as a young girl. Just when I came to understand his true love for me, my oldest daughter started to be loved by a man, whom she then married. They bought a house so that I could live with them.

It’s been 20 years since my mother passed away. In the past, when I went to see my taciturn father, he often wrote or kept quiet. But after I became consciously aware of his love for me, I started going to see him. We’ve become closer than I could ever have imagined in the past, with me cleaning by his side, going out to eat together, and so on.

This year, I gave him a birthday gift, and we fixed a stuck clock (which had a dead battery) and had a heartwarming time together. Then he gave me the clock. “Take it home with you,” he said “Thanks. I’ll be seeing you again.”
“Great!” A week later, my father suddenly collapsed and passed away. There were still so many more things I wanted to do with my father… I shared these things with everyone at the Miross Life Course.

On his last birthday, rather than wanting to make himself happy, he wanted to have his daughter celebrate him. That’s all that he wanted to do.
He wanted to show his daughter how happy he was.  If he wasn’t satisfied, he wouldn’t have passed away. My father gave me the final lesson of perfect love.

After my father passed away, my brother told me about the debt he was left with. It wasn’t a small amount. When I looked back, I realized that the debt was for our benefit! So I accepted it. I was no longer stuck in the old rut with my brothers and sisters. I told them that I wanted to pay that debt too. A few days later, my brother replied, “You know, you don’t have to pay it. It was a misunderstanding.” From what I had heard up to that point, I wondered how that could be possible. Yet the debt has truly disappeared.

One day, while sorting through my room, I found an old album. My hand stopped, and I noticed the nostalgic pictures. For some reason, among the many pictures, one of my grandmother caught my attention.I was actually not very fond of my grandmother, but on this one occasion, I stared at her face.
“What don’t I like about my grandmother?” I asked myself. Was it because she punished me sometimes when I was little? No, not really.

When I was growing up, my family grew rice. My grandmother used to say at meals, “Don’t leave a grain of rice in the bowl.” I also remember my mother saying the same thing: “Don’t leave any rice, because your father worked hard to grow it.” There were times when the amount of rice was too much for me as a child to eat. On those occasions, my grandmother or mother would eat my leftovers. I especially hated the sight of my grandmother eating the leftovers.
I realized the reason I disliked my grandmother. Once I realized that it was her love for my father, my belief that I hated her disappeared.

Speaking of photos, once when my eldest daughter was looking at the many photos from her childhood, she said happily, “When I look at these photos, I see how much I was loved.” It was as if a light had shone on my life from just one photo. My father left me many opportunities and gifts.

Summer 2023

Something significant happened to my second daughter this summer: she contracted an infectious disease and was rushed to the hospital. I received a call from a hospital outside of my prefecture and immediately hurried there. From this point on it was a difficult time. A team of 14 medical personnel worked around the clock to treat her, but she remained in serious condition. I was told that even if her life was saved, she might be left with residual effects.

It was under these circumstances that I attended the Miross Intensive Class taught by Ms. Yanagisawa. I was worried and distressed about the situation, but I was able to take the course with peace of mind, knowing that my daughter was in good hands at the hospital. From there, my daughter started to change little by little.

I was allowed to visit her while she was still on a ventilator. Suddenly, she burst into tears at the sound of my voice. It was her first reaction since losing consciousness. Her mouth widened, and she looked like she was crying. She couldn’t speak, but she tried her best to communicate.
Even the doctors were surprised. The next day, when I went to visit her, she burst into tears again. The nurse wiped her tears, saying, “Oh dear, you’re shedding so many tears!”

Prior to this, I had felt that I wasn’t able to do motherly things for my daughter, but her tears at that moment made me realize that I am indeed her mother. The hospital staff told me that despite the COVID situation I should visit her every day, as it would help her treatment. Through my daughter, I had the experience I myself had always wanted: “Having my mother all to myself!”

Every day I did nothing but take care of my second daughter. A few days later she woke up, and from that point she recovered and was safely discharged from the hospital. Upon examination, she had none of the aftereffects we had feared! She recovered so well. One day, after I had regained some composure, I received a call from the NHK broadcasting station in Saitama. I was surprised at the content of the message. Fifty-three years ago, in 1970, my parents were married in the gymnasium of my father’s local elementary school. The wedding was filmed and broadcast as a documentary program at the time, and we were informed that the footage would be shown nationwide. The images were reproduced in 4K using the latest digital scanning technology, and they were just as good as today’s images!
The moment I heard about it, I thought, “Wow! That’s amazing!… and the timing is also amazing!”

As I’ve posted in the past, my mother took her own life, and I suffered everything until I encountered Miross. Through Miross I understood that the pain that had punished me throughout my life was the same as my mother’s pain, the pain of my deceased mother. I never thought that my daughter’s painful experience this summer would also lead to this point. My feminine nature is such that one (my mother) died and one (my daughter) was resurrected!

I was taught that this was a symbol that something was over. This perspective freed me from a life of suffering. Starting once again with my parents’ wedding … Without that marriage, I wouldn’t have been born. Without that marriage, my daughter wouldn’t have been born. November, the month of my mother’s passing, is a special month. At the end of this month, my father and mother will come back to life on the screen in a beautiful image. I’m very excited and thrilled to start a new life.

Mr. Rossco, Ms. Midori, instructor Kaori Yanagisawa, everyone,
Thank you always.