I am the fourth child of a four children family and I have three sisters. I was quite anxious as a child and needed lots of presence from my mum. When I was 7 years old, my dad left us without notice in a half renovated house and it plunged my mum and our family life into a really difficult place emotionally, practically and financially. My mum became depressed, overwhelmed. She managed to find a job after a while although she didn’t like it but she went every day. In the evenings she was usually drinking. I felt her sad and anxious, and it was unbearable for me as she had been my support so far, my rock and the figure I was turning towards. I became more needy around her and she started not being able to respond to my needs. Which felt terribly painful for me, I introjected another layer of ‘ I am too much’. The first layer was created when my dad left us.
Being in this merging space with her was difficult. I could feel so easliy her emotions and feel overwhelmed by them, not knowing what to do with mine and not having support to understand what was happening. She was my mum, and at the same time I felt unsafe and anxious around her. It was also painful when she used to forget to pick me up at the after school activities. And I had to find a way to call her to remind her to come. I felt ambivalent. On one hand I was angry with her and on another one I felt sorry for her. The latter was the most painful and scary for me, as there was no other parent figure around. I started stealing her money in a way to offer me some possibilities and distraction.
When I became a teen I rebelledjoushed her as she tried to run away from my bad attitude. I remember how powerful and also angry I felt when she couldn’t face me. Inside of me it made me scared also.
I then spent most of my time away from home, decided to not pass my exams at 16 years old and just enjoyed hanging out in broken caravans, smoking joints with my friends.
My mum brought me once to the police station and when she realised that they could take me directly to a youth house for delinquency she pulled away, feeling it was too strong. When we left, I felt outraged but inside also ashamed of what I was putting her through. Even if we were not looking at each other to the police, I felt both our hearts open when we realised what could happen next. I think we both got scared, we were both hurting and longing for love at the end. Not for me to be institutionalised.
After a while, exploring all kinds of edges, vandalism, stealing in shops I became bored. My friends were repeating the same jokes for a year now and we started doing the same things. I decided it was time to come home and finish my secondary school years,
The communication with my mum got bit easier. I softened and she then started to initiate me in a healing path. Showing me that I don’t need to stay with uncomfortable feelings, that things can change. Since my dad had left she had herself got through a healing journey, helped with different people. She did get really involved and committed especially in trans generational healing ; uncovering patterns that repeats in one’s family since generations and starting to heal them this way. She also introduced me to kinesiology, and other alternative practices, empowering myself with thoughts like ‘we have all chosen the life we are born with because we wanted ( before birth ) to heal certain things’. Even though we were still not rich she invested her money towards me and my sisters this way. She also was totally convinced that the work that she was doing on her was clearing her daughters at the same time, so it felt even more important.
Since then our relationships is getting better and better year after year. I am still feeling emotionally quite bonded to her, feeling easily what she feels, but she can own her feelings and hold herself much more strongly. I can notice when part of me fee ay rneof the bonding patterns that we were caught in for years we can now start meeting as two women, linked by blood and a mother-daughter bond, but also as two different beings, having gons a e through deep initiations in life and curious about what is ahead.
The mother daughter relation is such an incredible thing. After having come out of the physical womb the daughter learns energetically all that the mother is feeling, the way she responds to life, the way she think about herself, connects with her sexuality, with men, etc. It is like an energetic womb space where the daughter is ‘ energetically’ fed, informed, hopefully protected.
At one point though it is time to move out of it. To meet as adults, from what we call in Voice Dialogue an ’ aware ego process’, not expecting the other to react the way we want. We need to move out of the bonding patterns, whether positive or negative that have bonded so far the insidvuals. To move out of identifications like ‘ the pleasing girl, the rebel, the bad girl, the smothering mum, the victim mum, the controller’, etc.
This might be hard for the daughter and for the mother as well. They might have become completely identified to this fusion and identifications, seeing it ‘as a reality’ and maybe not having any clues even that this is happening and how to separate. Tensions might be building, confusion, resentment, unease ..
As much as it is an incredible phenomena like a sophisticated web of weaves, the mother daughter bond is really intricate, deeply emotional and demands lots of awareness from both parties to transition out of it.
I feel moved any time when a Voice Dialogue process or Fool Expression becomes the receptacle welcome this mysterious mother daughter bond. My longing and vision is for it to be a honey like, comfortable cosy space where the mystery, the intensity and the depth that links mother and daughters can be witnessed, honoured, unpicked, explored and taken care of. It is touching for me to imagine such a space being offered in this world. I see this mother-daughter relationship as a long, alchemical, complex and rich initiation to the world as a woman. So the more awareness we can bring to the multifaceted aspects of this relationship, the more we can reclaim a diversity of aspects in ourselves, transform uncomfortable corners inside of ourselves into resources and step into more wholesomeness in our life, embodying a healthy feminine.
MOTHER DAUGHTER ~ A REFLECTION ON MY JOURNEY AS A DAUGHTER
