Mother’s & Daughter’s Need Therapy Too

When my Mother told me “I love you, but I don’t like you”, I thought to myself ‘Who says that to their child?’ My Mother, that’s who.

She had reasons for not liking me. I was mean. My attitude was bad and deep down I was hurt. My life as I knew it was in shambles. During this time I was laid off my job, I didn’t have the money to pay my bills and I was single (with no prospects in sight).

I was down and I needed my Mother in a way that I couldn’t articulate. I believe she was able to feel that I needed her but she needed to prove a point to me and she did.

As a result, the relationship between my Mother and I became rocky.

Many people who knew both my Mother and I, may not have realized how similar we were. We were more alike than different and the truth was neither one of us liked seeing ourselves in the other person.

I inherited my Mother’s attitude and it was the very thing she disliked about me.

I was her, she was me and we ended up going to therapy.

We had a rocky relationship for over 3 years. It was bad. I remember getting in an argument with my Mother, on the phone, and throwing myself on the ground in tears after we hung up.

I wanted my Mother to understand me and she wanted me to understand her. We didn’t see eye to eye and neither one of us wanted to bend.

After a while I had grown tired of the dynamic between us and I realized had I kept my mouth shut, in a previous situation, our relationship wouldn’t have been as bad as it was.

But keeping my mouth shut wasn’t me. I believed in telling the truth, even if it wasn’t welcomed. So I told my Mother the truth and it resulted in a bad relationship.

After a little while of having a strained relationship with her, I decided I would do what I could to fix it. Fixing it didn’t come easy but my Mother and I found our way back to one another through the help of a therapist.

Therapy with my Mother was awkward. We were forced to tell the truth about the stories we were telling ourselves (her version was different than mine and my version was different than hers) but in therapy we had common ground. We found each other as two adult women. Catch that part. Not one adult and one child but two adult women.

I had grown in a way that allowed me to use my voice. Even when I was scared I believed in speaking up. During therapy we had to identify the things we liked about the other person and hearing what my Mother liked about me, made me see her differently. Up until that point I didn’t realize she admired my tenacity. It was something she didn’t think she had but life showed her differently.

I often tell people in my family that I knew my Mother was going to get sick and I didn’t want us to be on bad terms.

Unfortunately I was right, but when she got sick we were on better terms and I was able to watch her become just as tenacious as she thought I was.