OMG! I'M MY MOTHER!

Let’s just admit to each other here, most of us, at some point in our life, swore up & down we would NEVER be our mother?

I was going to do everything differently, … perfectly, unlike her. Sound familiar?

Who now catches themselves often resembling that same mother you were never going to be?


“Mommy issues" are often a huge barrier between mothers & daughters, but when daughters become mothers ourselves it’s important that we have a deeper understanding of our own mother, in order to have some insight into how we mother our children.


Our perception of what a “mother” is supposed to look like can cause us to judge each other. This judgement can put a wedge between us or find us having feelings of guilt or shame for our behaviour in the past, when we recognize how hard it is to be a mom.


There is an emotional umbilical cord between a mother & child that never severs. A mother is a child’s compass, at any age, & when we have unresolved emotional business with our moms we will suffer & unwittingly transfer those issues onto our children, if we haven’t made peace with her.


Rarely do any of us get the mother we wanted, we got the mother we needed & we must honour that woman inside of us. Making peace with our mom is an integral part of becoming the mother we always wanted to be. 


It is very difficult to fully love & accept ourself if we hold any resentment toward our own mom because she is a part of us, so that sword we point will ultimately come right back at us. 


Some mother daughter relationships have had experiences that are incredibly difficult to reckon with, but we must be able to release our mom from the expectation of what we wanted her to be & accept her for what she was, in order to be able to love to our fullest.


            “Releasing our Mother is not about forgiving her, it is about understanding her.”


It’s about seeing her as a human being, not as a mother, or any other title or label we have placed on her. She is a woman, trying to do her best, fallible, imperfect, with needs, just like you, as hard as that may be to believe!


We tend to put moms on a pedestal & believe they are supposed to be a model of perfection, as loving as Mother Theresa, or a superhero in some way. We must be able to see ourselves in every other woman but especially in our own mom. 


It’s difficult to investigate & understand our mother's pain, her desire to love us, the only way she knew how, & get to know her as a person in her own right, but in doing so it makes it easier to release her from the expectation that she “should” have been any different than the way she was & it free’s us to become the mother we always thought we would be.


When we’re able to see ourself in another, it becomes harder to judge "them" for things that we too are “guilty”, or at least capable, of. Only then will it be possible to show compassion & empathy, & when we are able to show that to another, we will transform every relationship in our life.

Lindsay Lal Professional Coaching