Thanks Meatloaf

to mothers of estranged adult daughters

(the picture will make sense the more you read)

Punishing yourself if/when your adult daughter distances/estranges herself from you will not make her more likely to come back.

Profusely apologizing tends not to go over well, either.

I know you’d do ANYTHING to get her back.

The first step is tend to and unshame whatever is going on inside you, apart from, separate from your daughter.

Hurt? Desperation? Anger? Fear? Guilt? Shame? Resentment? Jealousy?

All of the above?

In so doing, you become safer with yourself.

I get it...just like the rest of us, you weren’t taught how to acknowledge your feelings in a healthy way. While you promised yourself you’d DO things differently than your mother did, the feelings piece never got addressed.

Not your fault.

The next step is to ask yourself how you want to experience yourself. How do you want your adult daughter to experience you? And then become intentional in creating those experiences for yourself.

In so doing, you become safer with yourself.

The final step is to establish healthy boundaries for yourself. This is more about how you think and feel about yourself, rather than what you do.

Because when you’re clear about what’s yours and what’s not yours, you become safer with yourself.

I can’t guarantee that doing this will make your adult daughter come back into relationship with you. She’s an autonomous human just like you.

It won’t make you immune to emotions you don’t like experiencing. But you can learn to walk with yourself through them.

After 15 years worth of experience working with adult daughters (not to mention being one for many more years), I know what most adult daughters want in regards to the relationship they have with their mothers.

Many of us won’t get it because our mothers are unable or unwilling to change, for myriad reasons.

They may say things like “I love you as much as the day you were born when I counted your fingers and toes...we’re family and there’s nothing we can’t work through.”

And when we gather the courage to share with her, she snaps and says things like, “that never happened” or “I did the best I could” or “you’re still hurt over that?”

Or maybe she cries and collapses on the floor and acts like you stabbed her in the heart.

She’s defensive. Dismissive. Unwilling. Perhaps incapable.

Heh...Meatloaf’s song I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That) is now playing in my brain.

I have been that person as a stepmother (and in some other relationships). And it sucks, frankly. You can read the gory details in You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma and Shame.

Be willing to let down the defenses and see what’s possible.

Be willing to do that.

Also be clear about what you’re not willing to do…without shame.