Mean Mothers - Peg Streep

[Skip]

Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt Author: Peg Streep Publisher: William Morrow; First Ed 1st Printing edition (October 13, 2009) Paperback: 256 pages ISBN-10: 0061651362 ISBN-13: 978-0061651366

abcnews.go.com/mothers-peg-streep

The unconditional love of a mother isn't a luxury that all children enjoy. In Peg Streep's new book, she explores the darker side of the mother and child relationship with stories of strained relationships fraught with tension, anger, and ambivalence.

Peg Streep is both the daughter of a mean mother and the devoted mother of an adult daughter. She is the author or coauthor of nine books, including Girl in the Mirror: Mothers and Daughters in the Years of Adolescence and the bestselling Necessary Journeys: Letting Ourselves Learn from Life, both with Dr. Nancy L. Snyderman. Streep holds degrees in English from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. A native New Yorker, she is married and lives in Burlington, Vermont.

[Skip]

Excerpt:

Chapter One: The Myth of Mother Love

I was no older than three or four when I knew my mother didn't love me. Of course, the way in which I knew this was different from how I would know and understand it at other times in my life, but I knew it nonetheless. I knew it first by the way she stiffened when I tried to sit in her lap or touch her arm, and how she turned her face away when I kissed her. She wasn't like the people who loved me – my father, my grandfather, my great-aunt, or even my teachers – whose faces softened with pleasure when I drew near.

Later, I knew that who I was – a round-faced curly-haired girl full of energy and curiosity – was enough to irritate or infuriate her. "Stop skipping!" she'd say when we walked together, dropping my hand in punishment, as though my joy was an affront to her. I would slow down, chastened by her sharp voice, instantly lonely but reassured by the clatter of her high heels on the pavement that she was still there. She was the bullet I couldn't dodge, and the gunfire could come from anywhere and nowhere. It might be a stranger telling her she had a pretty child, inadvertently setting off a tirade as sudden and violent as a summer storm. She would begin with a defense of her own beauty that would build into a hurricane of complaints, gathering energy as it went, each new thought more saturated with anger than the one before, all directed at me. The seeds of her rage and disappointment could blossom in a bewildering instant.

I knew, more than anything, that her power was enormous and that the light of her sun was what I needed. But that light could burn, flicker, or disappear for any or no reason. Yet, as a small child, I loved and needed her, and wanted desperately to please her, as much as I feared her.

When I was a little girl, I learned to tiptoe through her shadows and found sunshine in the real world and that of my imagination. Before he died, my father was a safe haven, since she largely hid both her anger and meanness toward me when he was home. I hoarded the attention I got from my teachers, my babysitter, the woman who cleaned our apartment, the mothers of my friends, and tucked it away, deep inside.

I drew the stories in books up around my shoulders for comfort, my thumb in my mouth. I called myself Eloise and was happiest living vicariously in the blissfully motherless Plaza Hotel, with a loving nanny, a turtle, and a dog named Weenie. I pretended that I was Jo March with a mother named Marmie, and the boy who owned Ole Yeller and the girl who rode Flicka. I saw myself living in that little house on the prairie, all safe and warm, with the pumpkins big enough to sit on in the dry cellar. I mothered my dolls the way I longed to be mothered; I told them stories, cuddled them, and made sure they were safe.

I mothered myself by imagining that I'd been handed to the wrong mother at the hospital somehow and that the mother to whom I really belonged would come and find me—knowing, all along, that the mother I had was the one I'd been born to. I could see my mother's reflection in my face, just as easily as I could see, standing on a chair in the bathroom, the red outlines her hands left on my back when her anger left her speechless.

As I got older, my mother's menace diminished, though not her meanness or the mystery of her rage. With the birth of my brother when I was nine, I saw that my mother could love a child who wasn't me.

Try as I might, I couldn't puzzle it out; what was it about me that made her so angry? Why didn't she love me? When I asked her just that, as I would time and again over the course of many years, her answer was always the same and maddeningly indirect: "Every mother loves her child, Peggy." I knew it to be a lie, but I didn't yet see then that she lied to protect herself, not me.

There was no reconciling the mother I knew – the one who literally shook with fury and missed no opportunity to wound or criticize me – with the charming and beautiful woman who went out into the world in the highest of heels, shining jewelry on her hands and neck, not a hair out of place. She flirted with everyone – even my girlfriends and later my boyfriends – and they pronounced her delightful. Her secret—and mine –was closely held; who would believe me if I told? And so I didn't. But she was all I had left when I was fifteen and the two men who had loved me– my father and my grandfather – died within three months of each other.

By then, the struggle between us took a different shape. She could still hurt me – I never forgot the moment she told the first boy I loved that despite my pretty outside, I was rotten inside – but she couldn't scare me. I watched how she acted with her own mother, a dance set to a melody of jealousy and competition. Slowly – very slowly – I had my first inkling that how she treated me might have nothing at all to do with who I was.

I was younger, smarter, better educated than she, and I began to realize she was afraid of me and the truths I told. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I had a countdown of the days before college – it was more than 1000 – and that made my life trapped under her roof seem almost temporary and gave me the illusion of imminent freedom.

But I still wanted her love as much as I wanted to be able to answer the question I couldn't answer as a child: why didn't she love me?

I know the answer now and that knowledge absolutely co-exists with a terrible longing for the mother love I never had and never will have. Growing up, I thought I was alone— the only girl born on the planet whose mother didn't love her. Mothers in books were nothing like mine and the moms on television – it was the late 1950s and early 1960s – were women who wore aprons and served dinner with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts. I envied my friends for the mothers they had. I wanted to be Lynne whose mother was both thoughtful and attentive, and who bought her first kitten heels as a surprise when we were in sixth grade or Beth whose mother told funny stories and let us make messy cupcakes in her kitchen. Even Roz's mother, who was born in Europe like mine and more formal than the born-in-America moms, was kind and loving. It happened over forty years ago but I still remember how she stroked Roz's hair, absent-mindedly and contentedly, as they stood side-by-side in their hallway, saying goodbye to me after a study date.

I watched strangers, daughters and mothers in the supermarket aisles or taking a walk together—and was all the more bewildered. What made my mother and me so different?

Why didn't my mother love me the way she was supposed to? Whose fault was it? Hers or mine?

My mother's physical control waned as I grew taller but she had power nonetheless. I still couldn't understand what it was about me that made me, in her eyes at least, so eminently unlovable. I wavered between thinking I had done nothing to deserve her treatment and not being quite so sure – a testament, I now know but didn't then, to nothing more than the centrality of the mother sun to a daughter's world. The parent of a child, as Deborah Tannen has written, has the power not only to create the world the child lives in but the ability to dictate how that world is to be interpreted. Seen from that point of view, one of the lasting and important legacies of a mean mother is a wellspring of self-doubt. The other, explained by adaptive behavior, is a need to replicate the relationship she has to her mother with other people, regardless of how unhappy it makes her.

When I was sixteen, I read Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what he had to say about a mother's love: " Mother's love is bliss, is peace, it need not be acquired, it need not be deserved." I read on, astonished that the simple act of giving birth should be enough to spark a love truer than any other.

Unconditional love: I finally had a word for what I was missing.

It took me many years to understand that for the unloving mother and unloved daughter alike, our idea of unconditional love is a two-edged sword.

Stories of mean mothers make women uncomfortable

I understand this with greater clarity when I tell people what I'm working on. " Was your mother mean?" my hair colorist asks me. She's twenty-eight, a child of divorce, and fiercely loyal to the mother who raised her alone, whom she counts among her best friends. I often talk about my own daughter who's off at college but this is the first time I've ever mentioned my project or my mother. After I've answered, her response is downright hostile: "Why would you want to dig all that up now? She must have done something right because you turned out okay, didn't you? " From the other end of the spectrum, a friend – a psychologist who specializes in mother-daughter relationships and the divorced mother of a twenty-three year old daughter– sends me an email that's more like a cheer than anything else: "Good for you – this is courageous. You're telling the story no one else wants to tell. It's about time."

Women's reactions betray the power of cultural taboos. I give a small dinner party in my new home in Vermont and one of my guests, a fellow Baby-Boomer who raised three children and is now a doting grandmother, looks frankly skeptical when I tell her about the book and responds, slowly and deliberately: " I don't think it's fair to talk about those things. My mother did what she could." My other guest is a woman in her early seventies who raised four now-grown children and is long divorced. She seems delighted to be able to talk about her mother who, she says categorically, " was the most unloving and critical person I ever met. She never missed an opportunity to make me feel bad about myself, no matter how kind or loving I tried to be." When I ask her whether she ever confronted her mother, she looks at me, nonplussed: " Of course not. She was my mother, after all."

Mother love is a sacred concept in our culture and, like all things sacred, it has a mythology of its own.

There isn't any room in our ideal of "mother"— that essential multi-tasker and nurturer, the one made up in equal parts of a pastel-tinted Madonna cradling her baby, the smell of freshly baked cookies in the oven, self-sacrifice, and Hallmark verse—for the mother who doesn't love her child. As Western fairy tales make clear, cruel or uncaring mothers are never biological mothers but interlopers or stepmothers instead. "Real" mothers neither hate nor envy; it's Rapunzel's jealous stepmother who locks her in the tower, just as Cinderella's rapacious one would consign her to a life of servitude.

Today, we prefer to think of mothering as instinctual and automatic – even though mothering, for our species at least, is very much learned behavior and definitions of what constitutes good mothering are no more than cultural constructs. Our insistence on maternal instinct flies both in the face of human history as well as the history of child-rearing practices. It doesn't take into account the extraordinarily widespread practice of abandoning children from the time of the Greeks right up through the Renaissance, the hundreds of thousands of foundlings left in hospitals established for that very purpose throughout the "civilized" world, or the practice of wet-nursing which resulted in the deaths of literally millions of infants, for example.

We talk about mother love as though it were a universal and absolute truth and, perhaps, this has nothing to do with motherhood at all. If Erich Fromm's idealized, if wishful, thinking about unconditional, instinctual love is a shorthand summary of what we hold to be the "truth" about motherhood, it probably also testifies to our deep psychological need for a love without strings or complications.

We want desperately to believe that every mother falls in love with her baby at first sight and that the complexity of relationship, so evident elsewhere as part of the human condition, is totally absent from the connection between mother and child. This ideal is so ingrained in our culture that, until relatively recently, even science held that pregnancy and childbearing were a protection against maternal unhappiness or depression – rather than potential causes of them. In 2005, Brooke Shields' frank depiction of her struggle with postpartum depression – after years of trying to conceive a child – was newsworthy for that very reason: how could a famously beautiful mother with an equally beautiful daughter possibly be made so miserable by motherhood?

Our culture understands motherhood to be one of the most fulfilling roles of a woman's life, if not the apex of fulfillment. Of all the roles we play, parenting is considered to be the one which promises the greatest personal and social rewards. There's little scientific evidence, however, to support this cultural trope; in fact, the preponderance of the evidence absolutely negates it. A major study reported in 2005 by Ranae J. Evenson and Robin W. Simon confirmed what other studies had found before: unlike other adult roles such as marriage and employment, parenthood did not appear to confe

[george]

I couldn't breathe reading this.
www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/read-excerpt-mothers-peg-streep/story?id=8825765

And the comments below it are either full of astonishment that someone out there knows what this is like and wrote about it, or HOW DARE YOU because teens are going to use this as an excuse, "you should always leave the door open in case something happens to her" another writes.

I could only read the first page of the excerpt.

[blonders]

Wow, Skip. I just read the whole excerpt with my mouth hanging open. Then I went straight to Amazon and ordered the book.

I'm actually almost surprised it was published. Just reading some of the comments makes it clear that even in the face of obvious, documented child abuse, "But she's your mother!" trumps all.

Great find, thanks for posting it.

[StarDust]

Thank you so much for sharing this.  What a powerful piece!  As I read the whole article, my eyes welled up with tears, I kept nodding and saying things like "Yes!"  "That's right!"  "Oh my God!"

It's given me so much to think about and will take me a while to digest.  I have always been afraid I was making more of my mother's meanness than I should.  But I would never knowingly be mean to anyone on purpose as she was.  I still don't get it.  Guess I never will.  I've always felt bad saying (even implying) that she was abusive but I guess the fact that she passed away last winter and I don't miss her at all is a pretty good indicator that she was.  

While I am saddened that there are others out there who have suffered the same and worse, I have to admit I find comfort in knowing I'm not alone in feeling the way I do.

SD

[mint-cc]

I didn't read all the comments but the ones that stuck out to me ("Go get therapy" "Mean daughters, hurt mothers" made me have the same sentiments as blonders.

[velvetfish]

I had often thought of writing an autobiography, but now, it has already been written.

There is a cult of motherhood that will never allow a mean word spoken about the Madonna.

Those are people who were not raised by a sadist.

Vf

[PT]

I could only read the first page too... .  I think we all can write a book and in a way we are all doing our own memoirs as we post on BPD family.  I didn't really read the comments either, but I did write a comment because I felt I had to direct anyone who believed they had a "mean" mother to BPD and bpdfamily.   I feel this bpdfamily board is the proof which backs up books like that.  We are the data confirming that "mean" mothers that hate their children exist.   So maybe if all those naysayers had a look at story, after story on this board they might think twice before naysaying.  Or, they just might think we are all spoiled and ungrateful adult children... .

By the way, does anyone know if this Peggy Streep knows about BPD and did she write about it in her book?

It is always interesting and validating to see our beliefs and truths as we know them put into actual published print... .thanks for the link George.

PT.

[fleur d argent]

Thanks for posting the link, george.  While my father was the primary "mean" one and my mother the secondary/enabler, this still hits home.  I will definitely read the book.

[colonel]

wow parts of that really hit home, thanks for posting the link.

[george]

The naysayers either never lived with someone like her or might have and are so sucked into the black abyss of abuse they defend women like her. I did, for years. I chalked my pain and phsycial symptoms up to her just being "high strung," or "emotional" or "caring too much."

Wow, when the blinders came off, I think the first layer of my life went with 'em!

My abusive sibling was the first to seek outside help with a counselor/therapist. After that got shot full of holes (our abusive BPD'd mother won't stand for any outsiders to "know" about our family or our history), I think the sibling went scrambling back to where it was "safe" and took up the cause again. My sibling would be one to write on comments like that about how troubled our mother's childhood was, etc etc etc.

In this day and age, there is NO reason to abuse your children. Infant or adult.

I thought the title was so appropriate. There are "mean" people out there, and then there are MEAN people like our BPD'd parents.

It also brought to mind how kids, little ones, will say, "You are SO MEAN." It's one of the most heartfelt, cut-to-the-chase comments a kid can make. Or at least think inside their little heads.  :'(

[chickadee]

Hooray for this book!  Thanks for calling it to our attention George.  People in general need to be educated about maternal abuse and the lifelong pain it causes for us victims.  I hope more and more books like this will be written.  Perhaps if society is better educated about this, it won't be so easy for mothers with BPD to keep child abuse hidden so well.  Even if that fails, at least perhaps it will help people who haven't suffered this kind of abuse to better understand those of us who have.

 

[Saroyan]

I have to admit I couldn't relate to this article at all. Probably because I'm younger than most of you and the daughter of two northern European parents (and spent much of my early childhood before immigrating to the U.S. in one of those Scandinavian countries that pride themselves on gender equality), I never had any conception of the ideal mother as a docile 1950's-style housewife. All the mothers I knew of had careers, and their capacity to nurture was not their defining characteristic; both my grandmothers worked into their sixties, even though they probably could have retired earlier. I grew up surrounded by strong, independent women, but nobody besides my mother was for that sake mean.

The other part that doesn't resonate is the assumption that mean mothers are necessarily unloving. There's no doubt in my mind that my mother loved me and still does, even though her every action seemed designed to crush my spirit. She's incapable of expressing love in a way that's healthy, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel it.

And no, that doesn't mean I excuse her behavior, because actions count immeasurably more than words, always. Consequently, I've no problem understanding why the author of the article couldn't bring herself to visit her mother on her deathbed, and I can't say with any certainty that I wouldn't make the same call. But in the same way that I've never been able to say I love my mother, I've also never, ever wished for her to love me more-- if anything I wanted her to love me less, just so she'd go away and leave me alone.

I think it's an important issue and I'm glad it's getting media attention, but in this case I just couldn't identify.

[velvetfish]

I dont know how you feel about this, but I suggested this book for the Oprah show.

I think the discussion with the author would be informative and interesting.

[tryintogetby]

wow.  Just, wow. 

[sandpiper]

Wow.  Thanks George.  I've ordered it from my local book store.

I'm changing Ts and one reason is because I don't think my old T really gets it as to what my mother was like.  I spent two years talking out all the other stuff with her but when I came to telling her about my mother she tried to get me to understand my mother's perspective.

A warning bell went off in my brain and I thought ':)oesn't get it, will stick with what she's good at, i.e. Dad's domestic violence'.

New T has a female relative with NPD and isn't shocked by anything I've said to her.


Velvetfish -

Do you really think Oprah would get it?

I have a lot of time for Oprah but I'm not sure she has the capacity to understand that there are people out there like our BPD or parents who don't have empathy and only care about themselves. 

It'll be interesting to see if she's willing to take it up.

I've seen a couple of articles in the O magazine about BPD and they haven't ever been brave enough to cover it from the viewpoint of the child of the BPD.  Hard to read, really.  Tip of the iceberg stuff.

[sandpiper]

sorry, typo, should read 'BPD or NPD parents'

Nice find, George.

I looked at this book and wondered if it was one of the old hands that helped me find my way when I first came here five or so years ago.

[inshock]

 What a bone chilling exerpt. I cannot conceive of being raised with those feelings of unlove. It must be horrible. I suffered from a mother who was more infantile, childish, and very disconnected from me, but not abusive in these terms. BUT I am worried my neice is having the experience like what is written in this book and what many of you have experienced. My sister once said that tonight she "is going to win" in reference to her 2 month old baby sleeping through the night. I have been disturbed by how my sister never hugs her daughter. She speaks to her in a cold voice. I have not witnessed hitting but I thought her "time out" were pretty harsh... .in a pitch black hallway for something not worthy. My neice would cling and snuggle to me. Anytime I would pick her up, she would colapse onto my shoulder with her head down wanting to be held. My sister rants and screams at our mother in front of her daughter, and once jerked her daughter by her arm so hard she started to cry as she was storming out.

The potential is there... .simmering right under the surface. And there is nothing I can do. I have thought that monitoring my neice would be the only reason to break my NC.  But she lives several states away. I dont know.

[JustWantMyJoyBack]

George  xoxo,

All I can say is "wow!".  I read the book excerpt from a different perspective.  I have a uBPD 21 yr old daughter.  Throughout her teenage years she would tell me what a horrible/controlling mother I was.  She didn't really say this often; however, mostly during her rages (when she didn't get her way).  So for years I've struggled internally with the possibility I was a bad/controlling mother.

I thought... .how so?  I've been gentle, loving, always the chaperon for 6 years, baked cookies with her & her friends, took naps with her, was very affectionate... .etc.  Once I read the first page of this excerpt, I just cried.  Cried for all of you who had a BDP mom and cried with relief that indeed I fit into none of those behaviors.

So... . to each of you that had to endure a relationship with your mother filled with distance, cruelty, manipulation and fear.  Big hugs  xoxox.  I'd be happy to be your surrogate mom.  I cannot imagine what you've gone through... .especially the secrecy.

My mom is 76 yrs old now... .the sweetest mom ever.  My relationship with my daughter has gotten better everyday since she was 18 yrs old. 

Thanks to each of you for your honesty & vulnerability.  Hugs to all  xoxox  xoxox  xoxox  xoxox

JustWantMyJoyBack 

[tabbycat]

thanks for posting this, George.  "Mean" is a perfect word to describe my momster... .(along with narcissistic, paranoid, etc).  There is a comment posted on Oct 16 by "Caring Kate" which says that these moms are just imperfect and the kids (like us) just don't see that.  She means well, but is soo off base.  It's like she doesn't even realize mental illnesses exist where people's perception of reality is completely different than healthy people.  I so appreciate the support on this website.

-tabby

[DorothyFromOz]

Thankfully my BPD/NPD mother didn't get mean until I was a bit older, and even then, not most of the time. Just really flipped out when I became more independent.

I am so worried about repeating her mistakes, especially after reading this excerpt: "Mean mothers are often the daughters of mean or highly ambivalent mothers, as my own mother was – a negative bond passed on from generation to generation, without acknowledgement or analysis. Over the past forty years, attachment theory –which started with the observation of monkey mothers and their offspring, and then expanded to human mothers and infants – has offered a reliable explanation for why some families will engender a mother line of pain. "Ghosts in the nursery" was the phrase Dr. Selma Fraiberg coined in the 1970s to describe how generation after generation of women were bound to repeat the same patterns of maternal behavior, no matter how sincerely they wanted to mother their children differently from their own mothers. As Fraiberg wrote, "While none has been issued an invitation, the ghosts take up residence and conduct the rehearsal of a family tragedy from a tattered script."

Of course, for me, it's not without acknowledgement or analysis, as she says. Oh, how I want to break this chain. The sad thing is, I know my own mother wanted to break the chain too. She said so many times. And yet, here I am on this board, NC with my mother.

[sandpiper]

Wow.

I had one of those 'Aha!' moments when I got to sit down and finish reading this today.

My mother died when I was six and I have very few memories of her.  Some have started coming back with the resurfacing of some 'lost memories'. 

The one really distinct memory that I did have was of how I got in trouble when she died, my Uncle chastised me because he broke the news and I didn't cry.

I couldn't understand why they'd think I would cry.  I just felt this sense of relief and 'Well, everything will be all right, now.'

I still can't remember her loving me.

I remember her being distant, critical, removed... .angry, afraid, on occasions - mostly angry, and mostly critical, but pretty much I remember The Ice Queen.  Breaking into rages when I displeased her and there was nobody to listen to her raging at me.

The thing is, I have two older half-sisters from my Dad's first marriage, who she raised.  And they loved her and I can remember that she seemed to love them.  I always wondered why it was that my sisters loved her and I didn't.  Why we didn't work.

And there it was, in Streep's extract.  Someone else who had been in my situation and could never comprehend why her mother disliked her own biological child and why they were always at odds, when she seemed to like the adopted children.

Its the Narcissism.  They see their own biological child as an extension of themselves so you aren't allowed to have a separate identity.

Which explains why my sisters were allowed to have their own interests and make their own choices but I was expected to think, feel, and function like a carbon copy of my mother.

It was so good to read that woman's story.  I think I have always had this insecurity that there was something inherently unlovable about me because my mother didn't like me.

I don't remember much, but at last it makes sense.

Thanks for finding and posting this, George.

Its helped to explain a mystery.

[sandpiper]

Which explains why I always thought that Disney messed up with their interpretation of Snow White... .the Evil Stepsisters were probably adopted and Snow White was The Evil Queen's biological child.

Explains why my sisters sucked up to my mother so much, though.  When they met her, they were old enough to figure out that if you stroked her vanity enough, and went along with her We Are The Borg ways of thinking, there was a considerable payoff.  It was me, who dared to challenge her and think differently from her, that set her off.

God.  I can remember her whining about how we had to visit her parents one Saturday afternoon when she had a million things to do and I said 'Why don't you just tell them you're busy?'  She said they wouldn't understand and I would when I grew older.  More whining.

So I said 'Why don't you just tell them that you don't like them.  Then we wouldn't have to go there any more at all.'



Ah, the wisdom of a four year old.

[george]

saNPDiper:

"I think I have always had this insecurity that there was something inherently unlovable about me because my mother didn't like me."

Inherently unlovable about us.

That's what my siblings and I have been trying to outgrow, OUTRUN, all these years.

Yes, we are lovable. Yes, we are valuable. But if your own mother doesn't treat you like you're lovable, more like something she can throw away at a moment's raging notice, how do you know anything else?

I tend to click on so many abuse stories. I always think, "Here's another one."  :'(

[blonders]

"Ghosts in the nursery" was the phrase Dr. Selma Fraiberg coined in the 1970s to describe how generation after generation of women were bound to repeat the same patterns of maternal behavior, no matter how sincerely they wanted to mother their children differently from their own mothers. As Fraiberg wrote, "While none has been issued an invitation, the ghosts take up residence and conduct the rehearsal of a family tragedy from a tattered script."

I vehemently disagree that we adult children of BPD/NPD parents are doomed to repeat their mistakes. In fact I believe that while some behavioral patterns in parenting will surface and remind us of our own parents, the really bad ones will either serve as strong examples of what not to do, or will make us realize that we can change, if only we're willing to do a little more work.

We're not doomed to be our parents. We're just handicapped, is all. We have to learn to work with our... .differences... .but we can be loving parents. Sometimes I wonder if the insistence that children of damaged people will also be damaged parents is a self-serving one in the psych community, a combination of laziness and confirmation bias. Maybe it's easier to assume that your patients/clients will fit the mold than to do the very hard, frustrating, long-term work necessary to help them grow into functional adults.

Of course, for me, it's not without acknowledgement or analysis, as she says. Oh, how I want to break this chain. The sad thing is, I know my own mother wanted to break the chain too. She said so many times. And yet, here I am on this board, NC with my mother.

Listen, I think the fact that you're NC with your mother is a pretty strong sign that you're determined not to be like her. You have made the agonizingly hard and socially unacceptable decision to cut her off, because contact with her is too damaging to endure. That you've realized you need to be NC says a lot about how healthy you are or are becoming. It's much easier to stay enmeshed... .remember?

xoxo

[Cordelia]

The other part that doesn't resonate is the assumption that mean mothers are necessarily unloving. There's no doubt in my mind that my mother loved me and still does, even though her every action seemed designed to crush my spirit. She's incapable of expressing love in a way that's healthy, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel it.

And no, that doesn't mean I excuse her behavior, because actions count immeasurably more than words, always. - Saroyan

I think this is a great point.  Especially with borderlines, "love" is often used to draw you in, for manipulative purposes - at least, that's how it feels to us.  From what I'm reading, they *do* really feel what they say they're feeling - they just lack a sense of coherent identity, so they can't extrapolate out from "I love this person" to "I'm going to think about what's in their best interests, and try to act accordingly," they just think "I love this person, I want them with me, all the time, and to think about me, and tell me how much they love me, and prove to me how much they love me, and jump through more and more hoops to convince me that yes, they really love me."  But as Saroyan is saying, that isn't quite the same thing as a lack of love.  It's a lack of appropriate boundaries, which is the result of an improperly developed personality.  It's more complex than Mean Mothers seems to make it out to be.

However, I did think it was very interesting, especially her decision not to see her mother when she was dying, and her feeling that that was the right decision.  I have acted so long in the belief that "I will feel guilty when she's dead if I don't x... ." though it's logical in many ways that if one accepts that the relationship is what it is, and that the mother is who she is, and isn't going to change, there's really no reason to feel guilty.  It isn't about the child, so nothing the child does or doesn't do is going to change the situation, now or on the person's deathbed.  Guilt really comes from not doing all you could, and I think so many of us have done all we could and more for so long... .  I think what I'll really feel on her deathbed is relief. 

[SkyeDusk]

Oh My God.

I just know this book is going to be a turning point in my life.
There you go, sometimes one just has to survive long enough until someone is brave enough to tell the truth at last.
I've been telling the truth about my abusive, sadistic mother my entire life but as peg Streep says, the notion of motherhood is considered sacred by our society.

I'm not walking, I'm running out to buy this book.

[Harri]

What a punch to the gut!

Read the whole excerpt at: www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/read-excerpt-mothers-peg-streep/story?id=8825765

I wish this article could be required reading for all "children of" who question why their mom did not love them and for all non parents who continue to believe in the myth of motherhood and that a mothers love is important regardless of the quality of that "love".
 

[Crase]

My eyes fell on the cover of this book yesterday, now I want it!