my mother & i
musings on the idea of daughters and their mothers existing as mirrors of each other
the most complicated relationship i have is with my mother. i think that is the nature of being the byproduct of someone, existing within them for 9 months; it forms an intense relationship. i would not exist without my mother, but she would exist without me. i owe her my life, the life that she created for me. i can’t comprehend what that is like: having a daughter, carrying them within me, and then my identity changing from “woman” to “mother,” because god knows, a mother cannot exist in society as anything else.
my relationship with my mom is one of ups and downs, long phone calls that devolve into circular arguments, and petty fights, but it also is full of constant love, a weirdly in-tune sense that could only be described as the shared bond between a mother and her first child.
i know because of how similar we are, we know the buttons to push to get each other riled up. i know exactly what to say that will frustrate her because half of the time, it’s something that would frustrate me. we are forever linked by the most intense of ties, our lives bound together.
there’s this quote from the movie autumn sonata that has resonated with me since i first heard it:
a mother and daughter — what a terrible combination of feelings and confusion and destruction. everything is possible and everything is done in the name of love and solicitude. the mother's injuries are to be handed down to the daughter, the mother's disappointments are to be paid for by the daughter, the mother's unhappiness is to be the daughter's unhappiness. it's as if the umbilical cord had never been cut.
reading that quote shifted something inside of me and everything clicked. the umbilical cord will always exist between mother and daughter, my mother and i. i firmly believe that none of it is intentional, the generational traumas my mother unconsciously deals with are not forced on me, but they seep through the cord that binds us. she can’t hold them back from me because i feel what she feels, the bond between us makes it so that is often the case. i had a lot of anger towards my mom when i was younger before i understood that she is not just my mother, she is someone’s daughter so she understands the pain of absorbing your mother’s disappointment, sadness, and anger. how can i hold that against her when she has experienced that herself? if anything, that brings us closer together in my eyes.
i watched lady bird for the first time when i was 16 and it embedded itself into a deep part of my brain reserved for strong emotions and my most intense thoughts. at that time, i had never watched a movie that made me feel so sick, made me sob until i thought i would throw up. when i was 16 and lady bird came out i was so confused with my life. i saw myself living in my small new jersey town and i understood christine “ladybird” in a deeply profound way. i’ll never forget the visceral reaction i had to lady bird asking her mother “but do you like me?” after her mother told her that she loved her. it’s something that’s crept into my thoughts over and over for the past 6-ish years because i think about the complexities of my relationship with my mom, how often we argue and go at each other’s throats, how we’ll end up crying from the other’s words or immediately go to each other for advice, that’s love. i know how deeply we love each other, but sometimes i can’t tell if we like each other.
my mom isn’t my friend. we don’t have a relationship comparable to those of a lot of girls my age and their moms, where they hang out, gossip, travel, and treat each other like best friends. my mom is my mom, i rely on her for emotional support, advice, and the occasional dose of common sense. she is the person i’ve always gone to vent my rage to, to cry to, and to commiserate with. i can’t see us as equals, but as different sides of the same coin. we are always attached to one another but are vastly different. she is heads, i am tails. we can’t both be heads, i can’t expect her to always say what i consider to be the correct answer or react the way i would handle a situation. there’s a part of me that craves the simplicity that would come with letting my mom be my friend, but there’s a deeper, more inherently feminine connection between us, between knowing how attached we are in our own special way.
i’ve read countless books, watched movies, and listened to stories all centered on the beating heart of a relationship between mother and daughter. every time i immerse myself in one of these stories, i find myself unconsciously comparing those relationships to my own with my mom. i wonder if we are as dysfunctional (we are not), if our love is as strong (it is), if we will simultaneously destroy one another in the way that life forces mothers and daughters against each other. society cannot let mother and daughter exist as women together, there will always be the pressure of motherhood on one’s shoulders and the potential daughterhood is full of on the other’s.
i want my mom to be an individual, to be a woman without having the ties of motherhood binding her to the miserable, cruel society that we live in, but selfishly, i hold her back, i tug on the cord that runs between us to force her to maintain her identity as “mother.” i want her to be an equal, i want us to be girls together, but i am the one who cannot escape the societal prison that makes me view her only as my mother. there is something to be said that now, after separating from my father, she has stepped beyond the guise of motherhood in my eyes, has created an identity for herself outside the bounds of motherhood. i see her interests, her activities, and how she lives as a woman and not just a mother, and i slowly let that cord loosen.
<3
Pls enlighten on the orchid 🙏