On Motherhood: The Ultimate Perspective-Changer

On the week leading up to Mother’s Day, I found myself pondering Oprah’s recent interview of Ms. Rielle (pronounced a lot like the word “real”) Hunter, a former presidential candidate’s mistress and the mother of the child they conceived while said candidate’s wife was battling cancer.

Here is how one Time magazine columnist described it:
Hunter… has the knack of articulating completely narcissistic and delusional thoughts with a disarming blitheness. She's puzzled that people think her remotely culpable in the affair. For her, the right and obvious thing to do is always to follow "your own truth" and to be really "authentic," even when such authenticity requires you to buy your married lover a secret phone so he can call you without anyone knowing.

What the columnist missed is that Ms. Hunter was still articulating her old belief system while actually living according to the fact that a mother’s decisions are no longer her own – that a mother’s decisions inevitably affect her children. Only a true narcissist can ignore that fact, and Ms. Hunter thankfully isn’t that removed from reality.

This is the truth – the reality – that came out whenever Oprah asked about the contradictions between Ms. Hunter’s personal “truth” and her actions, which included agreeing to lie, at one point telling the world that a different man had fathered her child. Her previous moral compass told her to tell the truth, consequences be damned. But her new identity as a mother caused Ms. Hunter to first think about how her child might feel in the future if this candidate’s daughter one day came to believe that she was to blame for costing her father the presidency.

“My dear,” I wanted to say, in my most sanctimonious elder sister tone of voice, “that is the problem with using yourself as your own moral compass.” A compass that is set to point to me, to my truth, my desires, my preferences, my “needs”, will rarely point to True North. And such a compass will inevitably leave me lost. The trouble with believing that all “truths” are equally valuable is that they are not, at least… not if the consequences matter.

And that has never been more clear – or sadder – than in the case of Ms. Hunter, the once-married Mr. Edwards, and their child. Because in their effort to be “real” to their own selfish desires (that’s right, not “truth” – simple desires), the two new parents caused tremendous pain to many people, not least of which are Mr. Edward’s older children.

Oprah: Do you think you hurt Elizabeth Edwards?
Hunter: She was hurt by the process.

Oprah: You didn't answer the question.
Hunter: Do I think I hurt Elizabeth? Um, you would have to ask Elizabeth that. I don't know.

Oh, BS! I don’t need to ask Elizabeth and neither does Oprah. We don’t need to ask Elizabeth’s children. We don’t need to ask thousands of former John Edwards supporters. And we don’t need to ask the baby. What we do has consequences. That’s the truth that motherhood is beginning to teach Ms. Hunter – that is what is ultimately real, Rielle. At least part of the measure by which we select our moral compass should be the effect that following that compass has on others.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go check my own path. What am I leaving behind – as a mother and as a human? Should I be glad that Oprah’s not interested in interviewing me?