“Mending a Mother-Daughter Relationship”
By: Nicole Cardona
My name is Nicole and I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a cousin, a therapist, and a Black woman… but my first role in life was as a daughter. To be a daughter to my mother has not always been easy. There admittedly have been fights, disconnect from all communication, etc. She and I don’t have any misconceptions of our relationship because we didn’t always have the luxury of being able to get along with each other. I remember being a child and seeing other mother/daughter relationships and wondering why I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my mother. Make no mistake, my mother is charismatic and fun…all my friends loved her when I was growing up. But like most families, there is often some kind of trauma (i.e. addiction, incarceration, abuse, etc.) that can create a rupture in the mother/daughter relationship.
For me and my mother, our rupture hit a peak when I was 13 and she had just given birth to my brother. My mother was in the middle of separating from my father, she had a teenager and a newborn, she was a victim of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse by her mother, and my mother was well into her addictions at this point. Looking back on that time, I don’t know why I expected more from her with all these hurdles she had in front of her, but what I remember most about those early teen years for me was an overwhelming feeling of resentment that I carried with me all the way to my late twenties/early thirties. For so long, I felt like my mother had stolen my childhood by saddling me with the responsibility of caretaking for her.
This resentment was a valid feeling. It holds true to me, so I don’t judge myself for having felt this way. But what I’ve learned over the years is that it never benefits either of us to be so invested in anger. I think the mending of our relationship began when I started studying to become a therapist about 11 years ago. In order to become a therapist, my school required me to go to my own therapy. At the time, I didn’t have too much of a relationship with my mom but not surprisingly going to my own therapy cracked open an array of emotions that I had been suppressing with my own addictions (food and codependency). The freedom that therapy offered me over the following years along with various other tools like wellness retreats, Al-Anon and CODA (12 step programs), bikram yoga, meditation, focus on gratitude, etc., all created a mind/body/soul realignment for me. There was no longer a way to allow me to hold anger and resentment so close if I ever expected to achieve a level of peace.
As I look at my relationship with my mother now, it’s had a complete turnaround. She was at my wedding. She spends time with my daughter. She apologizes when she says something offensive. She has grown on her end and I have grown on mine and the beauty of it all is knowing that the years of past turmoil don’t even matter to us anymore. What I do give a lot of credit to is the communication having improved because I’m no longer throwing the past in her face and she’s no longer avoiding taking accountability. It does initially feel strange when we stop looking at our parents as otherworldly creatures. I think the root of mending our relationship began when I finally realized that my mom is human too and that she’s incapable of being perfect. Once I released her from ideas of perfection, I was able to enjoy the perfectly imperfect mother I have. Can I say we’ll never fight again? No, I can’t say that. But what I can say is I don’t think either of us will ever go back to a place where we can’t love on each other. And that is a beautiful thing.
