Dear mother of an adult daughter...
My daughter is choosing "no communication." She came from an environment that was supportive and loving. She also has a mom (me) who had her own identity crisis for a very long time. The estrangement we are in right now is very hard, but I am moving with it and learning about myself through it.
I KNOW I made mistakes. I KNOW I was a good mom. I KNOW that she has her truth about her own memories. I honor that and am willing to learn from it.
But she won't tell me what I did and that she desires no contact for her own emotional health. I do not understand this.
It seems like what is being taught by coaches and in the world of psychology is that it is okay to shut off those who make you "uncomfortable" and you can find happiness. There is something wrong with this teaching. It is creating a world of narcissism for them and they are being coached that we are narcissists.
There needs to be something that brings estranged families back together, which is what I see you attempting to do in your practice. For that I thank you. I listened to you on Moving Beyond Family Struggles and some of it was hard to hear. I am 59 and came from a loving family who wasn't perfect. I raised my three kids and support them in every endeavor they step into. Somewhere along the way they were "told" they don't need us anymore for their own happiness. In the meantime, they are hurting people who love them so much (grandparents, especially).
Thank you for what you are doing. I want nothing more than to reconcile with my daughter who honestly is dealing, in my opinion/experience, with the same "woman issues/thoughts/insecurities" I dealt with in my own mind at her age. Women have a very difficult time in their life...throughout all generations. And we are all doing the best we can with what we know and what we knew at that time. There has been a loss of empathy. It has to go both ways. We can't teach these young moms that they don't need the people who love them with all of their hearts to just shut a door. Yes, I can see needing time for process, but boundaries (the ones I have experienced) say to put up a wall. I'll open the door when I am ready. To me boundaries should say "here is what I need from you and why." This isn't happening from what I have observed/experienced. And it makes me very sad for my grandchildren's generation.
Dear mother of an adult daughter...
Thank you so much for writing. You and I are the same age...
You write that somewhere along the way, your daughter was told (by coaches, by therapy, by psychology) that she didn't need you anymore for her happiness.
And guess what? Somewhere along the (very long) way, you (and me and most women) were told you need your parents (and then your husband and then your daughter/children) for your happiness.
Therein lies the disconnect.
Needing others to make you happy = codependence.
(Make no mistake, I am not saying humans can't or shouldn't be mutually interdependent. Nor am I saying that humans don't have needs, like the need for connection and belonging, and the need for authenticity and autonomy.)
This is SO not your fault. Generation after generation of women have been conditioned to believe their happiness (and survival) depends on others and in many ways it quite literally did. Women have had to rely on men and the systems men created, because we couldn't do it on our own...even in our lifetimes (did you know it wasn't until the 1960s that women in the U.S. were allowed to have bank accounts without a male co-signature and that it wasn't until 1974 that women were allowed to get credit cards in their own names?).
When you believe you need your daughter to make you happy, you are handing her two things: #1 responsibility for your happiness, and #2 power over you. And if she believes she needs you to make her happy, she is doing the same thing (I did this for years with my mother).
I suspect the "emotional health" your daughter is seeking the ability to create her own happiness, separate from you, not dependent on you.
NOT because you did something wrong.
She's not doing it because of you, she's doing it for her. It's when parents think their kids are doing things because of them that they start to get painted with the narcissism brush.
And so my first gentle challenge to you is, can you let her grow without your input? Can you let her create her own happiness separate from you, for her own sake? AND?? Can you create your own happiness separate from her, independent from her, for your own sake?
When you (and she) create your own happiness, you are free and so is your daughter. You are free to have a relationship based on something other than making each other happy. Other than shoulds and duty and obligation.
Now imagine coming together from that place or having created your own happiness. Imagine feeling happy together, in each other's presence, but not dependent on each other's happiness.
Here is my second gentle challenge: can you see where the happiness is actually coming from – the thoughts you are thinking about her and you in that moment. What are they?
There's nothing "owed." She is not responsible for your feelings and you are not responsible for hers.
This is emotional health.
And I will say it again: it's not your fault that you didn't learn it when you were younger. Neither did I. Neither did most of us who are around our age (and older).
Our kids are learning it and there's no reason to make it mean that there's something wrong with us. Or that we can't learn it too.
Right now, you are resisting "what is" and it's creating extra layers of pain and suffering.
Your ability to feel differently about the situation (if that's what you want) is in asking yourself what you're making it mean about you, her, and the relationship, and then shifting, gently, those thoughts. Changing your world view about what healthy mother-adult daughter relationships look like.
Believing "it shouldn't be this way" is what creates that extra layer of pain and suffering.
The next level is to have so much compassion for the part of you that wishes it were different. And to tend to that part with love and regard.
And so the third and final gentle challenge is in how you see boundaries. You wrote "to me boundaries should say 'here is what I need from you and why'."
Here's my suggestion: boundaries say, "Here's what I want to grow in our relationship, are you in? And if you're not, that's okay. You get to be you and I get to be me."
It's brave work. Not many women our age are willing to do it because it requires a change in our world view about so many things.
I can't promise you that doing the work will result in your daughter choosing to be in contact with you, but I can promise that it can be less painful and will enable you to show up in the relationship differently. You are worth your own acceptance, love, attention, and regard.
Take my hand, do this work with me, and. be part of human evolution: book 1:1 coaching.
Much, much love,
Karen
"I don't care that much about wrinkles and gray hair, I'm more worried about keeping my worldview flexible enough that when I am older, I don't condescendingly tell young people to play by the rules that worked in my day (or the ones that didn't!), without concern for whether they rules still apply." ~ as seen on the Internet
