Walking a Path Between Estrangement and Enmeshment
When you’re used to codependence and emotional enmeshment, clear, healthy, mature boundaries will feel confrontational and divisive.
Boundaries are not confrontational.
Boundaries are not disrespectful.
Boundaries are not divisive.
Boundaries are your values in action. ~ Randi Buckley
Being a cycle-breaker…
…a pattern-disrupter…
…someone who sets boundaries…
…is only confrontational, disrespectful, and divisive to someone who benefits from keeping harmful cycles and dysfunctional patterns in place and from you not having boundaries.
It may be your mother, it may be your adult daughter, it may be someone else…it may actually be a system. It may be the water we’re swimming in.
Clear, healthy, mature boundaries improve mother-adult daughter relationships.
Clear, healthy, mature boundaries mitigate enmeshment and co-dependence.
Enmeshment and co-dependence aren’t character flaws.
They are symptoms of living in a multigenerational patriarchal system of inequality and oppression where those who hold power –politically, socially, and morally – dictate the standard within which those with less or little power live (thank you Dr. Valerie Rein).
Clear, healthy, mature boundaries are a way for us to become good ancestors, rather than dutiful descendants (thank you Adam Grant).
Working with me is a way for you to center yourself in what you value so that you can establish and maintain the clear, healthy, mature boundaries that will enable you to flourish in the relationship you have with your mother or your adult daughter.
And if your mother or daughter chooses to walk a similar path, she, too, will flourish in the relationship.
But you’re each on your own paths. Your paths may intersect, they may be parallel at times, and there will be times when your paths take you in opposite or wildly different directions.
Acceptance of this is a middle path between estrangement and enmeshment/co-dependence.
If your mother or adult daughter can’t or doesn’t want to participate, that’s okay. When your energy shifts, her energy will shift in response. She may not like this, she may experience discomfort, but it doesn’t mean that something has gone wrong or that you should stay the same.
If your relationship with your mother (or your daughter) perplexes and vexes you, I can help.
Coach with me and watch the relationship change.
Coach with me so you can flourish, no matter what’s happening with her.
Coach with me and become a good ancestor.
Coach with me and break the cycle of codependence and enmeshment.
Coach with me and be an example of what’s possible for mothers and daughters.