Essay 114: How to be a good mom even if you didn’t have one

I was recently interviewed by Rachel Nielsen for her awesome 3in30 podcast. The episode aired on 05/13/19. You can listen to episode 081 here.

The essay below is what I wrote in preparation for the interview and sent to Rachel.

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Rachel,

I’ve been using traveling and jetlag as reasons why I hadn’t yet written my takeaways on the theme of “How to be a good mom even if you didn’t have one”. Ever since you mentioned an interest in this, I’ve thought of it daily… yet I procrastinated. Today, with less than a week before the deadline we agreed upon, I realized I was scared and that’s why I hadn’t written yet.

In order to write about “how to be a good mom”, I’d have to feel confident enough to call myself a good mom. Can I go there? When you don’t feel love from your own mother, when you don’t have that nurturing foundation, you grow up all shaky and it’s hard to find your balance and know your worth.

So here I am, rationally able to determine that I am indeed a good person, a good mother, but emotionally, it’s so hard. It’s as if my mother is sitting on my shoulder, hissing in my ears: “who do you think you are?”

Let’s see if I can do this!

Before we get to our 3 doable takeaways, I want to set the stage and the expectations. Let’s start by defining what is a good mom.
Google answered this: patient, empathetic, strong, humble, attuned, respectful, supportive, etc… etc… Simply stated, a good mom is a loving mom (even if she loses it at times), one who cares (even when she gets annoyed a hundred times a day), one who wants the best for her children (even if she may not be able to provide it quite yet), one who is willing to sacrifice (even though she still hides the chocolate to eat by herself after the kid’s asleep).

And let’s remember this: a good mom is still going to be an imperfect one.

The range of what can be considered bad parenting is broad and can include physical as well as emotional abuse. My own childhood was far from being completely horrendous. I had a comfortable home. I was well fed (my mother was a great cook). I went to private school. I traveled to exotic places every year. I was not a beaten child.

I just wasn’t loved by my mother. Here are just a few examples:

• When I was 10, she stole money I had earned working a week for my uncle (about $100 then, which was a lot of money for a 10 yo). She let me cry and made me believe one of my cousins did it. Later she admitted taking the money but offered no apologies.
• When I was 16 and had just been legally emancipated, I went to retrieve my belongings at my parents’ house. My mother grabbed lighter fluid and matches to set me on fire! (I fought back, called for help and was rescued by firefighters.)
• There were dinner dates with her lovers that she’d take me to when I was in Middle-school, inappropriately sexy clothes she encouraged me to wear in High-school.
• She labeled me a know-it-all for having opinions of my own.
• The day I got married, she told me: ”Enjoy it while it lasts!”. (I have been happily married for 21 years now).
• After I’d moved to Hawaii and would come back to visit her (which involves 27 hours of flying), she wouldn’t always pick me up from the airport or see me off when it was time to leave.

I now know Mother fit all 9 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.

I was an inconvenience to her when I was a child, and then, as I became an adult, a threat. She made it clear that if I hadn’t been born, life would have been easier, better for her. She even told me: “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t have kids.” Well, if I could do it again, I wouldn’t have had her as a mother!

Lucky for me, I had a great Dad, and that I believe has made all the difference. (My parents divorced when I was 17.)

Let’s get to the three takeaways:

Takeaway #1: Do what’s obvious
Accept your plight
Be the adult
Bring your healthiest self.

Accept your plight:
If you want to find solutions, you have to admit that there is a problem. Let go of the what ifs and embrace what is.

“Every little girl deserves to have a mother who is crazy about her.” (Karyl McBride).
When she doesn’t, she assumes it must be her own fault. But now, as a woman, as a mother herself, she has to lift this terrible burden off of her shoulders and acknowledge that it was never about her; she was never the problem; she was born innocent.

Be the adult:
I couldn’t continue to go through life acting like a wounded child, using my poor upbringing as an excuse for my inappropriate behavior.  I had to mourn my loss, woman up, and be the parent now.

Bring your healthiest self:
It is important to make self care a priority. Exercise, good nutrition and enough sleep are a must to regulate emotions.
If you lacked nurturing growing up, you have to nurture yourself now.
If your body is not healthy, you won’t have the energy required to be a good mom.
If you’re stressed out and tired all the time, you’ll be trapped in lizard brain mode and it will be harder to act intentionally and rationally.

Takeaway #2: Do what’s easy:
Be who you are
Teach what you know.

Be who you are:
It should be easy to be yourself but when you had a difficult upbringing, it’s not that easy. My mother’s behavior taught me that I was never good enough. I never measured up so I constantly tried to be someone else in the hopes that she’d finally love me. My mother was wrong.

I am enough. I am valuable. I deserve to be loved simply because I exist.

In an effort to become better, we think we must change completely! We don’t have to. We don’t have to beat ourselves up over everything. We can strive to be our best self but we don’t have to become someone else and we don’t have to do it all. We just have to be honest and kind with ourselves. Role model self acceptance. Burry the doubts. Be true to our nature, even if our mothers didn’t celebrate it.

Teach what you know:
Your mother may have had a tendency to focus on what you did wrong, but you don’t have to. You may have a lot of weaknesses because of your upbringing, but you have a lot of strengths too. Don’t downplay these.
What are you good at? What comes naturally to you?

I have a girlfriend who can sew, crochet and make pizza from scratch. She also has a thriving crate vegetable garden, she spear fishes, plays the piano and makes jewelry. I can’t do any of that and I could feel bad about it. Or I could take stock of what I do well and focus on sharing that with my daughter. I cook well, I have a knack for organization, I’m a successful business owner, I’m a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and I love writing. My daughter has won a poetry contest; she has her own business selling gratitude cards; she trains martial arts, knows how to fold our laundry and cooks omelettes for her Dad. I could learn to crochet alongside my daughter, but I don’t have to in order to be a good mom.

For a long time, I thought I had to bake cookies and love to pretend play (two things I very much dislike doing) in order to be a good mom. I don’t.
I read aloud and play board games. Because that all comes easy to me, I didn’t think it “counted”. I didn’t think it earned me “points”. It absolutely does.
Give yourself points for every little good thing you do, even the easy ones. Especially the easy ones.

Takeaway #3: Do what’s hard:
Make the hard decision
Have the hard conversation
Make the hard choice.

Make the hard decision:

Should you stay or should you go?

You have to decide to either stay in a relationship with your defective mother (and figure out a way to endure the inevitable turmoil that comes from that) or sever all ties to keep your sanity and protect your children. I chose the latter when my daughter was 1 year old and mother had started displaying her manipulative ways with my sweet child. I never spoke to my mother again. She died six years later. I don’t regret my choice but it is a very personal one. You may want to seek professional help to determine what’s the best course of action for you.

Have the hard conversation:
Once you have made the decision, tell your kids why you made it. If they know the truth, it will prevent them from making up stories in their own minds, feeling confused or even being mad at you. Very early on I told my daughter why she didn’t have a grandmother on my side. I explained that, someone who doesn’t treat you well shouldn’t be part of your life regardless of their title. I also explained to her, that because I didn’t have a good role model growing up, I picked up some bad habits that I’m working hard on breaking. Which brings me to my last piece of advice…

Make the hard choice:

Will you break the cycle?

Whatever your biggest issue, tackle it. Stop ignoring it. Stop making excuses for it.
Acknowledge it.
Commit to change.
Get help.

Dr Laura Schlessinger says: “You have two chances at a healthy parent-child relationship. The first time, you’re the child and you have no power. The second time, you’re the parent and you have all the power.”
With power, comes great responsibility. You’re not doomed because of your past but you can’t just wish to be a good mom and not put in the work. It won’t happen magically.

My biggest problem was anger management. I had a very short fuse, was very defensive and easily offended. When my daughter was a baby and sleep deprivation had transformed me into a mad woman, I would slam doors and throw things on the floor in desperation. (Behaviors I had learned from my mother. I remember a particularly bad day in my childhood when Mother broke all of our glasses and plates on the dining room floor). I knew I had to change.
I reached out to a friend-psychologist. She forwarded me the self-paced program she used with her patients and recommended the book Mind Over Mood. Both helped tremendously. I haven’t slammed a door in years.
I continue to read inspirational books almost daily. Non fiction and fiction. Books that portray good mothers (such as Little Women or Little House series). I surround myself with friends who parent well and can offer me sound advice. I focus on progress.

My mother didn’t know how to love, but I do. If I continue on this path of self improvement, I am confident that my daughter will look back fondly on her childhood and that, when she’s an adult, she’ll say: “MY mom was a good mom even though SHE didn’t have a good one!”

That’s the best compliment I can hope for.

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For the sake of sticking to the 30 minutes time limit of the podcast, we changed the takeaways slightly and the conversation flowed into other topics as well. Click here to listen to my interview on episode 081. 

Books:

Mind Over Mood: Change How You Feel by Changing the Way You Think by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky.

Will I ever be good enough: healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers by Karyl McBride.

Podcasts:

3in30 by Rachel Nielsen: https://3in30podcast.com

Better Than Happy by Jody Moore: https://jodymoore.com/podcast/

Essays that relate: 

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/am-i-enough/

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/the-one-where-i-dont-like-being-a-mother/

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/the-backstory/

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/the-battle-of-the-voices-in-my-head/

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/the-one-where-i-tell-you-what-a-good-mother-i-am/

https://www.sarahbadatrichardson.com/the-magical-powers-of-love/