Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
when your mother wants you to say "yes"
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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 human being is going to tell me: No, that’s my space. No, I don’t want to. No, I’m staying home. No, I’m not available. No, I’m not explaining myself. No, that doesn’t work for me. Sometimes there won’t be a dramatic reason behind it. Sometimes the reason really is: because I don't want to. And somehow, despite everything humanity has survived…we're going to survive this too. 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
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?...
Some people avoid apologizing because it feels like an attack on their own identity. As if saying “I was wrong” is the same as saying “I am bad.” (and they are probably unaware that they are doing this) Those are not the same thing, and confusing them is what keeps most apologies unspoken. What I find clinically interesting is what happens in the body and mind when shame is held in silence over time. It does not dissolve. It accumulates. It changes how we relate to the people around us and...