Mother's Day
Daphne Stevens, Ph.D.
©Copyright 2003 All rights reserved.

            "What are you doing for your mother for Mother's Day?" It was a question that got tossed around among co-workers when we were in our twenties and thirties, and it was as inevitable as the coming of warm weather. It was an agonizing question for all of us except the few who enjoyed living in families who were warm, and easy-going and not too complicated. Those lucky few sailed blissfully through Mother's Day—or else they lied about it. The rest of us deliberated throughout April.

            We were filled with clever ideas for thoughtful gestures and gifts. The problem was that most of us were so tentative about our fledgling status that we couldn't stand too much mother-connection. I mean, where was a card or a gift that conveyed, "I love you, but I'm working through my Mother Issues now and I have some ambivalence about you, and also some lack of clarity about where you end and where I begin. I want to tell you that I love you, but I don't want you to misunderstand what Love means for me this year. I want to acknowledge you, but I also need to find my own path. I'm not sure you're willing to honor my right to find my own path, and that kind of pisses me off. I want you to know that I'm pissed off--but what I want you to know most of all is that my pissed-off-ness doesn't mean I don't love you." 

           I mean, does FDS offer a flower arrangement that conveys all of that?   

           I know a few young women who have made creative attempts that doubtlessly confused their poor mothers no end. One classic example is the young woman, caught in a pseudo-mutual and anxiously over-close maternal relationship, who sent a card that said, "You've been like a mother to me." Another young woman, in a more overtly toxic bond, sent her mom a Venus Fly Trap from the florist.

            Ambivalence about our mothers has been around since the first teenage girl rolled her eyes and said, "Mo-ther," in that universal language of love commingled with disgust that is unique to mothers and daughters. NancyFriday gave voice to the problem in the 1980s with a book called My Mother Myself. It sent millions of women to shrinks and to consciousness-raising groups with the two questions that were mantras of the era: "How can I keep from being like her?" and "Why aren't she and I closer?"

           One cure for that ambivalence is found through the process of raising our own daughters. Oh, the cure doesn't show up for the first eight years or so, while they are adorable and snuggly. But as we realize that our pre-pubescent daughters are looking at us with the same blend of disdain and embarrassment that characterized our feelings about our own mothers, we begin to re-consider things.

            It's a pivotal point in a woman's life. If she chooses anger toward her daughter, she perpetuates the cycle of martyristic self-pity—the "Where did I go wrong?" syndrome that is far too common in middle aged women. If she chooses self-blame, she falls into an equally destructive trap, becoming a doormat for her daughter forever. Both pathways are equally death-producing—and, happily, there is a third way.

           When a daughter begins the crucial and treacherous path toward individuation, we can recognize eye-rolling and defiance for what it is. We can say to ourselves, "Of course she'd rather fight with me than come face to face with the terrors of growing up and facing the world. And of courseI feel abandoned and rejected." When we acknowledge both realities with a measure of equanimity, we bless ourselves and our daughters alike.

           But how do we maintain our composure when the child of our heart rages against us with a vehemence that would become Attila the Hun?

           We count to ten a lot. We remind ourselves, "Of course she's not grateful. How would she know to be grateful? Fish don't know they're in water. She can't know how much she's loved." We commiserate with our middle-aged friends.  And if we are lucky and our mothers are still available, we turn to them, and healing begins to happen.

            My daughter, engaged to a wonderful man named Joe, is walking through a mine-field these days. Joe's daughter is fraught with unresolved feelings about her parents' divorce, and she is edging into puberty. It's a daunting challenge for any stepmother-to-be, and my daughter is stepping up to the plate. She called me recently with a litany of complaints. "I can't do anything right," she wailed.   "She complains incessantly. She pouts. She plays me against her father. But you know what I hate most of all?"

           "No," I murmured with genuine sympathy, "What do you hate most of all?"

            "Mom. She rolls her eyes at me."

           I suppressed a giggle and struggled to keep my voice neutral. "She rolls her eyes? Oh, I hate it when they do that."

           "Yes, she rolls her eyes." Her voice became indignant. "I mean, no adult would have put up with that from me! How can she be so rude?"

            I could no longer suppress the giggle. I said, "Carson. You rolled your eyes at me from the time you were seven until the time you were fifteen. You only stopped then because you learned to say, 'Screw you, Mom! I hate you!'  Kaitlynn is precocious like you were, that's all."

            We talked about the dangers of motherhood and the perils of step-motherhood.  We laughed. We cried. We raged against the gods who give us children and make us love them unconditionally only to make them blind to the care that we give them.

           And I felt us both being enveloped by something larger—the presence, perhaps, of a Mother greater than the two of us, who has loved us enough to let us be ourselves, and to let us learn to appreciate one another in moments like these.  

           Motherhood may be the ultimate opportunity for learning forgiveness of self and forgiveness of another. It is absolutely crucial to be able to say, all in one breath, "I failed you. I did my absolute best. I love you.  You've hurt me. You're doing your best. We are—both of us—absolutely terrible and infinitely wonderful." 

            It's as impossible and miraculous as birth.
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Questions for reflection:

1. What are the ways you have felt the most abandoned by your mother? Where are the places you have felt the most affirmed and supported by her?

2. How do you see those patterns being re-played with your daughter, or your step-daughter, or your daughter-in law?

3. Write a letter in your journal to your un-mothered self—that part of you that feels orphaned somehow, unseen or abused or abandoned. Reassure that Orphan within you that you will not allow her to be hurt any more. 

 4. Consider the relationships in which you feel child-like or helpless—a boss who is critical perhaps, or an acquaintance with whom you find yourself feeling diminished in some way.  How can you protect yourself in those relationships by re-claiming your abandoned child and honoring your yearnings for belonging?

 5. Write a note of appreciation to the women in your life with whom you have found healing—perhaps your mother or your daughter, or a woman friend with who has mothered you in some way. Decide which notes need to be mailed, and which need to be simply pondered in your heart as part of your own process of giving birth to yourself.