Mothers And Daughters – A Connection That Can Heal But Also Hurt
Our cells divided and developed with the rhythm of the heartbeat. Our skin, hair, heart, lungs, and bones were nourished by blood – blood that was full of neurochemicals created in response to our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. When we feel fear, anxiety and nervousness, or when pregnancy is troubling us, our body feels it. When we feel safe, happy and satisfied, our body reacts to it too.
Christiane Northrup
Behind every daughter there is a mother – an infinite bond that we can never part with. Because if we should be aware of one thing, it is that part of this magical bond with our mother will never enter.
To be healthy and happy , each of us needs to realize how our mother influenced our story and how she will continue to do it. It is she who offers us love and protection even before we are born. And only through them do we understand what it means to be a woman and how we can take care of our body or how we neglect it.
The legacy that our mothers bequeath to us
The greatest inheritance a mother can bequeath her children is to heal herself as a woman.
Christiane Northrup
Every woman – regardless of whether she is a mother or not – is shaped by the experiences she had in the relationship with her mother in the past. When this relationship has conveyed positives in relation to the female body and the way in which one works on it and treats it well, then those positive experiences become part of the guide that shows us how we can be physical and gain emotional health.
However, the influence a mother has on her daughter can also be problematic when it results in a toxic relationship through careless, jealous, extortionate, or controlling behavior .
If we can understand the effects our mothers’ upbringing had on us daughters, we are ready to understand ourselves, to heal, and to adapt our bodies to this understanding or to discover, what we can possibly achieve in life.
Maternal attention – an essential source of nourishment for all of life
At a sporting event or any other type of event, when the camera pans at someone in the audience, what is they usually yelling? Exactly: Hello mom!
Almost all of us feel the need to be seen or, better said, noticed by our mother. This dependence is determined by biological factors, because we simply need them in order to be able to survive for many years. But the need for attention and confirmation already exists from the first minute of our life, because we always need the certainty about whether we have done something well or whether we are worth being loved.
Just as Northrup states, the bond between mothers and their daughters is strategically predetermined to be one of the most positive, understanding, and intimate relationships we will ever have in our lives. Unfortunately, this relationship doesn’t always look like this …
Over the years, this cry for attention and validation can become pathological and provoke emotional obligations, causing us to depend on our mother’s belief for our wellbeing, for most or even all of our lives.
The fact that our mothers recognize and accept us, their daughters, is a thirst that needs to be quenched, even if it means suffering. But that harbors a loss of our independence and our freedom, which changes us as human beings.
How can we begin to grow as women and as daughters?
We can never break this connection, whether it is healthy or not. It will always have an impact on our future.
If we decide to grow and want to develop further, this also means that we have to heal our emotional wounds or unpleasant events from the first half of our lives. This transformation is by no means an easy task, as we must first find out which part or parts of the mother-daughter relationship should be healed.
Our present and future sense of appreciation depends on it. And that’s because there is a low voice deep down inside of us telling us that in order to be worthy of love, we must overly care for our family or partner.
Motherhood, and even a woman’s love, are still synonyms for sacrifice among the majority of the population. This means that our needs always take precedence over those of others. This behavior then has the consequence that we adapt our own understanding of what it means to be a woman to that of the general public, our society.
The world’s expectations of us can be very cruel. I would even go so far as to say that we are being forced to give up our individuality.
These are the reasons it is so important to sever this chain of pain and the wholesome healing of our connections – or at least the memories we have of it. We have to be aware that it takes time for these to be forgotten. Therefore it is up to us to replace these more or less painful disagreements with which we have lived with peace.
From: Mother-Daughter Wisdom by Christiane Northrup
