Mothers...

It really bothers me that mothers can truly get under their daughter's skin. Case in point - my mother claims I am a horrible daughter just because I didn't send her kendha leaves (they are used to make a concoction which is helpful to reduce her cholestrol), and that I didn't finish a letter she wanted. Firstly, I admit I did forget about the kendhe but at the same time, she doesn't have a servant at home to make it for her and when she comes home, she can get it from our place. Regarding the letter, the corrections were minimum (adding a comma, changing literally ONE word) - which I completed before picking up my son in school. She made me cry... which is not a pretty sight.. She made it sound like I did something very horrendously bad to her, which I didn't do intentionally..

I wrote an article some time back about Mothers and Daughters, I will repeat it here...
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Mothers and Daughters – Can They Ever Be Friends?

The relationship between mothers and daughters are usually quite strained. When we are younger, our mothers seem the all-knowing ever-present caring women who we look up to and admire. We daughters smear our faces with their lipsticks, borrow their big shoes and try and emulate our mommies. Then as we reach our teenage years, “mommy” becomes “oh mother” as she suddenly becomes the most ignorant, out-of-touch creature on the planet. As we get continue to get older, we seem to earn their disapproval at every nook and cranny. We never seem good enough, thin enough, exercise enough, I could go on. Hopefully, when we reach our mid-30s and beyond, if we are lucky, according to psychologists, we become best friends with our mothers again. What causes this unusual bond?

No relationship is quite as primal as the one between a mother and her daughter. "It's the original relationship, and it's also a relationship that has been sentimentalized but not honoured," says Lee Sharkey, Ph.D., who directs the Women's Studies program at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she teaches a popular course in mother-daughter relationships. "Women grow up and our energy is largely turned toward men, but the original love relationship is with a mother. If we as daughters don't acknowledge that, we're closing ourselves off from a great source of power and fulfilment and understanding of ourselves."

But mothers and daughters aren't always best friends. Storm clouds in the adult mother-daughter relationship most often arise over one very basic question, says Laura Tracy, Ph.D., a family therapist who specializes in counselling mother-daughter pairs and has written books on the relationships between women. "Will the mother accept the daughter as an adult? That means, when she's visiting you, does she let you run your house? Does she trust you to be independent on small issues as well as large — who are you with, what's your sexuality, where do you work, how do you spend your money? Letting the daughter be her own woman is a universal issue," she explains.

Mothers often find it hard to let go of their children, especially their daughters. They have seen them growing up, changed their diapers, kissed away tears and listened to stories of teenage love and romance. They cannot picture their daughters as fully-functional adults. In their eyes, they are still their little baby who scraped her knee and wailed for her mother.

Mothers and daughters who struggle with their relationships as adults often repeat the old patterns of control and rebellion from childhood, says Dr. Tracy. "They can't hear each other. The daughter will hear the mother say something and she'll think, 'She wants to control me.' And the mother is saying something that absolutely is controlling, but is not meant to be." Meanwhile, when the daughter speaks, the mother hears nothing but anger — in a comment that does indeed convey anger but also "I love you, and can't we do this differently?"

As daughters, we seem to very rarely if not never gain our mother’s approval. No matter how successful, or thin, we are, we are still not good enough. There is always someone better, thinner, who exercises more than us.

However, believe it or not, most mothers are supportive of their daughters, even though they may not show it to them. “[They] want to be supportive of their daughters, and feel very confused by them," says Juanita Johnson, a New York-based therapist and storyteller who does presentations on the mother-daughter relationship with her own 27-year-old daughter. "One of the things that I observe quite frequently is that the mother knows so very little about her own self that she's placing way too much emphasis on how her daughter turns out rather than, 'What do I know about myself and how do I feel about myself?' I think daughters can model a great deal from a mother who is self-aware herself."

The irony is, most women fear of growing up to be like one's mother. It has long been so common among Western women that it has a name — matrophobia. It is quite common and usually after a while, we daughters do realize that mother was right after all (about certain things, of course!!).

The best gift a mother can give a daughter — and, as she becomes an adult, that a daughter can give her mother — is permission to be herself, says Juanita Johnson. "The daughter can be who she wants to be because the mother is who she wants to be, and I think increasingly mothers understand that," she says. "If daughters have trouble navigating being an adolescent, it's often because they don't know who they are. They're sacrificing themselves to fit in. All that spunkiness they had as a little girl goes out the window and they lose touch with what I call their internal compass."

Anna takes pride in her daughters' strength. "I think they're all independent and strong-willed women, which is good, but they're also kind. It's important to be your own woman, but also to have some compassion and understanding of other people, otherwise I think your life is too narrow," she observes. "Women are told now that they must be strong and assertive, and that's fine, but you need another component also to have a satisfying life. That's how I see them, and I hope that's something that I've given them."
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Honestly, I doubt mothers and daughters EVER being friends.. Its not like they compete with each other, I think they are on different frequencies.. I adore my mum, but honestly, sometimes she can be a pain..