Chapter 18
The Myth of the Unloved Daughter

One day not all that long ago, a friend tagged me in a thread on Facebook in which an article was shared about why unloved daughters struggle to escape shame. Several women commented that this had been (and in some cases still is) their experience.

“This is my personal story. I wish I had a mother that loved me. I’ve always been to blame. It’s a sad reality.”

Several others sort of tsk-tsked about how sad it must be. A pall fell over the conversation.

Given my work, it’s not surprising that I hear things like this:

“My mother doesn’t love me.”

“My daughter hates me.”

“My mother has told me she wishes she didn’t have kids and wonders what her life would have been like if she didn’t have me.”

“I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

“My mother told me she thinks her life would have been so much better if she hadn’t had children. It feels like she’s saying she wishes I was dead.”

I’ve heard these words from my very own mother in regard to her mother.

The pain and suffering are palpable. And understandable.

Something bothered me about that Facebook conversation, though…the idea that it’s a “sad reality” if a mother can’t or won’t love her daughter. As if it’s etched in stone and, as a result, the daughter’s capacity for joy will remain stunted for the rest of her life.

She becomes someone who is pitied. Someone whose potential is tainted.

Don’t get me wrong: I know the pain of thinking my mother doesn’t love me. I know what it’s like to grow up in an environment saturated in shame. I know what it feels like when I believe my mother is rejecting me. I know that PTSD from growing up with Adverse Childhood Experiences is real.

I also know the oddly satisfying feeling of being pitied and of not living into my potential.

And finally? I know—deep in my bones and in my cells—that I have an infinite capacity for joy and that my potential is equally as infinite. And while I will always make room in my life for sadness and grief, my life is far from a sad reality.

The myth of the unloved daughter isn’t that there’s no such thing as an unloved daughter (or a mother who doesn’t love her daughter). Or that she doesn’t struggle in ways that daughters who are loved do not.

The myth is that her life will forever be a sad reality.

In her book Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening by Martha Beck, the main character, Diana, was abandoned at birth by her mother, who put her in a garbage dumpster. She was eventually adopted by an abusive couple from whom she ran away. In a fantastical story, Diana meets Herself, a very smart wild boar.

Stay with me here.

“The mirror image of suffering is the truth. Try it. Change the story. Change the course of your entire history. Right now,” Herself says.

“You want me to lie about my past?” Diana asks, wiping tears from her face with the back of her hand.

“No, tell the story a truer way,” says Herself. “Any story can be told infinite ways, dear, but listen to me. Listen well. If a story liberates your soul, believe it. But if a story imprisons you, believe its mirror image. Use language to free and wild yourself, not keep you tame and in bondage.”

Diana used to believe: “They left me because I was a stupid piece of garbage.”

The mirror opposite? “I left them. Because I am a brilliant, beautiful treasure.”

Diana used to believe: “I wasn’t good enough to have parents.”

The mirror opposite? “I was too good to have parents.”

I did this exercise with a client who shared with me that her mother had told her, more than once: “I never wanted kids and I wish I never had them. My life would have been so much better.”

Her mirror opposite?

“All I needed from my parents was to bring me into this amazing world to experience my own life! I’m so emotionally and intuitively deep they couldn’t possibly begin to nurture me the way I needed. I had to leave them so I could grow into the woman I want to be.”

Inevitably, when I share stories like this, people say things like “Why do mothers say things like that?” and “If women feel that way, why do they have kids in the first place?”

And even “How could a daughter leave her mother?”

These questions are not helpful.

The questions to ask are: How can we challenge, dismantle, and heal internalized misogyny, so that motherhood is no longer a pressure-filled, perfection-demanding role? How can we help girls and women understand that motherhood is their choice and not shame them or pressure them, no matter what choices they make? How can we make motherhood more collaborative and supportive?

I chose not to have children and I can tell you right now that if I’d had the child I was carrying at age twenty-one, I’d have some regrets. I might wish I hadn’t had a child. And? I might even have said it out loud to that child. I have done enough shadow work to know that I am capable of being mean and horrible.

Having a mother who can’t or won’t love you doesn’t have to be a sad reality. You are not doomed. It’s not a given, even though we’re programmed by society to judge both mothers and daughters when they have a relationship that is considered “less-than.” And then, because we don’t know what else to say, we reply: “How sad.”

Nope. Not going to do it.

I am taking this stand with you because I am not willing to let you be a lesser version of yourself.