For many years of my life I have been longing for my mother’s acceptance and approval of me. I just never seemed to be good enough. She loved me the best she could, but she never loved herself, and therefore it was difficult for her to love anybody else. This acceptance of me never happened, and our relationship was full of hurt, anger, disappointment, jealousy, control, abuse, mixed signals, etc. I grew up learning first hand about a bad body image, emotional eating and lots of self-hate, which for me resulted in years with eating disorders.
In my family challenging relationships between mother and daughters have been normal for generations. Fighting, arguing, controlling, stubborness, no communication, and so much more, was just the way it was. My mother experienced the same issues with her mother as I did, so much so that when my grandmother was dying, she refused to hold my mother’s hand. I remember sitting at my grandmother’s funeral in the middle of the church, together with my mother, far away from the rest of the family. My mother felt so alone, and I felt so sorry for her. All I wanted to do was to make her happy. The pain she had from her relationship with her mother reflected on the way she raised me. She loved me the way she had learned, but it was so difficult on me. I spent years in therapy, feeling I was not good enough because I wanted the acceptance of my mother so much. I was seeking it everywhere.
Becoming a mother myself has been the biggest gift I have ever received. I started understanding the whole situation from my mothers side as well, and suddenly I realized I had difficulties being that role model for my kids. Because I had seen how it had destroyed so many relationships in my family, I felt a big need to change this pattern. The stressful relationship between my mother and I has been one of the biggest challenges in my life, and I needed to deal with that in order to move on.
Coaching helped me shift from feeling like a victim and not being good enough to a total acceptance of myself. Suddenly it was not about my mother and her issues anymore. It has been such an incredible journey. What I could not get from my mother, I could now give myself through coaching, and I could decide what kind of mother I wanted to be and look at my mother from a different perspective.
With the power to choose the kind of mother that I want to be I am now able to show my kids, that self-esteem and self-perception comes from within. We now have a deep respect and healthy love for each other with open communication and healthy boundaries.