Daughter Detox

by Peg Streep

  But the obstacles, despite a daughter’s best efforts, often remain and you need to recognize that your ability to remove or sidestep them is usually very limited. Among the most common roadblocks are:

  ♦ Lack of acknowledgment or plain denial on the mother’s part

  Salvaging the relationship has to be a dyadic process, with the full involvement of both the mother and daughter. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, as one daughter commented: “I’m in awe of people who can continue to have a relationship with their narcissistic mothers. I, for one, couldn’t do it. I’ve been no-contact for almost ten years even though she lives across the street (yes, she followed me here—what kind of madness is that?). But I’m just not strong enough to handle that abuse every day. And my fear is that she’d poison my daughter against me.”

  Her mother’s unwillingness to own her behavior became the linchpin for another daughter in her own middle age: “At the age of 50, I asked myself . . . how long was I going to beg for my mother’s love or for an apology or even for an acknowledgment of what went on . . . ? I gave that up and mourned the loss of my childhood and of the mother I never really had. I felt that at 50, it had become pathetic. Pathetic that I allowed myself to chase after that for half of my life.”

  If your mother is willing to see a therapist with you, it’s worth trying. But be prepared for the possibility that she’ll take over the session or sessions and try to win the counselor to “her” side. The truth? Your mother has to want reconciliation as much as you do; if she doesn’t, the effort will inevitably fail.

  ♦ Refusal to respect boundaries

  Maintaining boundaries while trying to save the relationship is often a huge struggle since combative, dismissive, self-involved, controlling, and enmeshed mothers have never observed boundaries and believe that motherhood confers the right to intrude whenever and however. This led one daughter to remark wryly: “All relationships can be salvaged—but at what cost? Some of us aren’t willing to pay and pay and pay and pay. . . . ”

  Setting boundaries inspires some women to go “low”-contact—with few in-person get-togethers and limited communication—but alas, that’s often difficult to maintain. One woman wrote, “My mother is as convinced of her right to intrude on my privacy and to meddle in my affairs as she was when I was 12. Never mind that I’m 45 and the mother of three. She just doesn’t get it. She orchestrates drama all the time and, frankly, it’s intolerable. This isn’t working.” Mothers who have never respected boundaries are very unlikely to start now .

  ♦ Continued verbal aggression, abuse, manipulation, and game-playing

  Alas, without acknowledgment and therapeutic intervention, mothers tend to keep acting as they always have, despite the daughters’ efforts to develop new scripts. Ellie reported, with not a little bit of sadness and resignation: “I have tried a ‘low-contact’ relationship with my mother for over a year. She continued to be manipulative, toxic and would do things to try and drive a wedge between my husband and me. I felt retraumatized every time I had to deal with her either in person or through texting. I made the decision in May to go officially ‘no-contact’ with her. I immediately felt a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I know without a shadow of a doubt that this is the best decision for my life. I am now working with a wonderful counselor and working on healing myself.”

  WHEN ALL EFFORTS FAIL AT SALVAGING THE CONNECTION, OR STAYING LOW-CONTACT

  Again, this is a highly personal choice: whether to live with the painful status quo or to push forward to break free. It’s at this point that many daughters begin to consider divorcing their mothers. It’s a moment filled with ambivalence and fear, as well as the hope of living differently.

  THINKING ABOUT DIVORCING MOM

  It’s been five years and I still struggle with feeling ashamed. A part of me still believes that someone better and stronger than me would have found a solution. I feel as though it’s my fault somehow at moments. Of course, that’s what my mother says .

  ~Sally, 51

  In the court of public opinion, the daughter is always on trial. The societal response to a mother or father who disinherits a child—whether it’s someone famous like Joan Crawford, who cut two of her children out of her will, referring only obliquely to “reasons that are well known to them,” or your next-door neighbor—is muted and more or less accepting. “Ah, yes,” culture murmurs, feeling sorry for the parent, summoning thoughts of an incorrigible or impossible child, a black sheep, the one with whom you tried everything you could think of but nothing worked. There’s a collective nod, an acknowledgment that parenting is hard and that children can be difficult to deal with.

  In contrast, the adult child who cuts her mother out of her life is judged on the spot, labeled as ungrateful, irrational, immature, impetuous, or acting out. The myths of motherhood are largely responsible for this cultural stance and, combined with the Fifth Commandment, pack a mighty wallop.

  As a daughter who wrestled with the question of choosing no contact for two decades of my adult life—cutting off and then going back again and again until I finally bailed at the age of 38—I’ve seen people change their opinion of me in seconds. It might be a doctor or nurse asking me about my mother’s health when she was my age and hearing me answer, “I don’t know. She wasn’t in my life.” Or it could be a new acquaintance hearing that, no, my daughter never met her grandmother, even when she was still alive and living not very far away. Yes, I have a dog in this race and I know the cost. I have been called selfish, narcissistic, and much worse by total strangers. No one likes hearing about unloving mothers. No one.

  SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT GOING NO-CONTACT

  I have spoken to many women over the years, both before writing Mean Mothers and since, about maternal divorce. It is, in every sense of the word, a crucial decision, and I use the word deliberately because it comes from the Latin “crux,” or “cross.” You are at a crossroads in life by considering this decision. In ancient times, the crossroads was a place of mystery and life-altering, signifying a major decision. This is no different.

  Here are three anecdotal observations you need to keep in mind as you think about your choices:

  ♦ No one sees the cutoff as a real solution

  While you’re unlikely to hear this from most people, the truth is that maternal divorce is a last-ditch effort to establish some normalcy. It is usually preceded by years of effort on the daughter’s part to try to fix things, either on her own or with a therapist’s help. Because a daughter never divorces just her mother—she inevitably will lose other family members, including siblings, aunts, uncles, and even her father, as people take sides—it is emotionally highly fraught and very painful. Ironically, maternal divorce is hard and scary precisely because the decision has to draw on self-love and self-esteem, which are usually in short supply. Sometimes, after going no-contact, a daughter will try again. Alas, unless the mother is willing to go into therapy to thrash it out, it rarely works. While going no-contact solves some problems, it inevitably creates new ones.

  ♦ The need and longing for a loving mother coexists with the cutoff

  It’s not unusual for adult daughters to experience a great sense of loss even though they initiated the break; one daughter described the grief she felt as the final death of her hope that someday her mother would love her. Sometimes, the pain will outweigh the relief the daughter feels and she’ll reinitiate contact and get back on the merry-go-round for a time until she finally concludes she must divorce again.

  If you have found yourself in this pattern, it’s important that you see it as par for the course and not indicative of any failing on your part. Be patient with yourself. The core conflict is resolved by your healing alone. I know it sounds weird but it’s true. Going no-contact will not end the core conflict.

  ♦ The therapeutic stance toward parental divorce may be insufficient

  Daughters who are in therapy may feel pushed into divorce when they’re not ready or, alt
ernatively, feel that their decision to go no-contact isn’t being supported or is being actively discouraged by their counselors. My own therapist wasn’t in favor of my cutting my mother out of my life, arguing that you can’t ever hope to fix a relationship that you’re not in. That’s both logical and true. In my case, having tried for 20 years to “fix things”—with a mother who categorically denied that anything was wrong except with me—I didn’t heed her advice.

  There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to whether maternal divorce is the right choice for an individual. It’s a personal decision.

  DECIDING ON DIVORCE OR NO CONTACT

  There’s terrific anguish in choosing between saving yourself and the losses that accompany divorce. One daughter recounted the terrible turmoil she felt when her therapist suggested she cut her mother out of her life and she realized that, likely as not, she would lose her connection to her father. She talked to her father and he suggested she take a hiatus from her mother, instead of acting definitively, and reassured her that somehow they’d work something out. Nonetheless, she felt shame and conflict: “I also feel like the worst person in the world for even considering cutting my mom out, especially as she is just getting older and may someday really need my help, but I know you have to take care of yourself and sometimes that means letting go of people you wish you didn’t have to let go of. . . . So, no, I don’t think my relationship with my mom can be salvaged, even though I wish it could be. Since I’ve never really been able to hear myself speak or even think when around her, and even when not around her because she never really granted me the opportunity to have a voice of my own, I especially don’t feel that continuing a relationship with her is a good idea. She just, and I hate to admit it but it’s true, has too much power over me as all mothers seem to have over their children. But despite not feeling like I should have a relationship with her anymore, I don’t know how to cut ties with her, especially with my dad in the picture.”

  Other daughters have transitioned from low contact to no contact over time. One woman explained why it was that she thought she was heading toward the final cutoff: “I have chosen recently to go ‘low contact’ with my mother. This has been very good for my family and continued healing. However, given that I am no longer a source of narcissistic supply for her, my mother has ratcheted up the drama and is constantly testing boundaries. I am actually thinking at this point that it may be best to go ‘no contact.’ This is a difficult decision, but I have come to the acceptance that she is not going to change and my family and I are better off without her. I think that any relationship can be saved and that anyone who does the difficult work can change, but I think that would be unlikely now, given her age and how entrenched her behaviors are.” Again, only you can decide.

  Divorcing your mother isn’t a solution in the traditional sense because it involves an admission of powerlessness, as Ceci noted: “I can’t fix what she’s broken. I would like a distant relationship with her, and for my kids, but it’s not safe, and our age of connectivity means the distance I’d be okay with isn’t possible anyway. And she still smears me to others, and claims our rift is a result of my brokenness, not her continued abusive behavior. As I said, I can’t fix what she’s broken.” Maternal divorce also doesn’t answer the larger problem of being unloved. In truth, going no-contact is the first step in a long process, which, in the best of all possible worlds, includes mourning the mother love you didn’t get and so richly deserved, the growth of your own self-compassion, and the stilling of the voice within—internalized from years of criticism and verbal aggression—and replacing it with a tape that says, “You’re fine.”

  At our most optimistic, humans like to believe that all close bonds can somehow be repaired or salvaged so that we’re not left with nothing. This is especially true when it comes to a relationship—that of mother and child—that our culture places on a pedestal, separate from all other connections. The pity is that when the damage is severe, it can’t be.

  SELF-DOUBT AND THE WORRY THAT YOU’RE THE CRAZY ONE

  Most of the time, I feel confident that I’ve made the right choice. But then there are moments when I imagine picking up the phone and calling her and, miracle of miracles, she’s so happy I called and everything will be different. Well, I gave into that impulse a few weeks ago after three years of no contact and, after enduring 15 minutes of a blistering attack in which she listed every one of my flaws and explained why I was worthless compared to my sister, who is so wonderful and fabulous, I deleted her number from my phone. I’m going to have to learn to weather those moments, but I’m not leaving anything to chance .

  ~Diane, 4 6

  If you’re wrestling with the decision to go no-contact or you’ve taken the step and are filled with angst, don’t beat yourself up; it’s a big decision and, yes, it should make you nervous. But there’s the good kind of nervous—the kind of self-questioning that goes into a major decision—and the bad kind of nervous that melts you down into a puddle of self-criticism and puts the voice telling you it’s all your fault on a loudspeaker. Pay attention to the difference. Keep in mind that unloved daughters—and yes, I’m including myself—really want to be like everyone else. And everyone else, from the daughter’s point of view, is comprised of those mother-daughter pairs she sees on the street, laughing and talking, going shopping and having lunch. You know, those people who don’t feel depressed on Mother’s Day or Christmas and who actually feel loved by their mothers. I bring this up because it’s part of the complexity of even considering—much less implementing—a divorce from your mother.

  The truth is that the relationships that end in estrangement are not amped-up versions of normal stress or tension in healthy mother-daughter relationships. Stress (and even friction or real fraction) happens in basically loving mother-daughter dyads, particularly in times of transition. There’s no question that the mother-daughter connection undergoes a period of transition from late adolescence to adulthood—a body of research substantiates that—as do the relationships between mother and son, father and daughter, father and son.

  Mothers used to an authoritarian or controlling style of parenting will certainly feel the friction the most as their daughters begin to make choices that are not necessarily the mothers’ own; research shows that mothers may experience lowered subjective wellbeing when daughters outstrip or eclipse their mothers’ choices and achievements. In loving and relatively healthy relationships, boundaries are redrawn by both mother and daughter, and acceptance of a child’s choices—even grudgingly offered—gets worked out.

  These relationships, while not perfect (what connection ever is?), have a pattern of give-and-take, even in times of stress and difference; the unloved daughter is in a very different place.

  Unless her mother is willing and ready to take responsibility for her actions and words, past and present, things will stay the same .

  WHAT ABOUT GRANDMA? DAUGHTERS AND THEIR CHILDREN

  While I actually divorced my mother because I didn’t want her to come into contact with my child, many women are ambivalent about going no-contact because they don’t want to deprive their child or children of an extended family; not surprisingly, they hold out the hope that, regardless of their mothers’ failures at parenting, they will somehow succeed as grandmothers or at least be good enough. That’s actually not as crazy as it sounds because the two roles are so different; grandmothers can send grandchildren home at the end of the day, don’t have to pay their bills, and can control the degree to which they choose to interact. Sometimes, it works; often, alas, it doesn’t. Anecdotally, it seems to work best when there’s physical distance, the visits are short, and the daughter stays largely out of the picture.

  When a daughter decides to go no-contact with her mother, the problem becomes more complicated. On the one hand, there’s the guilt of depriving your child or children of an extended family; on the other, there’s the risk that your own offspring can be manipulated to get at you in some way, even get
ting co-opted to your mother’s side. That sounds paranoid as all get out, but it actually does happen, as Darcy’s story makes clear: “My husband is an only child with only one surviving parent whom he adores and he really doesn’t understand the conflict in my family. There are four children in my family of origin, three sons whom my mother treats well, and me, the scapegoat and disappointment. Make a long story short, I gave in and allowed my kids to see their grandmother, and she filled them with poison about me. But the breaking point came when my husband realized that she was scapegoating my kids in front of my brothers’ children. He talked to my mother who called our kids liars and denied it all. My husband’s eyes were finally open.”

  Anna, now 60, lived in the same town as her mother and she felt she couldn’t deprive her two daughters of their grandmother. In her case, things were peaceful until her daughters were preteens and they became increasingly uncomfortable with how their grandmother constantly criticized their mother and started telling them that they would have to “take sides.” She’d get angry when the girls refused to play along. Ultimately, the girls themselves decided they wanted to see less of their grandparents.

  On the other hand, Jane reports that she had success allowing her sons to see her mother and explains why: “I set very distinct rules and boundaries and made it clear to my mother that if she bad-mouthed me or my husband, the boys couldn’t visit her anymore. I trusted my father, too, to make sure that happened. My mother treated my brothers well—she considers girls pretty useless and I am a good example—and I figured she would be okay around my sons. It wasn’t always easy or a cakewalk, and I can’t say that the boys felt close to their grandmother, although they adored their grandfather, but it mainly worked.”

  Again, each daughter’s experience, her relationship to her mother, each family constellation, makes each situation unique. Each of us has to make our own choice.