Chapter 3
Why I Do This, Plus FAQs and an Invitation

I wrote this book because I spent many years suffering, struggling, and hating myself, all because I had a story about my mother, myself, and our relationship. I’ve been freeing myself from that story ever since. Of all the hard things I’ve ever done, this has been the hardest—and most rewarding, powerful, and liberating.

That is my number one credential. I have been there.

So what can you expect? This book is part lessons and concepts and part real-life experience. It’s also part journal prompts and exercises that will help you apply the lessons and concepts and make them real in your own life.

I suggest you keep a journal specifically for this work. Why? Because writing is powerful and it’s good for you. Writing about stressful events helps you acknowledge, cope with, and resolve them, which has a positive impact on your health.

Writing also helps you to:

• Clarify your thoughts and feelings. As you get deeper into the book you will understand the difference between the two.
• Know yourself better. What makes you happy and confident? What situations and people are challenging?
• Reduce stress. Writing about uncomfortable thoughts and emotions is the beginning of being able to release them.
• Solve problems from a more intuitive, creative place. Writing unlocks creativity and intuition, and unleashes unexpected solutions.
• Integrate what you’re learning. It’s one thing to consume information; it’s another to act on it.

It takes courage to do this work. Intense emotions may come up as you make your way through the book. You might find yourself feeling everything from guilt to anger to grief, but also joy, hilarity, and relief.

How you feel about your mother right now is okay. Although there may be societal, cultural, and family taboos in regard to the emotions we experience in relation to our mothers (especially if those emotions are “negative”) there are no taboos—or judgment—here.

The key is to engage with compassionate objectivity and examine yourself with fascination and curiosity, rather than harsh judgment, shame, and guilt.

To break in your journal, consider an intention for yourself as you work your way through this book. No matter where you are in your relationship with your mother, whether she is alive or not, whether you speak to her or not, consider three things when coming up with your intention:

• How you’d like to feel on a day-to-day basis.
• What you’d like your relationship with your mother to look like.
• Who you want to be and how you want to show up, not just in this relationship, but in the world.

And remember: this work is more about you than her.

FAQs

“What’s different in this book as compared to The Peaceful Daughter’s Guide to Separating from a Difficult Mother?”

In the two-plus years since the The Peaceful Daughter’s Guide was published, several things have happened:

I’ve received hundreds of questions from women all over the world, some of which I’ve answered on my blog and in my newsletter. I’ve coached hundreds of women around their mother stories. I’ve come to understand the concept of boundaries in a much deeper and more nuanced way and have led Impeccable Boundaries workshops, both live and online. I’ve communicated with mothers who want to have better relationships with their daughters. I’ve explored my own stories on a deeper level and have consciously transformed some that were hurting me.

In addition to the core concepts laid out in The Peaceful Daughter’s Guide, here’s what you’ll find in this book:

• More deeply personal stories and lessons
• More writing prompts and exercises
• A chapter dedicated to questions and answers, advice-column-style
• More resources for healing and thriving
• The incorporation of concepts from the Healthy Boundaries for Kind People methodology created by Randi Buckley

How do I know if I have mother issues (beside the obvious indicators like chronic conflict, lack of boundaries, or consistently feeling anxious or angry when I think about her and my relationship with her)?

Here are some common ways it shows up (in my own words, but with thanks to Bethany Webster): You compare and despair. You feel stuck, overwhelmed, and like an underachiever. Or you are overachieving, but without any joy or fulfillment, just going through the motions in an effort to prove your worth. You encounter issues such as:

• Shame, blame, guilt, and desperation
• Fear of failure
• Fear of success (believe it or not!): believing that if you succeed you won’t be loved, someone will disapprove, or that you’re somehow “showing off”
• Putting up with bad behavior in others
• Constantly seeking approval, validation, and permission from outside yourself (and especially from your mother)
• People-pleasing and being afraid to say “no”
• Taking on other people’s problems and thinking it’s on you to fix them
• Self-sabotage (especially when you get close to achieving something)
• Binge eating, binge drinking, binge shopping, binge anything
• Trying to control the uncontrollable
• Chronic worry and anxiety
• Believing that it is selfish or narcissistic to put yourself first, or even to love, accept, or care for yourself
• Believing it is your responsibility to take care of others, emotionally speaking
• Thinking that your desires and preferences don’t matter
• Not having a clear sense of who you are and what you want
• And if you do know what you want, feeling incapable of doing or having it
• Having weak or nonexistent boundaries
• Being afraid to speak your truth and take up space

If you identify with any or all of these, it’s not bad news. You may believe that this is just the way you are—that it’s set in stone and unchangeable. Or maybe you understand that you can change it, but it feels overwhelming and near impossible to do so. Besides, you might not have had a great role model for being the woman you want to be. I used to feel the same way, until I learned (and more importantly practiced) the concepts I lay out in this book.

Does my mother have to be alive in order for me to get something out this?

No! This book and the lessons, concepts, and exercises aren’t so much about the two of you as they are about you making some choices about how you want to show up in the world. This is about your future, and not just in relation to your mother (whether she’s alive or not).

I don’t want to have to talk to / see / interact with my mother. Are you going to suggest that I should?

Absolutely not. For some women, choosing to not have their mothers in their lives is the very best choice. What I want for you is to have made choices from a loving, proactive, powerful place, not from a reactive, defensive place.

My mother was abusive and violent when I was a child. Am I supposed to forgive and forget?

This book isn’t about putting up with or approving of any type of abuse, whether it happened long ago or is happening now. It’s about learning how to tell the story about what happened in such a way that it doesn’t hurt or minimize you, but rather empowers and liberates you. It’s about learning how to establish impeccable boundaries so you can put a stop to the abuse, if it is still happening.

I’ve taken everyone else’s advice for years to no end. You can’t possibly know my mother!

My job isn’t to tell you what to do. My intention is simply to guide you in having your own back…in learning how to trust yourself implicitly when it comes to your relationship with your mother—or anyone else.

How is what you do different than therapy?

Therapy and coaching can coexist beautifully together, but their approach and focus are different.

1. Most therapy is diagnostic and clinically treats people with psychological disorders or mental illness. Coaching can pick up where therapy ends and starts with the premise that the client is okay and full of potential. Coaches do not diagnose or treat mental illness.
2. The goal of therapy is to take people from a dysfunctional state to a healthy, functioning state. Coaching helps highly functioning people get to the next level so that they can have a more meaningful and satisfying life.
3. Most therapy is focused on the past, using childhood to explain current problems. Coaching focuses on the present, the future, and the belief that you do not need to continue focusing on the past in order to feel better and move forward.
4. Therapy asks “Why?” As in, “Why do you think, feel, and behave the way that you do?” Coaching asks “What’s next for you? How do you want to feel? What obstacles are standing in the way of you feeling that way?”
5. Therapy is usually a long-term process. Coaching is typically short-term.
6. Therapists are licensed professionals in a highly regulated industry. Coaches are not.
7. Therapy assumes the therapist is the expert. Coaching is an equal partnership.

Speaking from my own experience: therapy helped me identify the “pathology” of my past (“Your anxiety might stem from having a narcissistic mother.”), which was helpful, but I continued to believe that my capacity for joy and my potential remained impacted by my mother. That it would be a “sad reality” for the rest of my life.

My experience with coaching showed me that I could choose otherwise, but I had to be ready to hear this. Coaching helped me take responsibility for my future. When we have dreams/goals and are having a hard time fulfilling them, it’s often because we still have unconscious stories we’re telling ourselves about what is possible.

An Invitation

How can I work with you?

If you’ve been through the therapy and have read all the books—if you’re done looking back with dread and want to look forward, focus on what’s possible, and have fun while doing it—I invite you to join Mare: A Re-Mothering Community (https://www.kclanderson.com/mare-community/). It’s like an interactive advice column that will help you practice and integrate what you’ve learned (“make it real”) and help you take those next steps you say you want to take, cheer you on when you take them, and hold your hand when things don’t go the way you wanted them to.

 

Mare: A Re-Mothering Community is…

• a space where women who have read (or are reading, or who want to read) Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide For Separation, Liberation & Inspiration can gather to share their stories, practice the tools, and get support and coaching from me;
• a secret Facebook group;
• weekly writing prompts;
• access to my Impeccable Boundaries For Your Life & Relationships eCourse; and
• monthly recorded group coaching calls via Zoom; and a place where you don’t have to go it alone.

At the very least, I encourage you stay in touch. The best way to do that is to subscribe to my weekly love note https://www.kclanderson.com/subscribe/.