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Mother’s are truly the glue that binds families and communities.  The most difficult job ever to be undertaken is that of mothering.  On this Mother’s Day, I am going to take on the mothers that have broken bridges to their children.  More and more I hear stories of adult children that have “divorced” their parents…not for what the parents have done but for what the parents will not do: work with their children to develop emotionally healthy and functional relationships.

I know of two mothers: one that is uneducated, a manual laborer, from another culture with street smarts.  The other holds a Ph.D., born in America with book smarts.  Both mothers are behaving in the same manner toward their daughter.  Both mothers are holding their families as emotional hostages until the daughters take the blame and go back to the way the relationship was.  What is of particular note is that this behavior each mother is exhibiting is exactly the behavior that both daughters no longer want to engage in - the emotional blackmail, toxic parenting, behavior that crosses all socio-economic and cultural boundaries.

Mother/daughter relationships are riddled with complex emotions and reflections.  The mother sees herself in her daughter from the daughter’s  shortcomings to perhaps not realizing her potential.  If the mother lacks emotional intelligence the reflection becomes toxic causing the mother to blame the daughter for all the mother has not accomplished or behavior in herself that is particularly dysfunctional. The reverse can be said for the daughter and the mirror her mother provides for her. 

In Elkhart Tolle’s book A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, he says “Ego takes everything personally.  Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression.  Are you defending the truth?  No, you are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute”.

I am baffled as to why these mothers would not exhaustively search inside themselves for a way back into their child’s life and arms.  What is preventing them from moving past their need to be right and their need to control to a place of peace.  What is in them that chooses drama over peace?  Questions only they can answer but finding the answers requires that a person first accept themselves as they are and then search for the truth of “why” to allow change to take place within themselves.

When my son Andrew was about nine years old, we were in the kitchen preparing dinner together.  I was railing at him about some nonsense.  He asked me in that moment, “Mom, who do you get angry at when I am not here?”  Thank God I heard him.  Thank God I understood the root of the question.  The following week we were in relationship counseling which he thrived on because his mother (me) was always in the hot seat.  The counselor always seemed to be turning towards me and asking, “Do you believe you can change that behavior?  Do you want to change that behavior?”  I was able to hear the meaning behind Andrew’s question and make a very clear intention that I wanted to have the most emotionally healthy relationship I could possibly have with my only son.  That intention required me to look at myself and see the bad with the good….and do something about the bad. 

Andrew and I actually had a good time helping each other being the best we could be in our relationship.  We practiced communication, listening, negotiating skills.  We took a few steps backwards but most steps were forward. It deepened and enriched our relationship and gave us both much joy as mother and child. 

Eleven years after I lost my son in a car crash I can say without hesitation that I have no regrets about our relationship.  We pulled out all of the stops.  We talked, laughed, argued, negotiated our way through the 5,721 days we had as mother and son.  He was my teacher but I was so very open to learn because he was my son.  Our ritual at bedtime, right up until that very last night was for me to kiss him goodnight and tell him ”You are the best part of my whoooooole life”.  He would not go to bed until we performed this ritual.

I am sure that any censure I might have of mothers who do not dig deep inside of themselves to find the path back to their children is that I cannot do this with Andrew.  Were Andrew alive today, I would crawl down a rocky road to have the opportunity to bare my soul and look at all of the warts of my being in order to have a healthy and joyful relationship with him. 

So on this Mother’s Day let us also remember the mothers who make difficult choices that cut themselves off from their children.  Let us send them love and compassion.  Their choices have nothing to do with their children and everything to do with their own egos and made-up stories that support only their traumatic past.  Let us hold them in the center of our hearts.  And should we have a mother like this or know of a mother like this, let’s not waste our energy in trying to change them.  Let’s look at ourselves and discover what behavior we might change in ourselves.  After all, the only person one can change is the one walking in our shoes - unless you have loaned your shoes to someone!!

Linda Ann Smith
Award Winning Author and Speaker
Power of Rituals for Women