by Hope Edelman
Because maturation is such an individual process, different adolescents separate from their mothers at different ages. Some never do it at all. If a mother dies or leaves when the connection with her daughter is loving and close, the girl may find herself faced with little guilt but much pain. Her reaction to the loss may be closer to that of the dependent child suddenly set adrift without a firm connection to shore. Mariana, who at sixteen was the oldest of two daughters when her mother died of kidney failure, told me how frightened she’d been to lose her mother because she was so timid as an adolescent. I must have given her a skeptical look—and it’s true I had trouble believing it at first; Mariana was probably the most effusive person I’d met all week—because she nodded her head vigorously to emphasize her point.
I was an extremely shy person when my mother died. I really kept close to home. My family used to call me “The Hermit,” because sometimes you’d see me come out of my room, but generally not. I’d just peek out. My mother and I were very tight. She was my best friend in addition to being my mom, so not only did I lose my mother, but I also lost a close friend. She just did everything for me, so I was totally unprepared for what it meant to be without her there to protect me from everything.
I went straight to work after high school. If Mommy had lived, I probably would have gone to a college close to home, but I was too nervous to leave Daddy. He was in and out of the hospital because of diabetes and depression. I ended up working for a year, and I decided to also volunteer for my congressman. It took time away from what I could spend with my sister and the household, but I felt if I didn’t get out of the house, I’d turn into a lunatic. Working for Joe made a big difference. He was very young, only ten years older than me, and I was working with young, hip people. I had to become more outgoing to work in the political arena. It changed my personality. I stopped being so inside myself all the time.
Losing her mother propelled Mariana into an autonomy that she might not have otherwise achieved as quickly, if at all. For other daughters, particularly those who lose mothers during their most turbulent periods, some areas of personality development may get stopped short. Arrested development isn’t exclusively a childhood phenomenon. It can happen during adolescence as well, occurring when a teen feels deeply ambivalent toward her mother at the time of loss and isn’t able, for any number of reasons, to mourn adequately and separate from her. Gayle, thirty-two, who was eighteen and the youngest of eight children when her mother died, was so tightly (and unhappily) bound to her mother when she was alive that Gayle’s separation did not occur until almost twelve years after her mother’s death.
My relationship with my mother was so many things. She was very sick, both emotionally and physically, from before the time I was born. And I was born when she was forty, pretty late in her life. She was at times my friend, but at times very domineering. She knew exactly how I needed to live my life, and she told me. I was her last child, and she held on tight. She let my other brothers and sisters go, with a fight, when they were ready to leave, but I never broke away from her during adolescence. I would make leaps to do it, but I was really tied to her, almost as if the umbilical cord was never cut. When I think of it now, it’s almost as if we shared bodily fluids. I was of her, for her, with her, and as much as I would scream—and I did my screaming during adolescence, trying to fight her that way—when push came to shove I would always give in, because there was no way I could win against her.
These last few years have been a period of redefining my life. I’ve had to take a look at my relationship with my mother and realize I never really mourned her death. I went through a good part of my adult life having shut the door on it, thinking, “Fine. We’ll just go on and not think about this.” Now that I’m finally doing it, I feel like I’m just starting to go through adolescence today.
Because mourning often reactivates the emotions that existed at the time of loss, a daughter who returns to that juncture in her past as an adult also may find herself working through the developmental tasks she never completed during adolescence. Daughters like Gayle who feel stuck in a prior stage can finally emerge from it as adults. Likewise, daughters who were forced into adult responsibilities too soon and feel they missed out on adolescence entirely report giving themselves license to act irresponsible or carefree ten or fifteen years beyond their teens.
With mother loss magnifying the typical strains and stresses of adolescence, is it easier for children who lost their mothers earlier to pass through these stormy years? Probably not. A 1950s study of orphaned children at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic in England revealed that children deprived of a stable mother-figure for their first five years actually have more difficult adolescences than children whose mothers die or leave during that time. Many of the children who’d lost their mothers before the age of five experienced a preadolescent phase that was often characterized by a frantic search for a mother-figure, possibly to form an attachment that could then be loosened.
Lucy, the child who lost her mother as an infant and appeared in Elizabeth Fleming’s case study earlier in this chapter, plunged into a mother-daughter void when she reached adolescence. She had never accepted her stepmother as an adequate mother substitute, and knew little about her own mother. At fifteen, she experienced a depression, according to Fleming:It was marked by feeling dejected and hopeless and being unable to wake up in the morning, losing interest in social activities, and not attending school and analytic sessions. She seemed immobilized bodily and mentally—a characteristic she had never shown before. In addition, old difficulties were exacerbated; she gained weight, experienced increased physical symptoms and, on one occasion, scratched her wrist. Consciously, Lucy linked her difficulties to her disappointment at her first boyfriend’s withdrawal. . . . Her greatest despair stemmed from not having an image of her dead mother from which she could divorce herself as a child and with whom she could choose to identify, or not identify, as an adult woman. During the following two years Lucy searched out independently enough detailed knowledge of her mother to form the coherent picture she had always lacked. Then, on her own and for the first time, she visited her mother’s grave. These achievements marked the end of her depressive symptoms.
Separating from a mother or mother-figure during adolescence, it seems, is an essential part of the process that turns a girl into a self-confident, autonomous woman.
Adolescents and Loss: Matters of Appearance
In college, I pledged a sorority. Like most sorority houses on campus, mine had its annual traditions, and one evening during the pledges’ Hell Week, all sixty-four sisters assembled on the living room floor. We sat in a haphazard circle on the powder-blue rug as the pledge trainer explained the rules: Everyone had to tell a story that began with, “Something my mother doesn’t know . . .” One woman told about a drunken midnight roadtrip to Milwaukee; another shared a vignette about sexual advances in a neighbor’s suburban hot tub. The stories crept around the circle, punctuated with small bursts of laughter and an occasional “You didn’t!” and “No way!” And then sixty-three eager faces turned to me.
I’d been siting there quietly, examining my fingernails and considering my options—Should I go along with it? Tell the truth? Excuse myself from the room?—when the woman to my left prodded me with her elbow. “Your turn,” she said.
I looked up. “I think I’d like to pass.”
“No way!” “Come on.” “Tell us, tell us, tell us.”
“No, I mean it. I’d like to pass.”
More laughter. “Come on!” “What, are you trying to hide something good?” “No, no, no. Everyone has to say.”
I panicked and I stammered, until words formed purely by impulse appeared. “I don’t have a mother,” I said, “but I do have a father. So I can tell you something he doesn’t know. The room fell silent, widely and uncomfortably silent, as I spit out some convoluted story about a man I’d met that winter in New Orleans. I don’t remember the details now, and I do
ubt I paid much attention to them then. My goal was to finish quickly and remove myself from the spotlight I’d been trying to avoid all year.
I managed to sit through a few more stories, until the pledge trainer noticed my wobbling chin and led me to her room. “I’m so sorry,” she said, feeding me Kleenex as we sat on her bed and I cried. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
No one knew. I hadn’t told them. These friends were my refuge from the tragedy I’d left behind, the sorority house, a place where I could reinvent myself as a carefree party girl unencumbered by baggage from my past. In the house’s tastefully decorated living room, I could pretend to be a girl no different from the others, 800 miles from the high school where I’d been known as the girl whose mother died.
The peer group, that all-powerful teenage tribunal in the life of an adolescent girl, plays a critical role in the aftermath of a mother’s death. Most adolescents transfer much of the energy they once invested in their parents to their peers or a “best friend” so common at this time. In fact, a teen is more likely to turn to a friend for help during her bereavement than to any other source of support. But because most adolescents have little experience with profound loss, a girl’s peers often are unable to validate her feelings, or to understand the magnitude of her loss.
Robin, twenty-seven, who was sixteen when her mother died, remembers how difficult her peer relations were at that time. She still remembers and appreciates the classmate who helped her through the following year:I couldn’t deal with most of my friends at the time. They would complain about how much homework they had to do, and I would think, “Big deal. How can you be upset about that when my mother has died?” I also felt there was a competition between them about who I would depend on the most. That drove me crazy. I felt I couldn’t say anything to one of them without the others feeling they’d been slighted and getting upset. I had one friend who would always look at me like I was a lost puppy dog and constantly say, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you.” I felt like I had to make her feel better, to help her feel that I was okay so she didn’t have to feel bad. I could barely maintain myself. How could I possibly make anyone else feel better?
But when my mom was sick, I did some volunteer work at a refugee center for Vietnamese people. I had another friend who was working there with me, who I hadn’t been very close with before. She was a very analytical person and she had that ability to remain objective, to not get emotionally involved. She really talked with me about my mom’s illness and death. She never said, “I feel so sorry for you, you poor little thing.” Instead, she would ask, “What is this like for you?” She allowed me a place to talk about how I felt without having to feel that I was being pitied. I think a lot of my other friends were so freaked out and scared of the implications for them, and for their mothers, that they couldn’t really talk about it with me. This particular friend didn’t know my mom, which made a difference, too. All my other friends knew her, so it was even more real to them than it was to this friend. I ended up spending a lot of time with her and talking, which was a big help.
Few adolescent anxieties are greater than that of the girl who fears rejection or an upset within her clique, especially when family members coping with the loss have less time to devote to her. Adolescents, as they undergo symbolic separation from their families, actually have much in common with orphans: Characterizing both groups are feelings of alienation, isolation, and low self-esteem; turbulent home conditions; and a fear of being left out. Adolescents without mothers are often deeply ashamed of having lost the parent other girls view as so central to a daughter’s well-being. The teenaged girl who thinks her mother’s absence will make her appear different or abnormal—and therefore subject to rejection from her peers—often will avoid talking about the loss or revealing any anger, depression, guilt, anxiety, or confusion to her friends, to her friends, adopting a stoic and unemotional coping style instead. This is in part to conform to “acceptable” group behavior, but may also be a self-protective act to shield her from overwhelming feelings of anxiety and grief. The more composed a teen appears, however, the greater her risk is of experiencing long-term, unresolved grief, and researchers now know that unresolved grief in turn places individuals at risk for depression, physical illness, and drug and alcohol abuse.
At the same time the teenager pushes the mourner’s emotions aside, she may also be expending a great deal of energy to appear as normal as she can to the outside world. It’s almost as if she’s saying, “Look—I’m captain of the soccer team, class treasurer, an honors student, and the lead in the school play. Nothing’s wrong with me!” Her self-definition began forming in a family with a mother, only to be changed by the force of an event she didn’t anticipate and couldn’t reverse. To let her identity continue developing along this new pathway would mean having to define herself as a teen without a mother—not exactly the description she would have chosen for herself, and not one she wants to advertise. So she tries to manufacture a new identity, one that exists independent of her past.
In this quest to reinvent herself, she frequently aims for a persona of competence and control. It’s no coincidence that motherless women who report having eating disorders and drug or alcohol addictions say these compulsions began during their teen years. Adolescence is a time of anxiety and exploration anyway, but for the motherless daughter who needs to feel in command of her body or environment, addictive or self-destructive behavior is a common manifestation of suppressed grief. Bereaved children often internalize their feelings, but adolescents have more resources for acting out. Juliet, twenty-five, started smoking and drinking the year her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and every time her mother’s condition worsened, she acted out. “The day before she started chemotherapy I was caught shoplifting with $30 in my pocket,” she recalls. “I went and stole a $1.69 bottle of fingernail polish and got arrested. Then she went into remission, but the day she had her thyroid removed because of a precancerous growth, I got drunk at a dance, threw up on everybody, and almost got into a fight. I was acting out with pot and alcohol when she died, and it just progressed until I was about twenty-three, and finally sobered up.” When change is occurring both around her and within her, the adolescent motherless daughter looks for comfort in what she can—or thinks she can—control.
The New Woman of the House
Almost immediately after my family completed the eight-day mourning period designated by Jewish law, I began driving my brother for haircuts, taking my sister to the dentist, and carrying the household’s incidental cash in my wallet. I even inherited my mother’s car. I’d somehow stepped on a fast-forward button that transported me from seventeen to forty-two, and though I never questioned taking over my mother’s role like this, I secretly counted the minutes until I could flee. When the time to begin college arrived the following autumn, I was out of town so quickly that I left skid marks. And then my sister, at fifteen, had to take over where I’d left off.
Adolescent daughters often become involuntary minimothers to fathers and siblings when the biological mother falls ill, leaves, or dies. An unfortunate byproduct of a culture that still views child care and domestic duties as “women’s work” is that the eldest or next-to-eldest daughter—even when an older brother lives at home—is the one expected to step into the mother’s role. When the daughter is an adolescent, her very identity is at risk. After Mariana’s mother died, Mariana had to take over the household chores at sixteen, including responsibility for her younger sister. “When you’re sixteen and your mother always did those things before, you respond like, ‘What do you mean I have to do the laundry? What do you mean I have to do all the dishes?’” she says. “Those first few months were very difficult. My aunt, who I called Mrs. Clean, would come in and inspect the house. It would drive me crazy. To this day, I hate doing dishes. I was also cooking dinner every night, and trying to take care of my sister, who was always a wild kid. In other words, I was doing all the normal things a teenager is supposed to
do during the day at school, and then I’d come home and cook and clean, like a mother or a wife.”
Faced with this kind of responsibility, a girl has three options: She can try to meet the demands fully, meet them partially, or not meet them at all. Sometimes, if she’s old enough or autonomous enough to resist actively, she refuses to take on her mother’s role—but then feels guilty for abandoning her family. Sometimes she realizes that she alone cannot meet the family’s needs only after trying and failing for several years. “Girls who have to take over their mother’s roles can run into all kinds of problems,” says Phyllis Klaus, MFT, LCSW, a psychotherapist in Berkeley and Santa Rosa, California, who frequently counsels motherless women. “Either they become overachievers and exhaust themselves trying to meet their own expectations, or they get out of the responsibility in some way that’s unhealthy, such as getting into a bad relationship or running away.”
The adolescent who must become the nurse for an ailing mother, a parent for younger siblings, or a caretaker for a grieving father may develop characteristics, such as compassion and empathy, that serve her well in the future. Many of the admirable qualities society associates with caregivers—and especially with women—surface in the teenage girl who must care for others. And some research suggests that children who take responsibility for others after the death of a loved one gain a sense of competence and are more likely to accommodate the loss successfully. But the caretaking role is a premature one for an adolescent girl in Western cultures, and it hurtles her into the responsibilities of a later developmental stage before she can complete the one she was already in. It also forces her into maturity at exactly the time she needs to regress and be taken care of.