[New and improved Shame School is coming back soon. Click here to get on the wait list!]

“The good dwarves felt pity for the prince and gave him the glass coffin in which Snow White lay. The prince had his servants carry it away on their shoulders. But it happened that one of them stumbled on some brush, and this dislodged from Snow White’s throat the piece of poisoned apple the evil Queen had given her. Not long afterwards, she opened her eyes, lifted the lid from her coffin, sat up, and was alive again.” ~ from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, 1812

Kate Farrell (who is an expert on the heroine’s journey) and I once had a conversation about how age-old fairy tales reveal patterns in the heroine’s journey and how having a difficult or troubled relationship with a mother impacts the real life journey of her adult daughter.

What I loved especially is how Kate told the original tale (not the Disney version) of Snow White and revealed how all the characters in the story are archetypal rather than literal, and how they reflect aspects of the heroine.

So, for instance, in the older, realer version of the story, Snow White wakes herself up and notices her new perspective. The prince is her self-protection in the fairy tale, but it is her embrace of masculine energy within her in real life.

I clapped my hands in delight and said: the piece of poisoned apple represents the shame that we all are given to eat and swallow and digest and metabolize.

Snow White shows us that it can be expelled.

~~~

Sometimes I get finger-wagging comments like, "You shouldn't be encouraging going no-contact and tearing families apart, you should be encouraging love and compassion."

And I'm like, dude...you can't "love and light" or "thoughts and prayers" yourself (or anyone else) out of an abusive relationship. Love and light doesn't turn a dysfunctional or abusive mother into a healthy mother (and it must always be said: when I say "healthy" I do not mean perfect!)

It requires love to step out of dysfunctional and/or abusive dynamics, heal from those dynamics, and then (if you choose) come back into the relationship from that place.

Estrangement can be one of the most loving and compassionate – and TRUTHFUL – steps an adult daughter can take. Because actual love doesn't bypass truth.

Poet/writer/author Andrea Gibson, who died last year, shared a story about this. Their doctor said, "The cancer thinks it's a better version of you than you are. So you want to spend some time in your day telling the cancer that you are a better version of it and tell it to go." Andrea said that they'd been doing the opposite; that they'd been trying to send the cancer love. The doctor's reply?

"What better way to love something than to tell it the truth."

The truth isn't "nice" or "polite." It's not trying to please, hide, force, control, or manipulate. It is clean and clear-eyed and full of love. Because love doesn't stand for abuse. From anyone. And it doesn't bypass being a human.

Abuse thrives on shame and shame will always find a way to get in the way of truth.

And a "toxic mother" is simply a mother who was fed the poison apple and thus experiences unconscious, unacknowledged shame, projects it (mostly unintentionally) onto her daughter, and is unwilling to hear the truth and take responsibility for it.

~~~

If you are a mother with an estranged adult daughter: the most loving, truthful thing you can do is to identify whatever shame is lurking within. Dislodge that toxin and free yourself. Because I guarantee it’s generational shame (meaning it wasn’t yours to begin with) that’s preventing you from having the relationship you want to have with your daughter. And from there, you can attempt to repair the relationship you have with your daughter.

If you are an adult daughter who wants to take better care of herself in the relationship she has with her mother: it’s the same work. Dislodge the toxin so you can be free and let your mother take responsibility for doing her own work. She may not be on board. She may not like it that you’re doing this. But YOU can stop living at the mercy of generational shame. This doesn’t mean sugar-coating it or gaslighting yourself, it means that you take the shame (that was never yours to begin with) out of your story…you stop letting it diminish you. That’s where your power lies. That’s what’s yours to take responsibility* for.

*And I’ll tell you what…this isn’t the kind of responsibility that’s a burden…a drudgery. It’s tending to something precious and alive.

New and improved Shame School is coming back soon. Click here to get on the wait list.

Much, much love,

Karen

We stand on solid ground.

We see clearly.

We speak the truth.