Conference turris::womannotes-v3

	I am the third of four daughters, but I got my mother's name.
	My mother and I have always had a strained and distant relationship.
	There are many things that I did that added distance to it.

	When I was sixteen I came home from a dance very upset, it
	was a boy thing, anyway my mother asked me if I wanted to
	talk about it (this was the only time I ever remember her
	saying this to me).  I looked at her with tears streaming
	down my face and said "Not with you, you would never
	understand."  and then ran out of the room to be alone again.

	We almost never have talked about our feelings about anything.

	There have been a few times when I needed help, I would ask
	for specific things that I needed.  And she would open up to
	me from time to time about her life as a young woman.  But there
	was no "trust" to tap into.  (This is one thing that I did do
	differently with my children.)  Part of the problem was the
	era and part was that there were 7 of us to care for and I
	was eventually the middle child and part of the problem was that
	my mother had no understanding or experience that would help
	her deal with me - a very different child.

	Many of the assumptions and life views that were around when
	my mother was young are all gone now - the world is very different
	and she had changed some but not a lot.  And when we are together
	the distance is always there, no matter how hard I try to
	bridge it.  I really believe that she won't/can't understand.

	_peggy
		(-)
		 |
			A rose is not a rose just because it is called rose.

    My mother and I are on more even terms these days.  She is a
    powerful woman, a strong woman, and perhaps it was that wielded
    strength that made me admire strong women, but also made me fear the
    strength in myself, knowing it might be a two-edged sword that could
    cut as easily as it could bolster others.  
    
    I seek her approval, more than anything I have always sought to be
    okay.  To be what she wished, and yet that dream led me in a different
    direction than many women.  It led me to technical and educational
    excellence in areas she never could have dreamed of learning.  She was
    a fighter, and nurtured in me a yearning for the right, and the just,
    and the honest....
    
    Sometimes I am angry with her for some lack in the past of approval -
    although I am sure her times of brief but harsh criticism stemmed from
    anger, or stemmed from her own will to see me succeed and perhaps that
    was the goad that drove me on.  I am uncertain.
    
    I took a seminar at Harvard Community Health Plan called "Ways to
    Wellness", about people who had any kind of dis-ease or illness (mental
    or physical), and were wanting to cope with it.  One of the exercises
    was to discharge your baggage from the past via writing a note of
    forgiveness to those you love in a relationship that somehow clings to
    anger or hurt from the past.  It was in writing that letter that I was
    able to see some of what she intended, and some of *her* baggage, some
    of the pressure she lived under, and some of what drove her to be a
    successful businesswoman, and mom, and remain involved in bettering the
    community (despite the community's constant failure to respond to its
    peoples' needs).  I admire her in many ways - sometimes I am sorry for
    her - that she cannot show weakness when maybe it would be better than
    standing tall and proud and staunch and solitary. 
    
    She has grown a lot lately, as have I.  We craft a friendship wherein
    we seem more equal, and we walk through the woods and speak of our
    womanfriends and their needs, and the needs we have, and our dreams.  I
    am less angry now that I am grown, and she seems pleased with me as I
    am.  For all intents and purposes I have won what I seek, and now all
    that remains is to open myself, like a flower, and show her what I
    have become.
    
    Perhaps she will do the same with me one day....
    
    -Jody
    

    
    My mother didn't want to have a daughter with her own
    personality - she only wants to have a look in the mirror
    and recognize that her daughter thinks like her, eats the 
    same things she does, uses the same words and behaves
    every minute like she would.
    
    These kind of mothers want to have her own person twice
    because they can not accept someone being different from
    them (how to be proud of your daughter when she is not
    like you are - they think that only their way of
    thinking and living is the right one).
    
    Poor mothers being so narrow-minded, poor daughters who
    have to fight so much and suffer ...
    
    C.

    I'd like to hear from some of those poor narrow minded mothers, who
    have such suffering daughters.  I'd be willing to bet that the opinion
    is different from the mother's end. 
    
    I personally did not have enough time to *really* know my mother. 
    My stepmother was not perfect, but we worked well together, and recognized 
    when being different was ok.  But I sense a one sideness, a selfishness
    in these mother-daughter relationship descriptions.  It sounds like
    it's ok for a daughter to judge the mother's motives but not the other
    way around.
    
    I hope I am wrong.
    
    -m

    
    Re: -1
    
    Of course my mother would say I misunderstand the situation.
    
    Who would be so honest to say that he doesn't want to let
    the daughter's personality grow without telling her every
    time to do what she wants her to do.
    
    If one monther complaints about her daughter, everyone says
    ok, vice versa is forbidden.
    
    My former boyfriend has a mother who was used to living with
    him until he was 29. Then he met me, we lived together for
    3 years, his mother was crying and arguing a lot at the beginning,
    always hating me for I am the person who succeeded in steeling her
    son ...
    
    She tried to make him beleive that she is very ill and that he 
    should spend the weekend together with her and so on.
    
    And hearing from such ill mothers you try to tell me that
    I should not complain, perhaps everything is wrong, and
    the mother is right ????
    
    I hope you don't have such a mother like my boy friend has,
    only people who have experience with those people can imagine
    what kind of life you have to live ...
    
    Of course there are two possibilities: Either quit with your
    mother because you are not able to be handled like this for
    the rest of your life. Or accept it and go on like before,
    because there is no way of changing her behaviour, she just
    thinks she has to protect you every time, and tell you
    whether to drink orange or grapefruit juice ... (that's a
    naive example, but it explains the daily situations).
    
    And of course you love your mother, you cannot quit and
    so you suffer and arguing still goes on and on ...
    
    Ask my father, I am 26 now and some months ago I wanted
    to cross a tiny street. He was standing there always looking,
    screaming at me I should not cross the street. And the people
    standing around were laughing, and I just wanted to call
    the ambulance for him. He really drives me crazy.
    
    And now you can decide if such behaviour would please you.
    
    Perhaps your answer would be another one when knowing the a.m.
    before. And you just can't change the situation !!!
    
    Don't be offended, but I really know what I am talking about,
    I had one colleague some months ago she has a 16 year old
    daughter and is 44 (my mother was 40 when I was born !!!!! -
    My father 3 years older !!!!!) and she never does and never
    will overprotect her daughter, knowing some day she has to
    make her own decisions ... What do you say now  ????

    
     Re .4
    I guess those "narrow-minded mothers" will be in topic 395....
    
    I have only just begun to consciously work through feelings with my
    mother. We had a period of six years in our relationship that was
    so harrowing, so painful, so mutually destructive, that it's taken
    us ten years to begin to talk about it.
    
    There are many tears, and many moments when insight into each other's
    view strikes and there are no words. Working it out hurts almost as
    much as the period in question, but it's a healthier healing pain.
    
    I still get enormously frustrated at our different views, and wonder
    how we can ever understand more than 20% of each other with our
    different assumptions, beliefs, conditioning etc. We have almost
    unconsciously begun to seek "woman space" together - we recently spent
    our first weekend together without any men around (neither my father
    not nor my brother) and found it a healing place........
    
    One hot topic is feminism and femininity - we are worlds apart in our
    views. But we are both trying so hard to understand, and I am coming
    to love her for struggling to understand me, even if her understanding
    is never complete. And I'm learning to love myself for my ability
    to forgive and try to understand after all these years.....
    
    'gail
                

>    I'd like to hear from some of those poor narrow minded mothers, who
>    have such suffering daughters.  I'd be willing to bet that the opinion
>    is different from the mother's end. 
 
That's why there are *two* topics here, one for a mother's reaction to her
daughter, and one for a daughter's reaction to her mother.  Or didn't you
notice?

Anyway, my first (gut/knee-jerk) response was the same as yours, except
in the other topic - I wanted to say "I'd like to hear from some of these
hellion daughters who have such righteous mothers.  I'd be willing to bet
that the opinion is different from the daughter's end."  My own personal
bias (as regular readers are well aware) is pro-children.  Yours appears to
be pro-parent.

But I *didn't* respond that way, because I realized that *of* *course* a 
mother's opinion and a daughter's opinion are going to differ.  And that
doesn't make either opinion less valid.  If the relationship is bad, or
just merely has a few flaws, the flaws and badness is a result of *interaction*,
of *two* people, not one.  If a daughter tells me her mother is over-
protective and tries to control her life, I believe her.  And if the mother
tells me that the daughter is rebellious and irresponsible, I believe her
too...both are *true* because both are just perceptions.  There is no
absolute measure of "overprotectiveness" or "rebelliousness", just
perceptions, interactions, and most of all, cycles.

I firmly believe that in any interaction of two people over time, no one
person is "to blame."  Each person contributes to the continuation of the
cycle...and to stop the cycle takes *both* people.  Daugher percieves mother
as being over-protective, and responds by taking more control of her life...
mothers see's that as being rebellious and irresponsible and tries to stop
her daughter from doing something she see's as self-harming...daughter
percieves mother as trying even harder to control her, and pulls away
instinctively...mother becomes unhappy at the distance and tries to pull
her daughter closer...daughter feels stifled and controlled...and so on.

I believe it's perfectly valid for the daughters here to express their
perceptions about their relationship with their mothers.  And even though
it often hurts and angers me to read, I also think it's valid and right for
mothers here to express their perceptions of their relationships with 
their daughters.

D!

    
    re .4:
    
    I fully agree!
    

    
    I realized after I entered my reply - that I had skipped over the
    Mothers' note.  Very sorry about that.
    
    I still am marveling at the daughters' comments about narrow minded
    mothers, and the mothers' comments about daughters who don't
    understand.  If you switch generations, they sound the same. 
    
    But since I have neither a daughter nor a mother (even though I have
    been a daughter, and I am a mother), then my comments are really 
    not valid - I acknowledge the fact that I am not qualified to voice 
    other than an outsider's oppinion.
    
    -m
    
    

     
    This isn't really directed at Madeline in .4 (I read .9) but .4 was 
    the catalyst.
    
    ----------
     
    Geez, I don't know.  I think I was the victim of benign neglect
    (though this is a gross over-simplification).  My mother meant well.  
    She was the best mother she could be, under the circumstances.  She's
    due a lot of credit for struggling against what I think of as
    insurmountable odds to raise her family, and she is an incredibly 
    strong woman.  One in a _line_ of incredibly strong women.  But, I 
    still got hurt, badly.  I'm still angry, very.  I can understand my 
    mother till the cows come home -- but I am still hurt, I am continually
    amazed at how angry I am, and I am still struggling to believe it's 
    OK to feel this way.  It never was acceptable to feel the way I feel, 
    because "mother did the best she could."  She did, I agree.  But I 
    still got hurt.  I still have to struggle to know how I feel, to be 
    able to identify a specific feeling with its name.  I'm almost 40 and 
    sometimes I feel like I'm 5, emotionally.  I've been afraid for years 
    of coming to the point where I am now.  I think I have to go back (to 
    being 5, perhaps) before I can go forward.
    
    CQ                

    Narrow minded, intolerant people do exist, and some of them are mothers
    (and fathers, too).  They often pronounce judgment on any behavior or
    preference which does not meet with their approval and may even try to
    force others to conform (e.g. pro-lifers, gay-bashers).  An intolerant
    mother will very likely treat her daughter this way, but the mother may
    not be aware of any thing "wrong" with the way she raises her daughter. 
    On the contrary, she may believe very strongly that she is instructing
    her daughter in the "right" way to live.

    But intolerance has a very negative effect on the child's self esteem
    and the mother is responsible for what she does, even though she may
    have been raised in an intolerant family herself and is doing what she
    thinks is best for her child.  If you are an approval seeker or people
    pleaser, chances are that there was some degree of intolerance or
    disapproving, judgmental behavior in your family background.

    For my own mother there was a "right" way to do everything and she
    could usually site some authority such as God or Emily Post to "prove"
    it.  I was not a rebellious daughter and adapted to her by conformity
    and compliance.  I did not even rebel in adolescence.  I believed my
    mother was an ideal mother right up into my early thirties.  But then
    I discovered the price I had paid for my compliance.

    Even though I always "played by the rules" I was a terribly unhappy and
    depressed person, at times even suicidal.  I could never understand how
    come if I was doing everything "right", why did I feel so "wrong".  I
    felt like a nobody.  And, in fact, I was a nobody.  My compliance with
    someone else's rules did not leave me any opportunity to have my own
    identity, to be me.  And without an identity, I was a nobody, unable to
    enjoy myself.  And if that isn't bad enough, I discovered the same
    intolerant, judgmental tendencies in myself which I had never been
    aware of.  I'm just beginning the long process of recovering my lost
    identity.

    I tip my hat to you rebels!

    Mary

    
    for years, my mother insisted that I accompany them to Christmas Eve 
    church services, which I begrudgingly did, even after separating from 
    Christianity many years ago.  the service was a time I could see old
    family friends, since I live in a different city than my parents, and 
    see these people but once a year.  their minister is also progressive 
    and has privately tutored my mother on alternative spirituality and 
    metaphysics.  so I attempted to focus on these positive aspects, but 
    still harbored resentment for being emotionally railroaded into church 
    just for tradition's sake.  my mother knew I was uncomfortable there, 
    which in turn caused her discomfort.
    
    I stood in silence as various creeds were recited, unable to speak 
    words I did not believe in.  I sobbed during the singing of Silent 
    Night, which is sung without an organ, while each member of the 
    congregation holds a single white candle.  it was for this moment of 
    peace and unity that I never staged much of a scene regarding my 
    attendance.  
    
    now it seems she has finally grown to accept my difference.  very
    lovingly, she said she understands my point of view and that if I am 
    not comfortable accompanying them to church, that she accepts and 
    supports my decision not to go.
    
    it's been an extremely turbulent year in our relationship, as she's
    tried to learn about and accept my bisexuality -- not an easy 
    reconciliation for a woman raised in a tiny Montana town where no 
    people of difference openly lived, nor people of color.
    
    we are finally accepting each other.  she is learning that my path 
    is different than hers, and that different is not necessarily bad.
    I think she has been more afraid of letting go what was force fed 
    down her throat all these years than what I actually was presenting 
    to her.  I am learning to be patient with her, and to value her as
    an adult woman with womanly feelings, emotions, and beliefs.  where
    we are now is worth the pain, anger, frustration, and hurt we went
    through in order to shed our skins and reach this place.
    
    we now buy books for each other, communicate with newfound and much 
    cherished respect and admiration for each other, and relate to each 
    other as two women.
    
    it's been a long, rocky road, but a warm, wooded haven is in sight.
    
    thanks, Mom.
    
    Carla
    

    
    I would be interested in knowing if anyone has he same opinion like me:
    
    I think that there are mothers (or Parents) who
    
    - think overprotection means love
    - give other people than familiy members the chance of being
      free, due to the fact that they don't comment every sentence and
      that they accept other peoples' ideas but the daughters' ideas have
      ALWAYS to be commented - mostly like "I wouldn't behave like you"
      etc.
    
    What I want to say is:
    
    a) Up to a certain age parents should not make a difference between
       their children and other people regarding acceptance of their
       own decisions
    
    b) they should be proud that they have children who have their
       own personality and make their own decisions
    
    c) they should not be disappointed, that means thinking:
       "So bad, he/she doesn't ALWAYS behave like I would like them
        to"
    
    d) they SIMPLY should be friends, not parents not overprotecting
       their mature children anymore, not being arrogant (even if they
       would never call themselves arrogant) and thinking: she/he will
       never be mature enough, he/she needs ALL my life experience
       and support to avoid mistakes . I WILL HELP THEM TO AVOID
       MISTAKES. WHEN THEY BEHAVE LIKE I WOULD THEY WILL NEVER MAKE
       MISTAKES.
    
    GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
    
    C.