“Congratulations on your baby girl! She’s beautiful.
As she grows up, remember this…
They’ll never be a relationship more important to her than the one she has with you. Every word you speak to her will become her truth. Her job isn’t to help you heal your past with your mom. It’s your job to show her what’s possible as your daughter.
Her fight for independence and autonomy doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be like you. It means she needs to find her own way.
If she’s loud, energetic, and charismatic, it doesn’t mean that she’s a dramatic attention seeker. It means she’s a leader with a strong voice in this world, and she needs you to help her refine and direct it. Not to quiet her.
If she’s quiet, cautious, and thoughtful, it doesn’t mean she’s insecure and won’t amount to anything she’s intelligent and graceful, and she will lead by example.
Your daughter will seek your approval, her entire life, be her parent first, and then her friend and praise her often.
There are few relationships so highly charged and fraught with pain and discord than a mother-daughter relationship.
Why is that?
Young girls look to their mother for nurturing affirmation, imitating her fashion choices, words, and actions. Your mother is your model of normal, and perfection.
Almost always, mothers fall short.
Mothers become human, they get tired and stressed and do imperfect, sometimes hurtful things. Daughters feel duped, yet still holding themselves to the same unattainable standard.
Mothers look to their daughters to mirror their best traits.
Status boosting begins within their family, friends, and community, affirming they’re in fact the enlightened supermom they always wanted to be. The one their mom fell short of.
Until the moment their daughter asserts herself.
Her unique personality and differences and praise turns to correction or condemnation. A mother’s heart is pierced by the reflection of her own imperfection as she begins to see more of their differences.
A subtle power struggle between independence and autonomy and a need for unconditional love and approval brews for years
This is a recipe for drama, shame, and dysfunction.
A karmic justice that perpetuates the pain over generations as broken people raise more broken people. Until the price becomes so great, we crumble under the weight. Our world is seeing some of this right now.
When we get relationships right at home, we change the world.
Everything we learn about relationships we learned at home. And whether that went well or horribly wrong, we repeat what we know. Not because of a lack of intelligence, because our brains want what feels familiar.
My purpose is setting people free through healthy, sustainable relationships.
My parents aren’t evil or horrible. They did what they knew as did their parents, and so on. I vividly remember what it was like to be one (I’m highly empathic with a near-photographic memory) with a dysfunctional family legacy squarely on my shoulders.
The legacy ends with me.
I choose to break the cycle. I choose to speak up about the uncomfortable and less appropriate topics so we begin to heal. I take responsibility for the past to create a better future. I’m not fighting against anyone. It’s about what I’m fighting for.
Are you in?
Click here to join Aly’s community with other caring parents, creating a new legacy for their children.
