Acknowledging the Painful Feelings
“It feels so good to get it all out.”
We’ve looked closely at the hidden beliefs that have powered the destructive patterns in your relationship with your mother. Now it’s time to examine the feelings they produce, the intense undertow of emotion that pulls you into self-defeating behavior.
This work requires great courage—a willingness to enter parts of your inner world that in some cases hold lifelong pain, disappointments, fears, and anger. Bravely acknowledging this material and bringing it into the bright light of consciousness will drain its power over you, and the liberation that results can be life-changing.
In this chapter, I’ll open the doors to my office and let you watch as I guide other wounded daughters through this process. The emotions that are likely to come up can be intense, and for that reason if you decide to try the exercises in this chapter on your own, I encourage you to connect with a strong support system before you begin, trusted people who can calm, comfort, and encourage you. Even as you’re reading, if you feel overpowered by emotions that come up, stop and take a break. Breathe deeply. Drink water. Go for a walk. Take things at your own pace—there’s no rush.
As I’ve said, you may find counseling especially valuable in doing this work. A good therapist’s office is a safe setting that will free you to go as deeply into your emotions as you need to, to produce lasting changes.
The Moment of Truth
Of all the tools I’ve used in working with people, I’ve found letter writing to be the most direct and effective way to get to the core of a woman’s relationship with her unloving mother. In a series of letters, a daughter can tell her story fully and lay out her emotional truth without fear of criticism, contradiction, or interruption. The first letter I ask daughters to write their mothers is not to be mailed, and I ask women to write it after our first session and to read it to me the next time we meet. It’s important to share the contents of the letter with a trusted person, a process that both lightens the emotional load and demonstrates the power of speaking one’s truths aloud, even when they’re difficult.
Many of my clients have reflected seriously on their pasts, and believe that they’re somewhat in touch with what happened to them. But their letters always bring a new clarity. A letter like this is so personal that I ask women to write it by hand if they can, just to experience seeing their words in their own handwriting. Many of my clients use a computer, but I believe that holding a pen and putting the words on paper can take the writer more deeply inside, and move her truths from her hand, through her arm, to her heart.
I’ve designed the letter in a structured way to make it easier for daughters to get to the core of their negative experiences and what continues to haunt them today.
This letter has four parts:
1. This is what you did to me.
2. This is how I felt about it at the time.
3. This is how it affected my life.
4. This is what I want from you now.
I’ll explain each part in detail, and also show you excerpts from the letters my clients read to me in our sessions, to give you a better sense of the range of memories, beliefs, and emotions that emerge in this seemingly simple exercise.
Part One: This Is What You Did to Me
My client Emily, who had struggled all her life with feelings of rejection after being raised by a cold, distant mother, approached the exercise with trepidation. But she promised to try because she was eager to get to the root of why she always seemed to wind up with men like her boyfriend Josh, who kept pulling away. (You saw Emily’s earlier sessions with me in the chapter on mothers who neglect, betray, and batter.)
EMILY: “I don’t know what I’ll say. On the one hand I feel as though it’s all a very old story that I don’t need to get into again, and on the other hand I kind of like the idea of just laying it all out there once and for all.”
I urged her to simply dive in. “As you sit down to write, remember: This is your moment,” I told her. “It’s a time when you can tell exactly what happened and get all the experiences, feelings, and thoughts that have been floating in your head for so long out into the open where you can see and work with them. You’ll find that the demons of self-blame, guilt, and shame start to lose their power when you take them into the light.”
The healing process kicks into gear with the words “This is what you did to me.” That statement is not gentle or polite; it’s absolutely direct. In fact, I know that seeing it might feel like a punch in the stomach. I deliberately removed the distancing veil of “objectivity” from the words “This is what you did” by adding to me. This is personal, and acknowledging that in words, and on paper, goes a long way toward freeing women to see and accept their experiences.
“Your mother’s behavior hurt you,” I told Emily. “Spell it out, starting with that bold, honest indictment: This is what you did to me. Tell your story and don’t minimize it. I don’t care how graphic you get. Put it all down. Did her behavior hurt you? How? How did she devalue you? What was your childhood like under her roof? Were you afraid of her? What burdens, secrets, and shames did she load you up with? You’ll need to overcome your feelings of guilt and disloyalty for saying these things about your mother, but I know your desire to make your life better is stronger than your fear. Things that were extremely important and harmful may seem small to you because you’ve pushed them down so much, so write down the ‘small things,’ too. You’ll gain perspective on them when you see them on paper.”
Emily’s eyes widened, but she nodded and said she’d give it a go.
I know that women who had violent childhoods may have a simpler time identifying their mothers’ behavior as hurtful—and again, I want to caution you that if you were abused, you should definitely not confront these memories without a therapist’s support. Abuse and overt bullying can seem easier to single out and describe than quieter forms of unloving behavior. But the pain and effects of unloving mothering are intense, whether it involved control, criticism, the steamroller of a mother’s narcissism, emotional abandonment, or being forced to be a caretaker.
REAL EXAMPLES OF “THIS IS WHAT YOU DID TO ME”
Emily painted a vivid picture in her letter:
“Mom—You were so critical, there was no real bond of kindness. You would never let me hold your hand or tell me you loved me. You told me once that the only reason you had me was because abortions weren’t legal when you found out you were pregnant. Anything positive you did for me was done for show. You never asked me how I felt, if I was okay, what I was interested in. . . . I could never be what you wanted me to be. You used to ask me, ‘What would you do if I wasn’t here when you woke up.’ I know you wanted to hear, ‘I couldn’t stand it. I’d die without you.’ But I was just a scared little girl who needed her mother, and all I could think of to say was, ‘Who would feed me? Who would take me to school?’ And you took that as proof that I only thought of myself and wasn’t worthy of your love.
“When I was older, you never encouraged anything I showed interest in, and if I didn’t get the grade I wanted or the boyfriend I hoped for, you told me it was my fault and I was doing something wrong.”
Emily paused as she read.
EMILY: “Am I just being a big baby, Susan? It feels so good to say all this, but I know I should just get over it.”
I emphasized that it was vitally important not to minimize the pain she felt and still feels. “Don’t worry that you’re ‘wallowing in self-pity,’ ” I told her. “You’re not ‘just feeling sorry for yourself.’ It’s about time you gave yourself permission to feel sorry about the things you missed out on.”
It’s not uncommon for women to find that the act of writing gives them access to memories they had pushed away. For my client Samantha—the daughter of a sadistically controlling mother—the first section of the letter was a revelation. Samantha had struggled with explosive anger on her job as a pharmaceutical sales rep (you saw her earlier sessions with me in the chapter on control freak mothers), and as she wrote, she flashed for the first time on how her mother had not just been controlling—she’d been abusive as well.
FROM SAMANTHA’S LETTER: “Mom, the things you did to me when I was so much younger and more vulnerable were so painful that I actually forgot a lot of them. I just remembered how you slapped me across the face when we were on vacation, for no plausible reason. I think you didn’t approve of the way I was eating my spaghetti. And now I remember spitting blood after you punched me another time. I think I even lost a tooth, and the fact that it was a baby tooth just goes to show how young I must’ve been.”
I advise daughters to stop and seek support if memories like that surface as they’re writing. They’re not uncommon. The act of writing is valuable in part because it can provide access to material that was so painful, it couldn’t be kept in conscious memory but was shelved in the unconscious. In the course of this work, the door to that storeroom may swing open and reveal glimpses of what’s long been hidden.
Some of what’s buried there may be intense anger.
FROM SAMANTHA’S LETTER: “I still remember sitting in my room hating you for not letting me go to my basketball championship in junior high. Shit! There was no plausible reason for not letting me go.”
Part Two: This Is How I Felt About It at the Time
Strong feelings inevitably come up as daughters look at how their younger selves were treated. So the second portion of the letter is devoted to looking closely at how they felt as girls and young women when faced with a mother whose actions made it clear that she would not or could not act in a loving way.
Feelings are the language of the heart, not the mind, and they can generally be summed up in one or two words. I felt: sad, furious, lonely, terrified, ashamed, inadequate, silly, ridiculed, unloved, terrified, angry, burdened, exhausted, trapped, bullied, manipulated, ignored, worn down, devalued. I never felt: worthwhile, smart, safe, carefree, happy, important, loved, cherished, respected.
The distinction between thoughts and feelings may seem obvious, but I emphasize it because so many people are in the habit of putting distance between themselves and their feelings by intellectualizing. That happens when “I felt” becomes “I felt that . . .” The word that carries you right into your thoughts and beliefs, and away from your feelings.
FEELINGS: “I felt unloved.”
THOUGHTS: “I felt that you didn’t care for me.”
FEELINGS: “When you made me do all the cooking and take care of my siblings when I was only eight, I felt overwhelmed and bewildered and resentful.”
thoughts: “When you made me do all the cooking . . . I felt that you must think I was responsible enough to do it, but I felt that it was a lot to ask of a little girl.”
REAL EXAMPLES OF “THIS IS HOW I FELT ABOUT IT AT THE TIME”
For most daughters, vividly recalling what their mothers did to them pulls them into a stream of feelings, and this part of the letter is designed to help them stay with those feelings for a while rather than pushing them away. It’s not uncommon for daughters to find that they’re veering into describing thoughts, not feelings, as they write, and that’s okay. But the goal is to keep returning to feelings, as Emily and Samantha do below. As I reminded Emily, “If you see yourself getting stuck in ‘I felt that,’ go back to those statements and ask: How did that make me feel?”:
FROM EMILY’S LETTER: “I felt so alone. My heart was always hurting. I felt helpless, unlovable, unwanted, unheard, and angry. I felt like I was a burden and should never have been born, and that made me feel so sad and guilty and alone. You have always been a source of pain in my life. I have always felt your resentfulness of me and my very existence. It made me feel so unloved. I hated that.”
SAMANTHA WROTE: “When I was little, I just felt helpless, bewildered, confused, and really, really frightened. I felt so alone. The older I got, the more I felt angry and ashamed for what you did to me. I felt especially furious when people who didn’t know your violent, sadistic side told me what a nice person you were, how funny and charming you were. I hated you for that because at home it was gloomy, depressing, and frightening. I felt like such a loser. I also felt like I had to keep a low profile and pretend to be doing fine at all times. I felt so isolated. I couldn’t let anyone in.”
I tell my clients to avoid self-censorship and perfectionism. This letter isn’t an entry in an essay contest. What’s crucial is unearthing and expressing the emotional truth. Every remembered feeling is valid and important to look at, and the intensity of some emotions can be surprising. There’s no need to press on if they begin to feel overwhelming, I tell daughters. There’s no rush. But honesty, as much as it’s possible to muster, is vital. Recognizing, naming, and facing the emotional demons that have been in charge for so long take away their power. Sentence by sentence, the letter helps disarm them.
Part Three: This Is How It Affected My Life
This is probably the most important section of the letter. It focuses on the connections between what happened to a daughter as a little girl and the choices she’s made since then. Most of the daughters we’ve seen in this book have reenacted much of what they grew up with without realizing it, and those are the patterns that pop to the foreground here. When I think of the links between childhood hurts and the difficulties of adulthood, I picture a long, thick rope that ties a daughter to her past and keeps her from finding the full measure of love and confidence and trust and happiness that she is entitled to. But with effort and consciousness, she can weaken that connection. Each part of this letter cuts another strand of the rope.
This part of the letter deserves thought and time. The instructions I give my clients go like this:
Describe the negative, even poisonous, lessons you learned from your mother and how they’ve affected your personal life, your professional life, and your life with yourself. What did your experiences with your mother teach you about your place in the world? How did they affect your sense of personal value and dignity? What did you learn about whom you can trust? What did you learn about love? Think about the self-defeating choices you’ve made in life and how the lessons from your mother have shaped them. You’ll make vital connections between then and now.
REAL EXAMPLES OF “THIS IS HOW IT AFFECTED MY LIFE”
Many of my clients are concerned that their letters are too long, and that reading them aloud will take up most of their session. In reality, a ten-page single-spaced letter takes a little over five minutes to read. Emily, despite her initial misgivings, found that once she started writing, she didn’t want to stop. She and the little girl inside her, whose pain had been so invisible to her mother, demanded their say. Emily’s letter to her mother was nine pages long, and her “how it affected my life” section took up nearly half. Here’s a sample of what she wrote:
“I have always lived on the fringe, like a girl looking into a playground, but never feeling as though she can participate—she is lost, disconnected, and alone. Nobody will ever stand up for her—there is no one on her side.
“I was starved for physical contact and needed to be needed. I got involved in unhealthy relationships and hated myself for doing it. I confused sex for love in a relationship, and I attracted weak men, emotional boys, perennial adolescents who refused to grow up. They had low self-esteem and little ambition. I thought I could change them. . . .
“I’m constantly thinking: ‘What do others want? What do they think? What do I have to do or say to make sure they are happy?’ I put my needs and wants secondary to that of others. It left me drained of energy and fatigued. . . . I feel as though I do not know how to be an adult. I have no foundation, no role models, no idea of how to set boundaries. I am terrified that people will see me as the disturbed person I must be, having been brought up by a cold, disturbed person.”
Here, in this section of the letter, we demolish the argument that goes “your childhood troubles with your mother are all in the past” and the advice that urges you to “just get on with your life.” Daughters like Emily are often surprised to see how little trouble they have describing how their programming has affected them and how it fuels the compulsions they’ve felt to repeat many of the unhappy events of childhood in adult life. The characters and settings change, but it’s as though there’s just one dysfunctional tune stuck on repeat in their minds, driving a dysfunctional dance that never seems to change. Futile attempts to squeeze love from an unloving mother in childhood reappear in adulthood as they struggle desperately to prove that they’re worthy of closeness, respect, and affection.
The very personal way in which each daughter falls into such patterns becomes clear as they write.
Here’s a passage from Samantha’s letter: “You yelled at me so much that I’ve always been scared to say what I wanted or demand things from people. I didn’t think I had that right. I was such a sucker for the approval of others. I have become accustomed to taking things very seriously. I am constantly occupying my mind with problems and unable to live in the moment and enjoy what is going on in the here and now. My life has become just as dull and serious as yours. . . .
“I have a hard time being immune to your demands, and I always feel guilty when I go my own way or do things you don’t approve of. I am so angry with myself for not having told you to leave me alone years ago. It’s like there is an invisible string tying us together and keeping me from getting on with my own life.”
The advice I give to clients who get stuck on this part of the letter goes like this: Keep looking for the tendrils that stretch from your mother into your life, the ones that have kept you enmeshed no matter how much you’ve tried to get away. This is hard work, and dumping out the stories of your life in a heap in front of you can feel daunting. Remember there’s no need to relive the experiences you’re describing. What we’re doing now is looking back and remembering.
Part Four: This Is What I Want From You Now
The first three parts of this letter have spelled out the vivid details of a mother’s unloving behavior and the lasting harm it’s done. They document the outsize amount of influence she had and continues to have, and detail the power she has claimed in her daughter’s life.
That balance of power shifts with the words This is what I want from you now. With that statement, daughters step into the role of adults who can shape their own lives. Adult daughters are not helpless and dependent anymore, and putting into words what they want from the person who hurt them so much is the beginning of empowerment.
Many daughters have not decided yet exactly what they want their mothers to do, and how—or even if—they want the relationship with them to go forward. It doesn’t matter at this point. This is a first step, and there will be plenty of time to zero in on the options and come to more clarity about the decision. Nothing is set in stone, and a daughter has the right to change her mind.
The instructions I give my clients for this portion are simple: Just go from where you are now and experience what it feels like to state your preferences in an honest, direct way. I know that this may be scary, and I know that many daughters may never have given themselves permission to even consider changing the relationship with their mothers, because they didn’t think they had the right to do it. But the time has come to shift the balance.
I remind daughters that they have the right to decide what they want, regardless of what their mothers have taught them, and despite the admonition of relatives and friends to “Respect your mother.” I ask my clients to imagine that the sky’s the limit and anything is possible, then answer the question: What do you most want from your mother? There’s no need to have a plan or a strategy at the outset. The first step is zeroing in on a desire, knowing that it will change and evolve. What have you longed for? I ask them. What would finally make you feel free?
It may be an apology. It may be nothing. You may want your mother to stop interfering in your life, and you may want her completely out of it. The choice, I tell my clients, is yours.
EXAMPLES OF “THIS IS WHAT I WANT FROM YOU NOW”
Many daughters struggle initially with this part of the letter, but all of my clients have managed to sketch out a request, a desire, or a demand. Here are some examples of what they’ve written:
TO AN ENGULFING, OVERLY ENMESHED MOTHER: “What I want from you now is that I get to tell you what is okay to talk about and when we will see each other. In essence, I get to live my life as a normal adult. Or we will end our relationship, which will be sad and hard.”
TO A COMPETITIVE-NARCISSIST MOTHER: “For years I thought that I wanted your approval or for you to change and for us to have a healthy relationship. But amazingly, today, I want nothing from you. I just want to be left alone. I like who I am today and am working with a therapist to feel solid, whole, loving, and deserving again. I have no space in my life for you. I am also rebuilding my relationship with my siblings, and know that if I let you back, you will destroy it again. I wish it could have been different between you and me—I tried to make it so. But unless you become an active participant in healing what has happened between us, then I will have accepted that it is not going to be. I have given up the illusion of a close, loving family and parent and now give my love and attention first to myself and then to the world.”
TO A COLD, WITHDRAWN MOTHER: “What do I want from you now? Nothing. Nothing at all.”
TO AN ALCOHOLIC MOTHER: “What I want from you now more than anything is for you to LET ME LIVE MY LIFE. Leave me alone. Go get friends, hobbies, whatever you want. Stay in your room and be depressed every day. Drink yourself into a stupor. I don’t care. Just don’t call me or ever try to find me. For thirty-eight years I have tried everything I can think of to live my life and still remain in contact with you, and it doesn’t work. You can’t stop drinking or saying hurtful things. It is beyond you. So get out of my life and let me live it however I see fit. Get out of my heart, get out of my thoughts, and just live whatever life you want.”
TO A CONTROLLING, CRITICAL MOTHER: “Mom, I want you to acknowledge that you terrorized a small, defenseless child and you created a lot of damage to my soul that was really difficult to repair. I really wish you had the guts to apologize for what you did and to admit what a coward you were. I want you to see the strong, successful person I have become and understand that I have done it in spite of you, and not because of you. I want you to understand that I will do nothing more to gain your approval. I will do things my way whether you like it or not.”
I caution my clients to watch out for language that gives their power away by asking for permission or approval. Notice how the woman above, writing to her alcoholic mother, says: “I want you to let me live my life.” That sounds innocuous, and we say things like that every day, but I pointed out to her that the phrase “let me” makes her mother the warden of her life, and hands her the keys.
A far better way to express this is to say: “I’m going to live my life my way. . . . Without asking for your permission.” That little shift makes a huge difference.
The Power of Giving Voice to the Letter
Writing the letter brings a lifetime of memories and feelings to the surface and lets daughters examine them. That in itself is healing. But writing is only 50 percent of the work. Reading the words aloud is the other 50 percent. It releases them into the air where a daughter can literally hear them—hear herself and her truths.
It is equally important that she is sharing the truth of her life and the strength of her desire to change with someone else. It’s essential that those words be received by a person who can listen without judgment, without discounting, and without disbelief. A therapist is the obvious choice, but a loving partner can also serve this valuable function. It’s vital that the listener and witness be chosen for his or her compassion. In the reading, and the listening, come enormous strides toward regaining what was stolen from a daughter as a child.