There was just such a violation of privacy, and if she would've just trusted me a little more, I probably would've talked to her more and we could have understood each other better, but there was such little trust. It was constantly like invasive, and she deeded me to console her if she was upset. It was like that role reversal got in the way of so much. And if she would've just been like, I guess that's besides the trust part, but if she would've been more of like the parent than me having to play parent sometimes with her, then I think we would've had a better dynamic and I would've maybe just been more open to her. Every daughter is a story waiting to be told. Every mother is a chapter already written. Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show where we explore the most complex, beautiful, and sometimes challenging and painful bond between mothers and daughters. I'm your host Brittany Scott, and each week we'll dive deep into these relationships. From navigating teenage years to building adult friendships, from healing generational wounds to celebrating shared triumphs, we're here to share, learn, and grow together. Join us as we talk with real mothers and daughters, expert therapists and coaches and thought leaders who help us understand this unique connection that shape who we are. Whether you're a mother seeking to understand, a daughter looking for perspective, or someone who wants to strengthen this precious bond. This is your safe space. Hey, it's Brittany. Welcome back to another episode. Today's episode is another interview from the interview series that I did. We are chatting with Shalin. Shalin is a mom, a writer, and a life coach. She has a 2-year-old daughter and lives in West New York state with her fiance. She caught the entrepreneurial bug after a decade of working through the service and education industries and never looked back. Shaylyn writes about maiden into motherhood and her mother wound healing journey and helps women blaze their own unique paths through coaching. I will leave all the ways to find Shaylyn and be able to chat with her in the show notes if her story resonates with you and you'd like to reach out. Without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

And we have Shaylin here with us. I'm so excited that you are willing to share your story and help other women maybe hear themselves in your story and heal through their own mother wound.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited and ready to lay it all out, talk about whatever.

Yeah. Tell me the experience or the event that broke your relationship or caused you to notice that this isn't how a mother daughter relationship should feel.

I'd like to give a little bit of background and then I'll get into that. I don't think it was any like one thing specifically, but it was like a series of things that kind of added up. I grew up, my mom was a single mom. We were pretty low income. My younger sister and my mom and I was like just the three of us and it was tough sometimes and I know now that she was doing her best and we can get into that later, but I guess I started noticing when I was probably in like the young adult stage I was telling Brittany before the podcast that I was listening to her podcast episodes that were about the six stages. And I think I was in like the early adult phase when I started noticing this isn't how other moms are. This doesn't feel good to, to be, I was like the parent, it was like the roles had gotten reversed. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized this had been happening when I was a teenager too. So it was like it wasn't any one thing. Like event but just noticing over time that this behavior is continuing. Like we keep going through the same things over and over again. And I didn't know, when I was younger, what it meant or what it was, but as my self awareness grew and I started to understand what was going on, I realized, okay, she worked so hard and a lot of times she was in survival mode, but. I didn't need to be the parent. It was like, she would turn to me for advice. She would turn to me for validation and just everything that I did in my life was overshadowed by her making it about her and. That's where we started to have this major breakdown over the last couple of years, I would say, I have a daughter, I have a toddler and just moving into a new phase of my life, seeing that like this, I needed to not have this continue this way.

Sounds like you were maybe, she viewed you as maybe her partner or her co parent.

Yeah, my mom was young when she had me. I think she was 23, 24. So I know now, like I'm looking back at this and just seeing If it was me in her shoes, and I try to look at it from all these different angles and I feel that she was, we were growing up together and so she looked to me as the person that knew what they were doing a lot, As I became an adult, it was like the rules got switched somehow and like I had to guide her a lot of the time. And then I was like, I'm the daughter though, like I want to be guided.

You wanted the support she was looking to get from you.

Yeah. Absolutely. And just anytime I would accomplish something or I had a change in my career or I tried something new and I would tell her about it, it was like, she would try to jump on that. Like almost like it was like a competition or she was trying to like one up me or whatever, and eventually I would call her out on it and be like, this is like my thing, can you just, this is my thing, I want to be excited about it, like it's not about you. And she would say things like, I'm just so inspired by you, and I just want to be like you and all this, and I'm just thinking let me bask in my own glow, like you're like on top of me when I'm trying to make something of myself and grow up and It was like she was growing up right next to me and you almost want to be. Like happy about that. But at the same time, you're like wanting that parental guidance and like their praise and like being proud of you and stuff like that. And it just wasn't there because it was like, she had to do all the same things that I did.

You were looking for a cheerleader for praise and for accolades from your mother. And it's she was feeding off of you and using you as inspiration for her own life. Like I said, do

you think that would feel good? Oh, she's inspired by me. Like we want to inspire people, but it's my mom. Like I want her to be proud of me, but like kind of step back a little bit and just let me be more independent and be more, just building my life differently and also not getting offended by it too. Like it was hard. Anytime I would express myself or say any of this stuff, it was like. She took it so personally, like it was a big, something that just made her look like the bad mom, because she couldn't anytime I would say, Oh I'm just such a bad mom when I'm just trying to be inspired by you and whatever. And it was like, Oh, it was just that again I felt like I had to be the parent and I had to I had to step back and look at myself as the one that was doing all this work, but I couldn't let her feel any of my pain about it I don't know if that makes sense, but I couldn't let her feel a certain way because I couldn't be excited a lot of the time because She would be upset that she would just take it the wrong way every time.

Yeah. She internalized a lot and that manipulation of, Oh, I'm just such a bad mom, like pity me or turn all the emotions onto her because now she feels bad and you need to make her feel better.

Yeah, it very much got turned around often and so much time was spent just trying to smooth things over and like over and over again. It just wouldn't work because the next time it would be the same kind of behavior or the same kind of comments and I would have to turn around and just be like, okay, this is who she is. This is what she does. I'm not her mom. Like she is my mom, but I can't. Treat her like my mom because she's not treating me like her daughter like she's treating me like her mom, too.

Can you go into a little bit of detail, give an example of a time where she, instead of praising you, maybe she fed off of you and use you as inspiration of Oh, I want to do that too. Or where you felt more like the mom.

Oh, gosh, I have so many examples. The one that really sticks out to me because as an adult, I've really struggled with perfectionism and being an overachiever. And just I totally fulfilled that role of being. The mother figure, a lot of the time in my life, I had just gotten a promotion at a job and I was really excited about it because I was young. I think this was about the time when I was like 24 and I was really focused on my career and really trying to figure out. What to do with my college degree, and maybe I'll go this way, maybe I'll go that way. And I was bouncing around a little bit while I got in this promotion. And I just remember talking about the salary with my mom. And I think money ties in a lot with the mother wound. I was just excited about it. I told her how much they were offering me. And she was like I never made that much. When you guys were little, when you were growing up, I never made that much money. And. So instead of being super proud and excited about me accomplishing this thing and getting this promotion, she turned it around and just I felt so guilty, like she made me feel so bad about it because she had survived with two kids, single mom on lower salary than I was being offered as like basically a graduate, and it was like such a kill joy. And then I felt bad because I had shared it with her and it's like I couldn't change that and like she could have been like, wow, I'm really proud of you and she could have said I'm proud of myself for surviving on less than that, but she didn't see it that way. She saw it as an attack almost, like a personal attack that I was, had gotten this promotion and was making this amount of dollars a year, like it just, something that just sticks out still. This was over 10 years ago. And I, it sticks right out and little things like that. We would, I taught fitness classes for almost 10 years, I think now, and probably a few years in my mom had started going to the gym and she. I guess somebody at the gym asked her to start teaching classes, so she did, and she was just, oh, now I'm just like you, and I just remember thinking again, here we go again, like I can't have anything that's just mine, that my mom doesn't jump on and make it about her too. I have lots of examples just like that, just so many different times.

So it sounds and tell me if you would agree or not, there's some jealousy or envy there. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I think I chose to live my life so much differently, so differently than she did. And I don't know how much of hers was actually a choice when, just being such a young mom and when she had married my dad. They went to high school together and then they were married and then they divorced shortly after they were married, really. I think I was three or four. I don't even remember my parents being together. Actually. She just had such a different, I went to college and she didn't finish college and she worked overnights almost the entire time that I was a kid all the way through school until I graduated high school. And. I didn't get married right away. I didn't pick a specific career path, bounced around. And she just did what she had to do to have with two girls. I felt so much guilt. It's she was so jealous of what I had chosen. And so I felt bad about it I didn't want her to feel jealous of me, but I felt so guilty that I didn't struggle as much as she did. And it was like, it's such a silly thing. You don't want your kids to have to struggle. You shouldn't be jealous if they're doing well in life.

Yeah, we want our kids to do better than us.

Yeah, absolutely. And it just, it was like, every move I made was just another I didn't do that. Like it just always, okay, I won't talk about that. I just would, I would step back and just, okay, yeah, we won't get into that because you chose something different and here I am doing this other thing and it's not the same. And it was just hard to relate for a long time.

Yeah.

Almost like a why you and not me scenario. Lots of jealousy, I think, with her just not having, seeing me do different things that maybe she did, maybe she really did want to do, but seeing me do them first even sometimes it was like she did it, I'm going to do it. I don't know. It's a strange dynamic.

Yeah.

How big is the gap

between you and your sister?

We are 13 months apart.

Very close. Does your mom do this with her in any way or is this just you?

So what's interesting about that is my sister being younger than me, she actually went the exact opposite that I did. So she got married very young. She had her first daughter very young, like younger than my mom. I think my sister was 20 when she was pregnant with my niece. They moved out of state and she had a very tumultuous relationship with my mom for a few years. And now they're much closer than I am with my mom. And I actually don't speak with my sister either. So it's like the mother estrangement and the sister estrangement, like two for one deal over here. Oh, man. Yeah but they're close. Like they, my mom flies down to visit them often and It's not the same like this. I feel like they, my sister isn't triggered the same way I am about it. And she has told my mom in the past that she doesn't feel the same way about her childhood that I do. So it's just illustrates, like they say, you could come from the same parents, have the same child, live in the same house, all of that, and have two different experiences. And that's exactly how this went.

Yeah, the estrangement from your mom and your sister happened at the same time or did one happen before the other?

The estrangement from my sister happened before. It's been, I want to say about six or seven years since I have spoken to my sister and she lives out of state so I haven't seen her and then with my mom, I still receive messages and emails and phone calls and stuff from her, but probably it's been, I'd say almost a year since I've been like an actual, had a conversation or been in contact with her more than just like short texts. I wouldn't say that we're 100 percent no contact, but definitely Extremely low. If there was an emergency, we would be in contact, but we're not any other time or any other way.

How have you managed this emotionally to essentially Lose both of them.

With my sister, it was different because we were not very close ever. Even being so close in age we were never super close. We weren't like, two peas in a pod, best friends, like sisters. We were scream at each other and throw. things and like bang on each kick each other's doors and stuff like that kind of sisters. So we just grew apart over the years and then it came to a head and we just stopped speaking. And it took me a while to be okay with that because I have a niece and nephew that I don't get to see as well. And because I'm not speaking with her. Which is tough, but I feel like I've come to an acceptance that we weren't ever really close and we didn't really get along and that I'm not sure if either one of us would be open to ever rekindling that relationship at all. So I've just been like, okay, like this is just some people don't speak with their siblings and that's okay. My fiance's family is extremely close. So they've adopted me in a way and shown me a different family dynamic with my mom. It's a little bit trickier with the estrangement because emotionally, like it's. If you want your mom in these big moments in your life, I have an almost two year old and she doesn't really know my, she's too little to remember my mom, like being around much and even this last year, she's almost two, like I said, and she's. Starting to really know who people are and like who's in her life. So I feel really bad sometimes that like my mom isn't around to see her grow and be part of her life that way. But there's so much anger still and like resentment over things that have happened between us and so much guilt. Like I was just talking about with those different situations and there's still a lot of emotions and I would say that I'm less triggered, like regularly triggered by her. Like it, it doesn't happen as much. She tries to contact me or if I think about something that like. I wish I could resolve with her that I, it's so much energy and effort to try to make it better. It's almost better to just leave it be to keep my peace. But there's so many emotions just floating around all the time when little things happen Oh, I should, I wish I could send this picture to my mom, but I don't want to open up the door to see what she would say or whatever. There's just so much like unknown and uncertainty between us that it's hard to find the balance emotionally and just like day to day, just thinking. What it would be like to have a different relationship with her when she's just shown so many times like who she is to me. It's tough.

Would you or do you desire any kind of reconnection with her if it was real? If she was open to change and keeling with you.

It's interesting because she actually emailed me a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure if I was gonna talk about this, but She emailed me a couple weeks ago, and it was a very 180 from how she communicates to me usually and I want to work on a relationship, I've spoken to this therapist and she wants to work with us and all of this and I couldn't tell if it was like genuine and like a real effort to make changes or if it was like a last ditch, scripted, like I'm going to just throw this out there and hope it because it was so much different than how she usually communicates with me. And I haven't responded to the email to, to, because I just, I'm really unsure when I think about trying to rekindle our relationship or move forward in a different way, I still feel like so frustrated that like her behavior in the past, like she just won't apologize. She won't admit, that this is how she, and it's tough because As much as I would maybe want that if it was legit, if it was a legit, real effort to make a change, I almost am like, I want to hold back a little bit because I'm like, what if it's not what if this is just a trick or like something that's gonna, you want to get back into my life so that you can. Behave the same way you used to that caused us to be separated like this. It's really tricky to make a choice about that or to even open up like a little bit to see what she has to say. It's, I'm very on the fence about it.

Yeah. It sounds like you're scared. Or that you don't fully trust her.

Yeah, I, trust has been a huge thing and since I've become a mom, too, I've noticed just the depths that you go to in motherhood, just the way that things That didn't seem like a big deal before now that you have your own daughter, it's like a huge thing that you want to, repair or break the cycle and not do that anymore. Like it becomes so much bigger, but you don't know that's coming until after you've gone through birth and you have this baby and now you're like, Oh my gosh, now I'm the mom. And like, how am I going to do this all differently? So it is really scary to I've done all this work and I've made so many changes in my life as a mother myself. How do I relate this back to my own mom who may or may not be willing to go to those depths or have the capacity to do this kind of. Deep work and look at yourself and be like, what do I like? What don't I like? What do I want to pass on to my daughter? And I think a lot of it too, being an adult is like, she may feel, I'm assuming right now, I'm just guessing, hypothesizing, maybe she feels like the damage has already been done, so it can only get better or worse from here. Let's just. Try it. And she's just throwing me this email, like throwing a bone kind of thing. And I'm like, I just take things so much more seriously as a parent now that it's I want to protect my daughter from experiencing any of that too. So I'm like, really holding back from reopening this door for her to come back into my life.

You're not just protecting you.

Yeah.

You're protecting somebody else and she's so precious to you.

It's very tough.

When I get the opportunity to work with a mom and a daughter together, one of the things that I require is that I meet with them separately. And so one thing you could ask your mom is, if I'm not encouraging either way you have to make a decision that feels safe for you. But one thing that you could do is ask your mom for the contact info for the therapist. and basically interview the therapist yourself. See if the therapist is even prepared to make sure that you're both safe in that room and that you both have a chance to be heard and that your mom is fully ready to take accountability for how you felt and fully hear you out. Like you can see if the therapist is even ready for that because who knows who the therapist is.

Yeah, that's definitely something that it's just like with couple therapy, you got to choose somebody together and not have somebody like that's biased towards one or the other person. That's one part that, that kind of puts me off from pursuing this, but I'm definitely. I'm like working my way around to being open to this because I think that the pain of my past experiences with her and like past relationship dynamic with her, in order for me to not repeat that with my daughter, I feel like I cannot just leave this to be me. Resolved on its own I feel like there has to be something that is done. It's just like working myself up to that and like getting, coming around and not facing the fear part of it, facing the unknown of like how she's going to react or what I'm going to say or whatever and it just needs to eventually come out. I know this intellectually, but like my body and my emotions need to catch up to it.

Yeah, and know that you will be supported through the pain because this isn't going to be easy to do. It'll be painful work. Yeah, definitely. When you think about your mother daughter relationship and the dynamics that caused you pain, and then think about raising your own daughter. What are you trying to not repeat? What do you want to change?

I think you were just talking about safety and I feel like that is, I feel like a lot of damage was done when I was like a teenager, when I was eating, like moving into adolescence. Around that time, I feel like that's where, you don't really remember when you're like really little, like my daughter is right now, but I know that there's that implicit memory, just that feeling of safety. That's something that I definitely want to recreate because I feel that. As a child, as a teenager, moving into adulthood, all of that, like I always was very guarded because I don't think I felt safe, I had trust issues with all my relationships, even as a teenager, dating boys and even with friends, like female friendships, as an adult now. And looking back as when I was a child, like it was just very guarded. I didn't let anybody. too close and didn't really trust anybody. And it caused so many issues for me in these relationships where it would either end a friendship or it would cause conflicts in a romantic relationship. I hate to put it all back on just my mom, which is how she would take it. And like me blaming her for everything. But I think if I had felt safe and felt like supported throughout my development. I wouldn't feel like this now about her. And I think that's something that I'm trying to cultivate with my daughter is just you're safe. Your emotions matter, and it's safe to express them. And it's okay to make mistakes because I think I said in the beginning, like such a perfectionist, like I hated making mistakes and I had to have the best grades and I had to do everything perfectly or I just would not do it. Like I would throw it out. And I don't want to have my daughter pick up on that, that everything has to be perfect and everything has to be a certain way, or you don't get love or validation or praise or whatever you get that anyway when you just try your best, not perfect.

Is that the only way you got love and praise is when you were perfect?

I feel like it was. I feel like it was. And then it ties into like my mom wanting to steal the spotlight. It was almost like that's the only time that I would get her to notice me is if I did something right, if I did something really good, graduated college, the job or whatever I was doing, it was like it had to be notable or it was like unremarkable. Whatever, that's, it just would be overshadowed by whatever was going on in other people's lives. It's just I never got the spotlight. I never liked my birthday because it was like this one day that was supposed to be mine. But It was made about my mom, like giving birth to me on that day, rather than celebrating my growth and my day. So I've never,

yeah,

I'm like, that's the kind of stuff that I'm trying to avoid with my daughter. Like I want her day to be her day. I want her things to be her things. And they don't have to be perfect. I love to see just the attempt of something new and I'm not going to make it about me. And that's like my major goal with her is just to support and to accept and create like a safe and peaceful, happy environment to grow up in.

Okay. And so being perfect and doing things perfectly for lack of better words. Got you the attention of your mom, but it didn't really keep the attention of your mom because then she focused it back on herself.

Yeah, so that was just such a difficult dynamic because it was forced me to work harder and I went through a phase where I don't know if I would call it a phase because it was a long time where I just probably from being like a teenager, even I can think of some elementary school moments where it was like, Just got to be better, just got to get the grade, just got to, pass the test, join the club, whatever it is, like I was a super overachiever and it was driven by that. If I just do this thing, if I just get this accolade, my mom will pay attention to me. But it, and it also worked the other way too. If I did something really bad, like that, that would get her attention too. But I didn't like doing the bad things cause. I wanted to be good. I didn't like doing the bad things. Yeah, it didn't feel right to get attention that way, but it would work. It was tough because it was, I didn't notice that she would, that my mom would make it about her until later. Like when I was an adult, I looked back and I was, wait a minute, like this was supposed to be about me, but. How come I can only remember what my mom did that time? So I didn't realize that until later, but that was what drove me just to get that little bit of a crumb of recognition or attention or whatever.

Yeah. I'm assuming you've explained these things to your mom. How did that go? How does she respond to these attempts to make her see like your pain or the things that hurt you?

So I learned of the mother wound a few years ago, probably four or five years ago. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is, I have the mother wound. And I like, it was such a revelation to me that I was telling my mom about it. And she was like, What do you mean you have a mother wound? Like I didn't abuse you. I didn't hurt you. What are you talking about? She totally did not get what I was like, look, this is the book at night. There was a book discovering the inner mother by Bethany Webster. And that was like, Oh my God, this was written for me. And here you need to read it because you'll understand me but like you need to read it from the point of view of the daughter, not as me telling you to read it as my mom. So I'm like trying to like, Guide her toward being her mom, basically like playing the mom role for her. And I'm like, pretend you're the daughter. Okay. Read this, think about grandma being your mom and like that, not me, take me out of the picture, but read this book. So I'm like trying to get this across to her and it just went right over her head or in one ear out the other. She took it so personally that it was, all the things that they say that Oh, I'm I'm such a bad mom. Like I did so terrible, I ruined your whole life by doing, not raising you a certain way. And it was, she took it as if I was blaming her rather than just saying this is generational. All this is this is a whole big thing. It's not just you cause this thing. It's this was done to you too. And I tried to show her that and tell her that. And I just was like, It got to the point where I just, he was like, I talked to other people about this and they think it's, and I'm like, who are you talking to? She's like trying to get everybody's advice about this. And I'm like, it is a concept that's difficult to understand if you don't have self awareness and understanding of being able to take yourself out of the victim of it. She wanted to play like, I'm such a bad mom, blah, blah, blah. And in terms of feeling like this is something that I totally resonate with and it makes so much sense to me. And yet how come my mom can't understand where I'm coming from? So it was just a constant like push and pull, and I would talk about it online. And so I had to block her from all my social media because I was like going through this and working through this for myself and like talking about the mother wound all the time and having people like contact me and say Oh my gosh, this is my mom. It sounds like my mom. And I'm like, See, I'm not the only one, but then she would see what I was writing about and she would be like, why are you saying this stuff about me online? And I tried to be like, this isn't about you. This is my experience. Let me express it. She took it so personally. I guess if I was in her shoes, maybe I would take it personally to not understanding what it was. But it was like there wasn't even the opportunity to really sit down and discuss it and get her to a place where she could understand. And I, it was like, that was the fight. Like just trying to get her to understand where I was coming from was, I still don't think it's happened. I don't think she's ever met me where, on the same plane. Like we're just not, we just never have been able to understand each other that way.

She immediately got defensive and put up walls. When one thing she could have done is put herself in the position of a daughter and reflected on her own mother daughter relationship, and that could have helped her to understand yours.

Yeah, absolutely. And I tried to show her that and tell her that, and I'm actually close with my grandma, her mom, like I'm closer with her. She was born in the forties. Like she had my mom in the sixties when she was like 18 and just watching, even just those two generations to mine, like watching the progression of my grandma was. She was pregnant when she was a senior in high school, so she wasn't allowed in 1965 to walk across the stage knowing the condition that she was in. And, Yeah, my mom having me when she was like 24 and then I waited until I was like 33 to have a baby. And, The awareness my grandma must have been just terrified and just being so young and just, and she had to just go to work. Just hearing her talk about how my mom was raised from a baby and all of that, even just those two generations, I can see like the cycles that have happened and that the cycles that are breaking and just all of that. And it's just really interesting to me, but it also shows me. What the goal is here. I don't want to continue that feeling of I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who I am. I don't need to borrow from my daughter, like to figure out my own identity is what, that's really what it felt like with my mom and like with my grandma too. I'm sure she, sees what my mom does and she did her best, being 18 years old with a baby. I can't imagine just because. I waited a little bit longer, nothing wrong with whatever age you try, you decide to become a mom, but I just see so much cycle breaking happening. And I wish my mom could see that too. Look, this is what's happening here. You need to not take it personally. Take it as you can do this too. Like you can be a cycle breaking daughter to look at how you were raised and look at how I was raised and go way back. Like we have family history way back into the 1800s. Just look at the pictures, look at the babies in these pictures and watch the progression of how they've decided to live their lives differently those that came before them. That's the goal here. It's not about getting offended that I wrote about this online in my own experience. It's almost like she can only see this far just as close to her face what's in front of her, rather than far behind her and then far ahead.

She doesn't want to have to think about herself as a bad person, or as a mom that messed up, or as a mom that Didn't do her best, maybe.

Yeah,

absolutely.

And I try to have so much grace too, now that I've, even with that anger and frustration with her and just the resentment that comes up sometimes, or even the guilt, I try to look at all of that and just think, she's a person too, she was a daughter too. How would she feel if this was her? What if this was different in her life? What if my grandma did something different with her? I just try to think her experience is so different than mine, but at the same time, we're both trying to raise daughters. She's a little bit past the raising part, but she still has a daughter that If you want your daughter in your life, if you want to change the way that our relationship is can you just see it a different way? And I try to remember, give her that benefit of the doubt, that little bit of grace of she's still a person, still figuring it out. I try not to be on such like a high horse about all of this, but I feel like if I hadn't learned about the mother wound and started doing a lot of the looking at what I want to do differently and healing and letting go and releasing and forgiving and all the things. Then I don't think I could sit back and say, this isn't about me. If I hadn't learned all of that stuff, if I hadn't gone through all of this, I probably would still feel the same as her and only be able to see what's in front of my face and not all around and back and forth generationally.

Yeah. Your self awareness is greater than hers. What does your grandma think about your relationship with your mom?

I think she just tries to stay neutral because they're close as well. So it's interesting because I think if my mom could see the same things that my grandma sees from me, she could learn a couple of things. My grandma is very like accepting and just very. She'll admit she definitely raised my mom differently than I'm raising my daughter. She's always telling me what a great job I'm doing at everything, and she never tries to take credit for it herself. She's just different. And I think she wishes that we were closer. But at the same time she knows who my mom is. She knows how she behaves sometimes. And she's I understand, like, Why you need space from her and you need to be away from her. She understands. She doesn't ever try to push anything or anything like that on me.

If you think back to your childhood, what did you need as a little girl and also as an adolescent? What did you need from your mom in that time that you didn't get?

I feel like I needed more trust from her.

You needed her to trust you, or you needed to be able to trust her?

I think a little bit of both, but more at the time when I was younger, when I was especially a teenager. I needed her to trust me more. To make like Good decisions to make, to be able to not always have to do my absolute best. Like I was such a perfectionist. I wanted to be able to fail sometimes and her be able to be okay with it for me to be okay with it. I wanted her to just trust me to be able to talk about things. She would read my diary when I wasn't in my room or whatever she'd there was just such a violation of privacy and if she would have just trusted me a little more. I probably would have talked to her more and we could have understood each other better, but there was such little trust. It was constantly like invasive and she needed me to console her if she was upset. It was like that role reversal got in the way of so much. And if she would have just been like, I guess that's besides the trust part, but if she would have been more of like the parent then. me having to play parent sometimes with her, then I think we would have had a better dynamic and I would have maybe just been more open to her.

Yeah, would have created a different relationship. What would help you to maybe say yes to going to therapy with her since she has sent the email? Yeah, what do you need?

Ugh, I've actually drafted a response so many times, but I'm just too, I just feel so I think I would need her to just be accountable and just be really honest and say I know I've messed up. I know that we've had a difficult dynamic. I know we've had a difficult relationship and I'm willing to look all of that in the face and. do this work with you. I think that's really what I need to hear from her because so many times it's like she's made it about her and made it about everything that's gone on in her life. And I want her to just make that jump to be like, this is about you and me, like not just me. This is about both of us. This is a two person relationship, not like just I'm your mom and that's that. That's what has always been her kind of go to, I'm your mother and you have to listen to me and you have to do what I say and you have to make me happy and all this. And if we could just skip all of that, like just be real and just say listen, I'm ready to do this work and I know that I have work to do. That would push it. push me to be like open to some kind of therapy work with her. Yeah.

I hope you can get that.

Me too. I, like I said, it's very I know in my mind that is my next step, but it's just like getting everything else to catch up. Cause I feel so emotional in the anger or the guilt or whatever comes up and I'm just like nope, not now. Like not yet. So it's and once I can get over that and. I may have to just do one of those, rip the Band Aid off and not be over it and just pull the trigger kind of thing. Because honestly, that's, your brain can make the moves faster, I think, than your body can sometimes.

Yes, yeah. But our body often responds to things quicker than our brain gives us to words to to understand what it's responding to.

That makes sense. It can go either way. I feel like my brain maybe is the one that's, I don't know which one's holding me back, body or brain. And maybe it's both.

Yeah, possibly. Cause you've already tried with the book. You tried explaining it before and you tried opening up dialogue and she just pushed back on it and shut it down.

That's why I think I'm so caught up with this most recent attempt to reconnect because I've tried so many times to make this connection with you and show you, tell you, write, call, text, whatever. Now you've decided that you want to do something about it. It's almost is this a trick? All of a sudden, like this 180, like you all of a sudden want to reconnect. It's confusing to me a little bit. Cause I'm like, I've tried so many times, but not why now? I almost want to say too little, too late. Like you had your chance, but then there's part of me that feels guilty. And maybe she's come to her senses. Like maybe this is the time that. It's finally here, like you're going to do this work for real this time. I get caught up of I don't know, I don't want to get hurt. I don't want to regress and go back to the dynamics that we've had before. It's a lot easier to just not be in contact, honestly. than it is to navigate all the ups and downs of our relationship. So it needs to be really different if we're going to reconnect.

You've already done so much work to get yourself to this place. It's scary to possibly not move forward more, but to go backwards.

Yeah, exactly. One step forward, two steps back kind of feeling comes in and I'm like, I don't want to do that. I've made so much progress on my own. I'd love to just keep going, but In order to have a relationship with her, there's gotta be somewhere that we meet in the middle,

I'd like to know what you decide.

I'll keep you updated. Yes. Yeah, I'll let you know.

If you could leave any words of encouragement, or any last words to any woman listening to this that may hear similarities in your story, or feel like, this, my mom, sounds like your mom, What would you tell her? What words would you want to leave her with?

I would say Remember that you're, that you are a daughter and that your mom was a daughter and her mom was a daughter. I think that's so important because we get caught up in, in my experience in this, in the whole situation that I've just described, my mom would act like it was, I was blaming her. The hardest thing to get across was like that you're a daughter too. And if you have a mother wound or if your daughter saying that she has a mother wound. You probably have it too, because this is so generational. It goes through all the generations, back to back until somebody chooses to stop, like chooses to make it stop and just remembering that you're a daughter and that you have the power to stop that generational cycle from continuing, that's been my main focus through a lot of this, less about being like a perfect mom and more about being a healed daughter.

I love that because you've struggled with perfectionism your whole life. And so instead of getting caught up and wrapped up in how do you be the perfect mom, how do you be a hill daughter so that way you can show up for your daughter in whatever way she needs you to. I think that's a perfect way to go out. So love it. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing this and being so open with your story. And even telling us about something that's happening at the moment.

It's a process and I'm happy to share it as much as it's like a kind of a vulnerable thing. Feel like it's really taboo to talk about this because it's your mom, you only have one mom. You hear that all the time and you can't talk bad about her. You can't talk about what the struggle is between you two or your relationship. I think it's so taboo. And I think the more that. That we talk about it, the more healed daughters there's going to be, and then the more healed mothers there's going to be, because once you have your own child, it's like all of this stuff comes up. It came up even more intensely after I gave birth and I became a mom myself. I was like, wow, this is even more intense than I thought. And I'm really dedicated to doing this work. Yeah, I love to share this whole process and the whole background and everything because a lot of people do resonate with this and it's just not spoken of a lot. Yeah,

and so if we can get people to stop suffering in silence, we can get them to chill in community because there is a community of daughters. Who are being the cycle breakers? Absolutely. Thank you so much. I enjoyed this. I hope the listeners enjoyed this. Yeah, me too.

That's all for today's episode of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I hope you picked up some valuable insights that you can start using right away in your own relationship to create deeper connection and understanding. I. If something from today's episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the mother or daughter in your life who needs to hear this message. And while you're at it, please consider leaving a rating and review so we can reach more families and transform the way mothers and daughters relate to each other. For those ready to take the next step, you can visit my website to learn more about my private coaching programs and my program designed specifically for mother-daughter pairs. Whether you're dealing with communication challenges, life transitions, just an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.