Learning to Be Like My Mom…or Not
Mother-daughter relationships have their challenges and their gifts
“Don’t you want to do what makes me happy?”
How was I supposed to answer that? Who doesn’t want to make their mother happy? Did her happiness have to come at the expense of mine?
She was asking us to move from our home down to the south with her husband, who I detested. This came off of having moved twice and attending three different schools. I was a rising ninth-grader, so high school was looming in my future.
With a firm understanding that my happiness was inconsequential to my mother’s, I moved into a home with my pregnant mother, brother, step-father, step-sister, and my step-sister’s baby. My step-sister was 13 years old and had a baby.
For whatever reason, my mom saw fit to have me share a room with my step-sister and her baby while my newborn sister had her own room. I never understood that. Was it punishment? Was she trying to teach me a lesson?
The biggest scar from that time period is the belief that for my mom, anyone is a better option for a daughter than me. Instead of conforming to who and what she wanted me to be, I set out on living life my own way and proving my worth.
That need to prove, to show that I was deserving of attention and consideration was a beast to unload later in life. In some ways, it propelled me forward. In other ways, it kept me bound to things and people who did not serve me well.
That period, around 15 years old, was when my biggest goal in life was to be nothing like my mother. I kept my virginity, not out of piety, but out of determination not to be a teen mother. I chose to be single often because I refused to let men be as important to me as they had been to my mother. I showed up for people because I never felt like anyone showed up for me.
It was not until my mid-twenties that I began to appreciate my mother’s humanity. I was a single, young woman living in Hawaii making my own choices and deciding what kind of woman I wanted to be. Not all of those choices were ones that I was especially proud of.
When I first moved to Hawaii, I lived with my grandmother and two cousins. My grandmother and I had always had a good relationship. She was my refuge when I was frustrated and hurt by my mother. She was my safe harbor.
That changed quickly once I moved in with her. The level of control she needed was stifling. From the way the toilet tissue was put on the roll (you know, over or under) to permission to close my bedroom door to my choice (or not) to attend church. I remember I was called stupid for expressing my homesickness. It was such a departure from how my mother raised me.
The situation with my grandmother only lasted a few months before I set out to get my own apartment. My mother had permitted me too much independence for me to bear a controlling environment. I was given the space and freedom to make decisions and have independent thoughts. Gifts I never realized she gave me.
Another choice I made was to seek therapy. I was not suicidal. I was not depressed. Nothing was wrong, per se.
There was just so much going on in my mind and my heart. I didn’t know what to do with it all. One of the things I learned from my mother was the benefit of therapy. When I was ten years old, I had a therapist. As a family, we periodically went to family therapy.
So, it wasn’t strange for me to seek therapy. Another gift I didn’t realize my mother gave me: the vulnerability and courage to seek healing.
I don’t remember my therapist’s name or how I found her. But, she was such a great match for me and I feel like my approach to coaching is subconsciously influenced by her. She didn’t allow me to have a pity party or make my mother the villain in my story.
Instead, she helped me gain perspective, identify my scars, and take ownership of my present. One of the assignments she gave me was to write a letter to my mother. While I don’t remember what I penned on those lines, I remember that my mom responded.
My mother’s response was written on one of those long, skinny to-do-list type pads that you keep on your desk. The sense I got was that she stopped and responded using the closest thing available. She didn’t put her response on hold to get fancy stationery or a full piece of paper. It felt like responding was important to her.
In her response, she didn’t berate or invalidate my feelings. I remember feeling heard, even from thousands of miles away. I wondered if she ever got that same feeling from her mother, my grandmother. Did she ever feel heard or seen by her mother? Did she ever feel like she wasn’t enough for her mother?
Maybe my vision was clouded when it came to my mother. Maybe I misunderstood her actions because I didn’t know her story.
“Mother and daughter got on very well indeed, with a deep affection founded on almost complete misunderstanding” — Mary Stewart
Now, some twenty years later, I talk to my mother almost daily. Sometimes multiple times a day. She’s become my friend, cheerleader, and fellow Clubhouse-lover. She can still work my nerves as only a mother can, but my older self has better tools to help the hurt little girl that creeps up.
The first part of my adulthood may have been driven by a need to be nothing like my mother, but in this current phase, I appreciate so much about what she experienced and who she has chosen to become. That, perhaps, is the greatest gift my mother has given me, the knowledge that I have the power to choose who I become.
Author’s Note №1
Support my java habit by buying me a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine).
Author’s Note №2
It would mean the world to me if you would stop by to view my photography gallery.
Jenita Lawal is a writer, traveler, amateur photographer, entrepreneur, and mother. After 20+years of living the American Dream, she sold everything and packed her suitcases to pursue the life of her dreams. She lives abroad in Mexico with her three teenage sons and loves exploring whenever there’s an opportunity. She’s on Instagram @jenitalawal.
