Mothers Who Cannot Love

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• You try to make peace with her and find yourself pulled back into a web of criticism and manipulation. Once more you’re the ungrateful one. The selfish one. The unforgiving one. The one who will always owe her, no matter what she does.
• You seek advice from relatives and sometimes from friends, who respond,
“How can you talk that way about your mother? She gave you life. What’s wrong with you?”
• You have the misfortune of consulting misguided therapists who urge you to “forgive and forget” and make peace with your mother, no matter how high the emotional cost to you.
• You try to get support from a priest, minister, or spiritual counselor and you’re met with responses like: “Honor thy mother.” “You won’t heal until you forgive.” “Family is everything.”
• You even try talking to your partner, who counsels: “Don’t let her get to you. That’s just the way she is.”

你想要和妈妈和好，却发现自己被重重批判和控制网罗。再一次，你是那个不知道感恩的，自私的，不懂宽恕的人，是那个永远欠了她的人，不论她做了什么。
当你从亲戚朋友那里寻求建议的时候，他们会说“你怎么能这么说你妈？她给你了生命。你怎么了？”
如果你不幸遇到一个被误导的咨询师，你会被要求“原谅和忘记”再和妈妈和好，不论这对你来说要付出多少情绪代价。
你可能试图向牧师或者灵修导师寻求支持，你会得到类似于“孝敬你的母亲” “除非你宽恕，不然你的伤口不会愈合” “家庭是一切” 这样的回复。
你甚至尝试向你的伴侣倾诉，但他们只会建议 “别让她跟你说话，她就是那个样子。”

所以在一切的一切之后，你又回到了原点—— 困惑彷徨，孤独无依，甚至因为想要面对你的过去的念头而羞愧。你可能会开始怀疑自己是否应该有这些感受。

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Even if you have a full life of your own, she wants you to stay her little girl, joined to her at the hip. She holds out promise and praise that disappear when you prove to have a mind of your own. And she tries to mold you by making you feel guilty if you don’t go along with her wishes and needs.

As the child grows, she takes bigger steps into the world on her own, falls, and makes mistakes. And, if she’s lucky, her mother is the safe harbor she can return to, even after doing something foolish or rebellious. This is especially true during the teen years, when a daughter is figuring out who she is, testing limits, learning what those alien creatures called boys are like, and deciding what kind of woman she’d like to become.

• 即使你已经完全有了自己的人生，她仍然希望你是跟在妈妈屁股后面的小女儿。但如果你向她证明你有你自己的想法，那她口里就不会再有鼓励和赞美。当你不按照她的想法做事的时候，她会让因此你感到愧疚——这就是她如何塑造你的一举一动。

• 我们本应学会，爱是无条件的互相支持、鼓励、接受和喜欢，并且有彼此呼吸的空间，但你学会的是，爱是给予对方想要的，而忽略了你自己的需求。

• 孩子成长过程中重要的一步是，蹒跚这迈开自己的步伐去探索这个世界，摔倒，犯错，然后如果她幸运的话，她的母亲是她永远的港湾，即使她犯过傻，悖逆过。这在青少年时期尤其重要——当一个女孩正在试图了解自己究竟是什么样的人，以及了解那些叫做“男性”的外星生物时。

• 一个在家中遭受凌霸的女孩也倾向于在外界遭受凌霸——明眼人不难看出这二者之间的联系。如果一个控制欲强的母亲迫使她的女儿成长为一个安静、服从、不抱怨的人，那么自然而然地，她就会在其他地方也承担这样的角色。

• 一个孩子是没有力量解决她母亲的问题的 ——只有她的母亲自己能做到这一点。

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Instead of understanding that love is a free exchange of support, encouragement, acceptance, and affection, with lots of space to breathe, you’ve learned that you must earn love by giving other people what they want, like it or not, and taking your own needs and wants out of the equation.

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Perhaps most troubling, even when you take great pains as an adult to escape her reach, you’re very likely to carry with you huge reserves of the anger and resentment her control created in you. You may also have a powerful need to exert control in your own life, often by controlling other people. Or, conversely, you may live with the sense that you must always put others’ needs ahead of your own.

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It’s not hard to see the connection between being bullied at home as a young girl and becoming vulnerable to bullying in the outside world. Pushed to be quiet, uncomplaining, and compliant by a controlling mother, it’s natural for a child to take that role at school.

SAMANTHA: “I know. Yelling in general freaks me out. I grew up with it, I hate it,
and I just shut down when people raise their voices. I hold things in for a long
time . . . and then I explode.”

A young child doesn’t have the power to solve her mother’s problems —only her mother can do that.

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Identifying false beliefs that demean us:

You are so selfish.
You are so ungrateful.
There’s something wrong with you.
You have terrible judgment.

That burden us:

You are my whole life.
You’re the only one I can count on.
I need you so much—I couldn’t make it without you.

That make us feel we owe mothers:

It’s your job to take care of me.
You have no right to challenge me or say anything bad about me—after all, I gave you life.
I got bullied by others because you are not home.

Instead, write down lies versus truth.

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Write a letter to your mom (not to be delivered):

1. This is what you did to me.
2. This is how I felt about it at the time.
3. This is how it affected my life.
4. This is what I want from you now.

“Don’t worry that you’re ‘wallowing in self-pity,’ ” I told her.
“You’re not ‘just feeling sorry for yourself.’ It’s about time you gave yourself
permission to feel sorry about the things you missed out on.”

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My mother couldn’t love me and it wasn’t my fault.

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Let go of the fantasy of a good mother…

I hereby lay to rest my fantasy of the good
mother. It wasn’t in the cards for me. It didn’t happen, and I know it never will.
It wasn’t my fault.
I’m no longer willing to distort the rest of my life to try to make her
happy.