How I Accepted my Mother and Created a Special Relationship

Love does not wear a uniform

As Mother's Day looms, I’m flooded with memories of my mother. For the greater part of my life, it would have been hard to describe these memories.

Many people, but particularly women, have complex relationships with their mothers. Nancy Friday (1977) in My Mother, My Self voiced the complexity but elaborated on the importance of this bond. In her acknowledgment, she wrote:

“When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.”

My mother and I were never estranged, but I don’t think that we ever recognized each other as friends. We chased harmony, but it eluded us. I was always a Daddy’s girl, but I didn’t know that I had an unusual relationship with my mother until I was eight.

Our Sunday School had a Harvest program. Each participant, after reciting or singing, offered a rose to their most loved parent.

I recited my poem, took my rose, and walked off the stage. I passed my mother in the sixth pew. Hands reached out to grab me, to tell me that my mother was there as if I’d missed her. Ignoring the helpful calls, I walked purposefully down to the back of the Church where my father was sitting.

He got my rose and a hug. The confusion ended with reluctant applause from the audience. My dad was the only father to win a rose. All my life, I’ve remembered the look of puzzlement and hurt on my mother’s face as I passed her pew. The pause before the applause informed me I had made a mistake. All children in that world loved their mothers more.

Our relationship did not go downhill, but we did not go on walks together. She did her best to rear a young lady by teaching me domestic skills. I avoided the kitchen unless my father insisted. I did not mind cooking but didn’t want to share space with her.

She tried to train me in fabric selection as we visited fabric shops for dress material. I had a book on Greek mythology waiting at home and quickly agreed to whatever she suggested.

My indifference towards clothes confused her: “You are a funny girl,” she commented, dejected that she did not secure a bonding moment.

Growing older, the difference in our relationship and hers with my other siblings could not be denied. There was a reprieve for both of us when I left home for school in a different place.

When my young friends gossiped about their relationships with their mothers, I listened with envy and a sense of loss. I never joined in. Secretly, I realized my mother and I had different expectations of our bond.

Yet at her death at ninety, I had all I wanted from her. She seemed happy with me without the tensions that dogged decades of our lives. We were enough for the other; however, we were.

How did I stop asking for more of her?

An unplanned lecture, divinely ordained, I believe started the process in five steps.

1. A Lecture on Attachment Theory in Practice:

One day in the 1990s, I attended a class on the Practical Applications of Attachment theory.

Dr. McLeod summarized and updated two of Bowlby’s main tenets in 2017 in Simply Psychology.

Bowlby’s evolutionary theory of attachment suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others because this will help them to survive.

A child has an innate (i.e. inborn) need to attach to one main attachment figure. This is called monotropy. This concept of monotropy suggests that there is one relationship which is more important than all the rest.

The lecturer asked us to recall our earliest memory. My mother was missing. She concentrated on some causes and their implications of poor attachment of babies and failure of mothers to bond. Postnatal depression and trauma were two of the factors affecting mothers. These remain true today:

As she spoke of the helplessness of women who find it difficult to bond with their infants, she transformed my mother into a heroine.

Fortunately, for me, I was already aware of the trauma of difficult births, so this lecture provided the missing piece of the jig-saw.

My mother was ill for most of her pregnancy, then spent three days in labor at home without analgesia. In fact, her father grieved falsely, thinking that she was already dead during my home birth. On my first outing, I was viewed as a miracle and celebrated with gifts. My earliest memory of my mother is when I was five. Where was she?

Erica Loop wrote a very relatable article for parents listing fifteen causes of bonding difficulties.

2. Review of Past Actions

Despite her impatience and our lack of closeness, my mother never acted spitefully, or in bad faith. She gave me what she thought I needed. Unfortunately, even if there was not a failure to bond, my personality and temperament were alien to her.

During my work with families, I’ve heard horrendous stories of mothers’ inability to care for their children. Some, as adults, cried at the vindictiveness and exploitation they suffered. Dysfunctional attachment played a large part in these relationships.

When mothers reported they couldn’t help their meanness to their children because of poor bonding, I thought of my mother. She, too, suffered from a failure to bond which was unrecognized. Yet she did not use this failure as an excuse to be cruel or demeaning.

Doing the right thing, regardless of motivation, helped her avoid destructive behaviors. It reduced the psychological damage and made it easier for me to show empathy for her when I understood her suffering.

Two episodes defined her caring. When I was in my forties, she presented me with a door key after showing me the spare beds in the attic:

“Whatever happens, you’d always have a home here.” I thought of my home across the pond and the homeless people under bridges on two continents. I’d won a lottery because I could always go home.

Ten years later, I was recovering from a heavy cold. She heard me coughing around 1 a.m. I woke up to feel her covering me with a blanket with the words “Sleep tight, baby”.

3. Walking in my mom’s shoes

I re-read Nancy Friday’s book about the role a mother plays in developing the identity of her daughter. My caring grandmother who mothered me those early years influenced my mother, her daughter.

My mother watched a symbiotic bond between her eldest sister and mother. Two exquisite women sparkled in the family, leaving little room for her.

She was a teenage bride, although she preferred a career. After her traumatic delivery, she envisaged an ideal world — She and her daughter would replicate the bond her sister shared with their mother.

That did not happen. She must have felt betrayed when I did not care for the things that mattered to her. She was reared to value the opinion of others in most areas of life: clothes, housekeeping, manners, etc. Like my father’s mother, people’s opinions then mattered little.

She and my father sacrificed time, money, and opportunities to ensure that my sisters and I had the education to become fully independent. I had a glimpse of how she felt when we argued over an opinion by a newscaster. As we heatedly expressed our differences citing authoritative support for our viewpoints, she turned to my father,

“Carl, Isn’t it nice that the girls are educated!”

We were taking for granted a life she could only dream of. I saw her face glowing with pride and thought of what she gave up to ensure our success.

Despite our dissimilarity, we deeply cared about each other. She affected me with her loyalty, perseverance, integrity, and unselfishness.

5. Acceptance of us.

Her delight at our ability to hold our own might have been the moment I accepted my mom completely and let go of the fantasies of the perfect mother. She and I were flawed humans who recognized that we were doing the best we could.

Despite our dissimilarity, we deeply cared about each other. She affected me with her loyalty, perseverance, integrity, and unselfishness.

Of course, I regretted the decades of my life chafing against the bond that bound me to her, wishing my mom was someone else. We never became close enough to share secrets. But I’m so grateful that I embraced what she represented, her failures and strengths.

I wonder how many mothers feel inadequate because of the romanticized sentimentality of motherly love. We survived poor bonding and attachment difficulties and created a deep bond of affection and respect.

In fact, she was a real mom in that she cared for me the best she knew how. I miss her.

References

Dr. Paul McLeod (Updated 2017) Bowlby’s Attachment Theory pub. Simply Psychology.Psychology.

Nancy Friday (1977) My Mother, Myself by Delacorte Press, USA