Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Show the podcast for mothers and daughters who want to build stronger bonds, deepen their understanding and transform their relationships. I'm your host, Brittany Scott, licensed therapist and mother-daughter relationship coach. After years of working with hundreds of daughters. And mothers. I've developed strategies that help break generational patterns, heal wounds, and create the loving relationships you've always wanted. Each week I'll be sharing insights from real clients, expert interviews and practical tools you can use immediately to improve your mother-daughter dynamic. Whether you're struggling with communication breakdowns, navigating major life transitions, or simply wanna take your already good relationship to the next level. The show is for you. And yes, the transformation I guide my clients through can be yours too. I'll share more about how you can work with me. It's time to experience the relationship you both deserve. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Hey, welcome to or welcome back to the Mother-Daughter Relationship show. I'm your host, Brittany. In today's episode, I wanna talk about one of the hardest parts of healing a mother wound, and that is being able to accept the mother that you did receive. We all have an idea of what a mother should be, how she should act, how she should show up, you know, everything that a mother should emulate, and then sometimes the mother that we receive does not live up to that expectation or the idea that we have in our head. And that letdown can be huge and it can be really hard to work through. Okay, so I'm gonna give you a little bit of homework in this episode. This was not gonna be long 'cause you're just gonna have to go and do the work. Either if you already journal, grab your journal and you're, I'm gonna give you some prompts. If you don't journal and you have no interest in journaling, just grab a sheet of paper so you can write some of this stuff down and actually process it the first thing that I want you to do is write down everything that you wanted in a mother, everything you believe a mother should be. How you expect moms to show up and you know, just your expectations, no matter how high they are, no matter how ridiculous they may sound. Or even if you've never seen a mom do that, you just wish that's how they showed up. It doesn't matter. Write down your expectations for. A mother or the mother that you wanted or needed, and then I want you to write down the mother that you got. So take the ideas of what a mother should be. What should she do? How should she act? How does she show up? And then basically match that with the mother that you got. And this might be a huge disappointment to actually really sit down and think about, and to write out and to process. Okay, these feelings might, it might not feel good. Might be very disappointing, but I still want you to do it. And then after those two things are done, what I want you to do is write to. The little girl that was parented by the mother that you got and not the mother that you wanted. Talk to her about how that's not what she should have received and that it sucks that that is what she received. Talk to her about how you got through it, about who you are now as an adult. If you're not an adult listening to this, then just talk to her about how you're getting through it, how you're handling this, not receiving what you need. Talk to a younger you and then remind her that just because there are things that her mom. Was unable to or uninterested in giving her, was unable to show up or uninterested in showing up for, you know, same lines with support and emotional support and all the things. Either she was unable or she was uninterested. Just because that happened to her from her mother doesn't mean that other love doesn't exist. And so you're gonna talk to the little girl that has been parented or was parented by the mom you did receive, and help her to accept that in order to heal, she has to stop imagining the mom that she wanted. She has to stop being upset with this big gap between what she wanted and what she got. She has to work on accepting what she got. You today have to work on accepting what you did get. That way you can actually heal the pain that came from it. It's gonna be really hard to heal a mother wound when you're still hoping and wishing that your mom was someone else. She's not. Maybe she can be, but she wasn't. Maybe she's willing to work on this and build a better relationship with you and show up differently, but in the past she wasn't. So you still have to reconcile with what you didn't receive and who she was. This part is really hard because that little girl in you still wants the mom that she envisions the one that you wrote about in your expectations. She still wants that mom. That little girl is still inside of you. One of the things about children and their parents, and this eventually goes away, but it happens in young children. They struggle to see their parents as bad. They in turn see themselves as bad. Or I'm not saying mothers are bad people or whatever. You can decide that about your mother if you'd want to. I was not parented by her, so I cannot decide for you if she was good or bad. they struggle to see their parents as bad. They in turn and instead see themselves as bad. If I just. Do better if I just act better if I just stop doing this. If I try harder, if I wasn't such a bad girl, then my mommy or my daddy or my parents, whoever, then my mommy would love me or she would do this, or she would come back or she would play with me or she would do whatever children can't see themselves outside of their parents, and so when something's going wrong with their parents. They think about it as like they think about themselves. If I was just a good girl, then my mommy would fill in the blank. And so getting that little girl to stop desiring the mom that she desires, those expectations that you wrote down, that's really hard to do. That's why this portion is really difficult because when you are left with the mother wound. There's parts of you in your heart and like in your wound and the things that you want are still coming from that little girl that never got it. I hope that makes sense. That part of you is still that little child that wants her mom to be the perfect mom and to show up in the way that you wanted or you needed her to show up. Like I said, you wrote it down. You know what's on this paper. That little girl is still inside of you. She hasn't gone anywhere, and if you haven't worked to heal the mother wound, then she's still in there struggling with, well, wait, what's wrong with me? Why wasn't I good enough? Why am I not good enough? What do I need to do for my mommy to love me more? To be better, or to show up better? Or again, whatever it is that you needed that you didn't get, or whatever you expected of a mom. That you didn't get from a mom. She's, that little girl is still in there wanting those things, and so that makes this process really hard of accepting the mom that you got. So while you're working on healing your mother wound, maybe by yourself doing the healing all alone or maybe in conjunction with your mom and trying to prepare the relationship. Remember that while you're doing this work, that little girl you comes out, the young girl part of you is still in there and she's also healing too. And it's not just the adult you that can think logically through some of this. When those emotions hit and the disappointment shows back up and your heart gets hurt again, remember that part of that is the little girl that never really got what she needed that was missing something that was hurt along the way. She's still in there and she's healing along with you while you're doing a lot of this work. Logically, as an adult, it's not easy. It's very difficult work. We're talking about a parent relationship. We're supposed to be able to trust our mothers, to love us fiercely, show up for us in all the ways that we need and see us completely for who we are. We expect that of our moms, and when they fall. Short of that, that hurt is deep, is part of how you talk to yourself. It's part of how you move through the world. It's part of how you build relationships that hurt and that wound walks with you through other relationships and in other spaces and in other ways that you connect with people. So give yourself some grace and know that, you know, this takes time and, and it hurts. But the first place that you're gonna start is accepting the mom that you got. So do that exercise. Write out the expectations. Write out everything that you wanted and all the desires you had in a mom and everything you envision of who a mother should be. And then write down all the ways that your mom did show up who she actually was, where she fell short, where you needed more of her. Where she didn't really show up at all. Write all of those things down and then work through the disappointment of that gap. That gap of what your desires were and your expectations and your dreams of a mother versus the mom that you did get everything in that gap. That's the disappointment. So work through the gap of your expectations and what you got and doing this, accepting the mother that you did get is not making excuses for her. It's not saying, well, that was okay. She did the best that she could. You don't have to do that to yourself. You don't have to use that phrase, that phrase just hurts more because okay, maybe she did do the best that she could, but it still wasn't enough for you. So it's not about making excuses for her. It's not about immediately just accepting like that you didn't get enough. It's accepting who she was. It's accepting her capacity and how she showed up. It's seeing her for everything that she is, every role that she played. She was your mother, but she wasn't just a mother. She was other things too. So part of that is taking her off the pedestal of a mother. Take her off the pedestal, see her for everything that she is, and accept her for who she is, so that way you can start healing. It's about accepting the mom that you got, not making expectations for her behavior. When you're able to do this, it gets easier to set boundaries. It gets easier to stop asking, well, why can't she? Or, well, why won't she? You understand the mother that you got. You are able to live your life for you and not for her. Make decisions that make you happy. Create relationships that bring you joy, like you're able to do more things when you can accept. This is who my mother is. This is the mother that I got. You don't have to keep wishing and hoping you don't have to keep waiting. You get to maybe be surprised if she chooses to change one day, but you've already accepted who she is, so making choices and decisions and moving through your life become so much easier. That's what I have for you today. For this episode. Remember that there's a place where you can leave a question for me, either very specific about your relationship or just a topic that maybe I haven't touched on or you want me to go deeper on or explain better. If you have a question or want me to talk about a specific topic, please leave that for me. The link is in the show notes. I'd love to answer your specific questions for you. Thank you for being here and for being a listener, and I will catch you in the next one. 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. 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, or just wanna strengthen an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.