All Women Are Daughters
“There’s a story behind everything…Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is your mother’s story. Hers is where you began.”
My mother died three years ago this week. Although she was 86 years old, her death was unexpected - a broken hip, a loose screw, and a second surgery all proved too much for her heart.
I have had mummy issues all my life. My friends listened to me talk about our relationship ad nauseam. My husband helped me prepare myself mentally before her visits. My daughters reassured me I was nothing like my mother.
I was worried that when she eventually did die, I would be left with unresolved issues. So, I broached topics that I thought we should talk about. She would scoff, saying that was in the past. I would try and get her to say she was proud of me - ridiculous isn't it, a 60+ woman wanting acknowledgement from an 80+ mother - but she never expressed it in words. My mother did not do emotions. However, this frail, old woman could still leave me in tears with her scathing remarks. Yet I never cried in front of her - I did not want her to know she still held that power over me.
I was not the only person who suffered her wrath. She was critical and unforgiving. There were family members she despised. Friends who she felt had let her down. Shopkeepers quickly found someone else to serve when she walked in the door. I stopped going to the store with my mother many years ago. She would speak loudly about bad service and poor quality. One day, she had the butcher slice five different types of cold cuts and then said he could keep it - she had seen him picking his nose - and he had not washed his hands. True maybe, but I was mortified!
Yet despite knowing all of this, a part of me felt I was at fault. If only I had been a better daughter, or skinnier, or followed a different life path. No wonder I was a perfectionist, eager to please and setting high expectations for myself.
In her last months, the anaesthetic from her surgery befuddling her mind, she revealed details of her life as a child and young woman that I had never heard before. Details that I first questioned. Could this be confabulation caused by memory loss? But there was a ring of truth to her words. She spoke of situations that I knew could cause trauma. Painful memories that made it necessary to build strong defences - an impenetrable wall around her feelings. She was not from a generation that spoke these experiences aloud or, heaven forbid, would see a therapist to get help. She bore it all stoically, but she also armed those walls with weapons aimed at family, friends, and strangers.
As I began to process her words - stated once and with no avenue for exploration - I realized that I had held so much guilt and shame for most of my life, and it was not all mine to bear.
When my mother died, I grieved, but I also felt a tremendous relief. It still shames me to say that I felt relief more for myself than my mother. Our journey was done. I anticipated unresolved issues might surface, but these last three years have been smooth sailing.
Last week, her cousin sent me a photo of my maternal grandparents and my grandfather’s mother, a woman my mother did not like. I messaged her cousin. Is it true that my great-grandmother was not very nice, I asked? “She was severe,” she replied, “but I have photos of her laughing, and she was very good to my father when he entered the seminary to become a priest.” Another story I did not know! My great-uncle did not become a priest. She added that he was always a good Catholic, but my grandfather was not! This confirmed other details of her past my mother had shared. My mother would rail that he never entered a church, revered the pope, but insisted my non-Catholic Oma attend with the children.
I am not unique. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the most complex relationships we will ever have. Research from the Journal of Neuroscience shows that mothers and daughters report deeper emotions, positive and negative, in their intergenerational relationships than fathers and sons. Some of you were blessed to have had loving relationships with your mothers, some of us not so much.
I wish I knew more of my mother’s stories. I wish we could have talked as we both aged. Maybe I did not understand her pain and actions when I was younger, but with the wisdom I have gained over the years, I think we may have been able to resolve some things.
The mother-daughter relationship is also one that is often written about by women in my life story courses. So much so, that I developed a guided autobiography course called, All Women Are Daughters. Here are some questions from the course that you may find helpful to reflect on as you think about your relationship with your mother.
What story would your mother tell about you?
You know what your mother is to you. What are/were you to her?
What’s the earliest story you remember your mother telling you of her life?
What do/did you and your mother not talk about?
What gift did your mother give you?