The Daughterhood Read online

  If I try to address any of this with her, she flies into a rage or gets upset or sick, so that I look like the cruel one.

  I could list endlessly the way she has ruined my life. An article on this subject might help others who have had their lives dominated by a personality disorder that isn’t even their own.

  Trish Murphy replied:

  A mother-child relationship is one of such fundamental importance that to have a mother who does not put you before her own life is tragic. A mother’s love is the closest most people get to experiencing unconditional regard, and it is often the safety net that allows us to go out and tackle the world, knowing that we can return no matter how difficult our experience has been. Not having this fundamental stability in your life can be a lifelong affliction, but the starting point for healing is full awareness and acceptance of the reality of the relationship.

  When we are born, we have not developed any defence mechanisms, so we love whoever is our primary caregiver.

  That the caregiver might not be worthy of our love or is actually harming us may take years to recognise, and much of our youth can be spent trying to mould ourselves into something that will meet their approval. The result can be a wariness, cautiousness and lack of spontaneity that cripples our natural expression and development.

  On top of this we usually hide this bad relationship from other people as we are both embarrassed and fearful that it is our fault that we are unlovable. The result is isolation and loneliness, and the hope of another reasonable adult intervening recedes into oblivion.

  When our primary experience of love is so damaging, it is difficult to form later relationships that are based on trust and dependence. We may have developed an innate fear and self-protection that can create a distance from our partners, and find ourselves repeating patterns that we loathed in our parents.

  This is the real tragedy, but it does not have to be a foregone conclusion: once we are aware of it, we have the power to stop it becoming a generational pattern. However, it may take immense courage and support.

  You need to accept and see your mother for who she is: a very sad person who no longer has any power to hurt you unless you grant it. She has denied herself the best of what life has to offer: the enduring love of a child for her whole life.

  It is not up to you to fix this for her, and your energy should be reserved for your own needs. Your challenge will be to see yourself as worthy and lovable, and to take the risk of truly depending on another human being. You will have to let go of emotional barriers while trusting your intelligence to let you know who is worth taking a risk for.

  When acclaimed Irish writer Colm Tóibín was interviewed last year about his latest novel, he spoke of his challenging relationship with his mother. As an adult he had refrained from bringing up the difficulties and traumas of the past: ‘I think you have a duty to be immensely polite to your parents, especially when they’re getting older and you’re getting older and you won’t have them forever,’ he said. It’s a sentiment that could earn him honorary life membership of The Daughterhood. But Lily and other daughters of narcissism have moved way beyond politeness. As Trish Murphy says, their energy must be reserved for their own needs.

  CATHY: THE BECOMING-MY-MOTHER DAUGHTER

  I’m a cynical person. I don’t mind admitting that. I can’t walk through the self-help section of a book shop without smirking at the titles and feeling smug that I’ve managed to get through life without adding to the bank balance of any of those authors. I have never been to counselling. I’m a big believer in my inner resources. I sort things out myself. I don’t ask for help.

  It’s not that I don’t have struggles. The past few years have been challenging in that clichéd middle-aged kind of way. My marriage is sometimes a struggle; nothing too dramatic, just the usual irritants and frustrations of your typical long-term relationship. We are bored with each other, I think, but too polite to say so. I love Graham still and it’s all very civilised, but sometimes I find myself looking at him, trying to remember the person I fell in love with. I catch him looking at me the same way sometimes. Of course, it’s never mentioned. We have so much of everything else – a lovely home, good jobs, holidays twice a year – it would seem churlish to bring it up and, anyway, I believe these things go in cycles. I fully expect to fall madly in love with him again one day, perhaps when the children have left home.

  On top of the marriage issue, which is a cause of occasional low-level anxiety, I have a troublesome teenage son who communicates only in grunts and spends most of his time locked in his bedroom attached to various electronic devices. I have another son and daughter, both under the age of nine. My plate is pretty full at the moment but my cup does not runneth over. My glass? It’s half empty, you might have guessed.

  Lately it seems as though a lot of this angst comes up when I’m around my mother. I’m beginning to remind myself of her, and I’m not taking this well. After I read the bit at the end of Róisín’s column, I began thinking about how much I have taken on of my mother almost by osmosis. My children tease me about my sayings, my little verbal quirks, personal foibles I thought were my own but, when I look more closely, I see they are things my mother used to say to me growing up. When I thought more about it I realised that a lot of the values I was instilling in my children and the methods I have of dealing with challenges were not ideas I had thought up on my own.

  I’m not one of these hands-off mothers. My own mother wasn’t either. She was the original helicopter parent. She had an opinion on every decision I made, from the colour of my hair to the man I married. I can hear my mother’s voice now when I’m telling Jack what subjects he should pick in school. Sometimes I don’t tune in to what he actually needs. I think more about what I’d like him to do. It’s usually about what would be best for him in my opinion. My mother was wonderful in so many ways but she did that. And now I do it, too.

  I remember sitting in my house last year and musing, like your woman from Sex and the City except I was gazing out at a Cork skyline instead of over Manhattan: ‘I couldn’t help but wonder – am I morphing into my mother?’ And if I am becoming my mother, is there something wrong with that? Or is it a good thing? Reading Róisín’s mother–daughter call to action in the paper, I had this urge to explore that.

  I think what motivated me the most was wanting to explore how the future might look in terms of my relationship with my own daughter Jenny and my sons. Could I stop myself becoming the worst aspects of my mother? Could I take the good bits, the parts that would be beneficial for my children, and train myself to discard the rest?

  So sending the email was very unlike me. But the content was very like me: short and to the point.

  Dear Róisín

  I think I’m becoming my mother. This might be a good thing but I’m not sure. I’d like to figure it out.

  Cathy

  When I heard back about The Daughterhood, and Natasha explained what she and Róisín were doing, I recoiled at the idea at first. It sounded like a cultish kind of gathering. I wondered whether there’d be secret handshakes and women who swished out their cloaks before sitting down to utter incantations. Spiritum, sanctum, motherum. But since my oldest sister Lorraine had fallen ill, my mother had been on my mind so much that it felt opportune. I felt she needed me now and neediness is not a quality I’d ever associated with her. Her vulnerability in the face of Lorraine’s illness was a side I hadn’t seen before. Or perhaps I hadn’t been looking closely enough.

  I don’t believe in fate but I do think that in my middle age I’m getting braver. I am more confident in myself and less worried what people might think. Ten years ago I would have felt stupid sending off that email but now I felt I didn’t have anything to lose. And sure, what harm? What’s the worst that could happen? Sending that email had been a practical, pragmatic decision. Like going to the dentist when your tooth aches.

  I remember thinking when the meeting started in Natasha’s house and the stories beg
an spilling out of these women, that talking about your mother might be one of the most difficult things you could do in a group setting like this.

  In a way, all this Mothertalk felt more exposing than any exploration of marital relationships. It was deeply personal in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Talking about our mothers seemed to go to the heart of who we were as women. I held back at first, not out of shyness but because I was conscious of my brother and sister and the story they might have told if they were sitting around this table. My Motherstory is mine alone and I was aware that the other daughters around the table might read things into what I was saying that weren’t there. I was concerned that my mother be misrepresented, that people might go away from the evening thinking of her in a negative way. I heard myself stressing over and over to the women that my mother was a great person. They probably thought I was protesting too much.

  I thought about my own children, particularly my daughter. How would I feel if they were attending a meeting where I was the main topic of their conversation? Would I like it? Probably not. So that felt strange. And somehow disloyal.

  When Lily started talking about her mother, I sat there nursing a feeling that was bordering on smug. At least, I felt, there were things that could be done in terms of my relationship with my mother. Lily seemed to be at the point of no recovery. I admired the fact that she could talk about it; I was blown away by that actually. And it made me grateful that my relationship with my mother was so redeemable, if it even needed to be redeemed. Listening to Lily, and Sophie to an extent, gave me real insight into the fact that there were loads of things I could do, in terms of

  I grew up in County Clare, in a small village in the west of Ireland. In our house my mother made it her life’s mission to ensure there was No Place Like Home. There was always a pot of something delicious on the stove, a roaring fire in the grate, several board games on the go and at the heart of all this was my mother. The ultimate matriarch. On bad weather days, when the wind rattled the roof tiles, if any of us children suggested we might head off to a friend’s house, my mother would bat away the suggestion as ridiculous. Go? Leave here? But where could be better at this very moment with your family around you? So the idea was dropped, the crazy person who had momentarily abandoned their place at the fire or the Monopoly board sat down again. Peace and familial harmony was restored.

  You see, you didn’t need to visit anybody’s house because everything you needed was at home. My mother organised it that way. Friends came to visit us in droves and my mother’s tea brack was famous all over Co. Clare. My mother was the typical Irish Mammy and that wasn’t some kind of slur. She would have recognised that as the ideal version of motherhood and she was determined to live up to it.

  We were a close family growing up but sometimes too close. We always offered each other advice, whether about clothes, relationships or finances, but it sometimes bordered on pure interference. Busybodying, meddling, sticking your nose in someone else’s business, whatever you want to call it. My brother used to voluntarily throw out ridiculous advice on my boyfriend troubles and I can remember thinking how much better it would be if everyone else in the family sorted out their own stuff before poking around in mine. But of course I was guilty of it too.

  Verbalising that thought, telling someone off for being interfering, would have been almost sacrilegious in our family. Giving too much advice is almost a way of life for all of us. It still is. It’s there when I catch myself telling my teenage son to put on a nice shirt instead of a T-shirt if he’s heading out with friends. Sometimes when I hear myself talking to my children I see my mother standing in the doorway of my childhood bedroom about to show me the best way to store socks in my bottom drawer. In my memory, I turn away from her and raise my eyes to heaven, the way my son does when I’m blabbing on about the importance of looking smart in front of your friends. It’s true, you know. I am becoming my mother.

  As young children, my brother and sister ran everything past my mother. My dad was away a lot and she was the person you went to. But I was more of a Daddy’s girl. I always looked to him for advice. I was also more independent. Rebellious, my mother would have said. My siblings were much closer to my mother than I was. Our relationship didn’t have the same depth that they seemed to enjoy. Now I live further away from her than they do. I’d never thought about this before but perhaps it means something.

  And yet I always loved coming home. Especially when it all became too much. One summer, during college, I headed off to Barcelona in search of the famous Spanish fiesta. I was only there two weeks when my apartment was broken into and all my money was stolen. I remember making that phone call home and sobbing down the phone. And of course my mother knew exactly what to do. The next day she wired money over to me and I got the next flight home – my Spanish fiesta had come to an abrupt end. When I got home my bed had been made up with fresh sheets, there was hot water for a bath and of course there was tea brack in the oven. So when I think of my mother, I think of this nurturing spirit, this safe harbour. I have a lot of memories like that.

  But as I get older I worry that I’m not the best daughter I could be. My mother had a knee operation a few years ago but she refuses to use the stair lift that we installed in her house. I wouldn’t mind, but it cost us a bloody fortune! I do appreciate that she doesn’t want to see herself as old and I should be more understanding about this. But I’m not. It irritates me and I don’t always hide the irritation. I feel bad about it. I make dutiful phone calls but I don’t always listen to what my mother has to say. I interrupt. I make pronouncements about how she should live her life and how she should feel.

  When I went to Natasha’s house that first night, I found the atmosphere stilted and awkward. It wasn’t a natural situation. But then, after Sophie and Lily told their stories, I was overcome with gratitude for my own mother. I felt that I owed it to them and to daughters like them to do whatever needed to be done to improve my own mother–daughter relationship. After all, I knew there were loads of little things that I could do. I remember feeling sad about their stories but hopeful and grateful when it came to mine.

  Life is so unexpected – that’s hardly a profound or original thought, but sitting in that room with all those women it really struck me. We were honoured to be able to witness each other’s lives and the different stages we were at with our mothers.

  I was here because I had an inkling I was turning into my mother but I was also here because I sensed there were ways I could be a better daughter and that I could do better at accepting the things about my mother I cannot change. Talking it through at the meetings gave me clarity about what I needed to do. I realised that I don’t listen to my mother as much as I should. I am so busy telling her what she should do that I forget to really tune in to what it is she might need.

  I’ve caught the ‘meddling bug’ but it doesn’t mean there’s no cure. When I weigh in on my teenage son’s life – he’s eighteen, old enough to know his own mind about a lot of things – he doesn’t even listen. He’s become immune to my meddling. I don’t want to be known as Cathy the interfering Mammy, who can’t help but put her oar in. Most importantly I don’t want to be that person with my 79-year-old mother who has decades more experience in this living business than I have. I want to listen more and interrupt less. And I want to learn to be more patient and less intolerant. Listening to the other women had motivated me and made me appreciate the time I have left with the most important woman in my life. And it had made me wonder – in Carrie Bradshaw mode again: ‘Was becoming my mother the worst thing I could do?’

  Reflections on the Becoming-My-Mother Daughter

  I – Róisín – think of my mother as my hero. The wind beneath my wings. My moon, my stars. My north, my south. She’s basically my everything’, as my fourteen-year-old niece Hannah would say. Now Hannah says this about everything from salt and vinegar Pringles to The Fault in our Stars, so it’s not as potent as it might seem. But that’
s how I feel about my mother. And it’s corny and it’s clichéd but it’s the truth. That great Dubliner Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Most women turn into their mothers; that is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.’ Well, Oscar, my fear is not that I will turn into my mother; my fear is that I will not.

  I read somewhere recently that the experience of being a mother and a daughter at the same time is quite a privileged one. I’d never thought about it like that; the idea that to experience both of these states – daughterhood and motherhood – simultaneously is something to be cherished. It scares me a bit. As my daughters grow I find myself worrying that I won’t be for them everything my mother has been for me. That I won’t be their ‘everything’. It’s a silly worry. I know I am doing my best. But this worry is the curse of having a mother as brilliant as mine.

  Sometimes I cheer myself up by listing the ways I am like her. There are a lot but these are the top five – and some of them are more tenuous than the others:

  1. We are optimistic people. I’m much grumpier than she is, but if there’s a glass there in front of us, chances are it’s half full. Of white wine, hopefully.

  2. We get incapacitated when we laugh. I am talking weak. A couple of Christmases ago, my mother walked in the door wearing a jolly-hued flowery number. My siblings, their partners and children usually come over to my house on Christmas morning. This Christmas my mother looked more than unusually pleased with herself. She sort of danced across my kitchen tiles in this dress I’d never seen before. It was her Christmas dress, I deduced.

  ‘I love your dress,’ I said, when what I really meant was ‘What is the story with your dress?’

  ‘It’s really comfortable,’ she said. It had been a present from my brother Michael and his wife Rukhsana, so she thought she’d wear it for Christmas day. She wanted them to see her in it. After a while everyone headed back home to their own Christmas dinners. My mother was staying with us for hers. That dress distracted me all through the turkey. And even through her award-winning trifle and the turkey sandwiches with Branston Pickle, which I only eat once a year. And I was still distracted by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on about the dress when the Royle Family Christmas Special came on. Eventually I had to ask her what I had been wondering all day long. Was it at all possible that the dress she had been given might actually be a nightie?