Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
focus on being a joy and a delight to yourself...
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...rather than on being a disappointment to her. If it's hard, remember, not only were you taught not to focus on being a joy and a delight to yourself, you were probably actively discouraged from it. From earliest childhood those of us socialized as women were taught and persuaded to survey everything we are and everything we do in terms of how we appear to others. Our own sense of being in ourselves is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated by others. Others act and we...appear. Others look at us. We watch ourselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves and to other women, including our mothers and daughters. It is never too late to be focused on being a joy and a delight to yourself. This is the work of re-parenting on a deep level and I share an exercise that will help you do it in the next Cycle Breaker Summit (complete with a downloadable worksheet). This free event runs December 9 - 12. Click here to get your free ticket. Much, much love, Karen |
Karen C.L. Anderson
Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
Your mother is not entitled to decide that her desire for a "yes" invalidates your right to say "no." She may have reasons that are completely valid and your answer can still be "no." And: She's allowed to be disappointed. She's allowed to think you're unreasonable. She's allowed to wish you had answered differently. She's even allowed to complain about you. Kindness isn’t kindness when she has already decided you’re required to provide it. Practicing this reminds me that sometimes another...
I got a lot of responses to Showing My Work, in which I gave a brief accounting of what's happened between my mother and me in the past five years; wrote about a recent conversation with her in which I fawned; and how I noticed it and handled it. My mother's increased contact with me is showing me exactly where my growth is and y'all want the details :-) A week later, I had a very different conversation with her. This time when she called, I was busy and didn't answer. She asked me to give...
About One's Own Sense of Self ~ In this piece, Captain Tom Bunn, who is both an airline pilot and a licensed clinical social worker who works with anxious flyers, describes what happens when... "...instead of mirroring her child, a mother uses the child to mirror her. Dr. Beatrice Beebe has studied children who failed to thrive. She found that their mothers were so mirror-hungry that they, instead of mirroring the child, pushed their child to mirror them." ~~~ Have you read The Calamity Club?...