Why mother-daughter relationships can be complicated

There are too many daughters admitting to having a difficult relationship with their mothers. They both feel misunderstood, invisible and hurt by the emotional distance between them. 

On the other hand, adolescent girls are reacting with anger and some new mothers are mourning the lack of connection and support they need from their mothers, this is stemming solely from their unique individual problems and issues.

However, a daughter’s relationship with her mother lays the foundation for her relationship with herself. From her mother she will either learn how to claim her life and be fully visible in all her relationships or to silence herself, accept invisibility as a normal way of being. 

Why is mother-daughter relationship so complicated?

Beryl, 25 narrates how growing up, her mother was her worst enemy.

I remember being angry with my mother during my middle adolescence because she looked so depressed and bored as she went each day to the shops to get bread and provisions for the family. I did not want that to be my future. I hated that she was showing me a future where my life and energy would be completely taken up with caring for a family and feeling bored and depressed. In as much as I knew that she was raising us single-handedly, my adolescent mind did not understand the pressures that had placed my mother in that role. All I knew was that she was showing me my future and I did not like it.

As her daughter, I needed her to show me something different. To show me how to find my way out of being stuck with something that was not making me happy. I needed her to teach me how to say and believe in my right to speak my needs, and create for myself a life that nurtured and fed me, as well as my family. I needed her to teach me that feeding my family and ignoring my own needs is not a sustainable existence for any mother.

During my early years of childhood, I loved my mother so much but everything changed when she turned into a human I didn’t recognize. She could be angered by anything and kept shouting at the slightest opportunity she got. This made me to love school more than I loved home. Any time I needed to communicate my needs to her, I used to write her letters because I had so much fear.

I carried this fear with me for a very long time. My mother and I were never connected in any way. Had I gone through something tragic, I swear, I wouldn’t tell her. 

I got a relief when I joined University and decided to seek therapy. After months of being into therapy, I realized that the journey to claiming the lost language that speaks a mother’s emotional needs starts with the women who have come before.

I was lucky enough to still have my great-grandmother and my grandmother alive, so I had conversations with them trying to understand all I could about their lives, what their relationships and experiences had been like, and how they had been treated and treated themselves.

I had to understand my family’s emotional map. This technique helped me to discover where needs and feelings were heard and ignored, what events and beliefs had harmed them and even erased their emotional needs, and how this had affected the relationship with themselves and each other.

One of the strongly held themes I discovered in my family was that selflessness by women was treated as a badge-of-honor that they had learnt to wear proudly. This helped me to understand why my mother acted the way she did, I made peace with that and with her too and decided to break that cycle. I believe those that will come after me will do better so as to change this narrative.

Atara, 30, also shares her painful experience that led to a complicated relationship with her mother.

How do I tell the story of a woman who made life a living hell for me? In case you’re wondering who, this woman is, she is my mother. Some times I hate calling her mother because to me, a mother shouldn’t be anything that she was to me. This year marks 10 years since we lost her, all I can say about her death is…...am glad she rested. Her rest made me know how it feels like to experience peace.

Atara remembers the nights that gave her nightmares. The nights she was tortured and raped by her “mother’s husband”.

 I have never known my father, maybe, he has never existed, that’s what my mother said. My mother got married to another man called Njuguna, I call him my “mother’s husband” because to me, he was a monster, not worthy to be called a father, not even by his biological children.

My mum had an engaging job because some nights she went for night shifts and that meant that I remained home with the monster. During such nights, Njuguna would sneak into my room holding a knife. This time, I was 13, a Grade 8 learner in a nearby school.

”I will kill you if you dare tell your mother what I do to you,” Njuguna would threaten me.

For a long time, I lived in fear and pain. I was shuttered in all manner; Psychologically, emotionally and physically. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my teachers at school. After 6 years of going through the same experience, I finally decided to tell my mum, at this time, I had just completed my high school, I was 19 years old. I had no fear, I was ready to die. After all, I had nothing to live for.

“You can’t say that about my husband, he is the one who has been paying your school fees and catering for our needs in this house. It is very normal for girls to go through that. You’re a woman already, you’ll just be fine. That’s how I also survived in my mother’s house when she got married to another man!”

These words crushed me, “My mother can choose this man over me?” I asked myself. The woman that I thought would protect me was now supporting the abuser. That’s not all, she began abusing me verbally and that took a toll on my self-esteem and generally my mental health.

I was lucky enough to join Kabianga University, at least I was away from home. During my years in University, I got into a number a relationships and wondered why I still experienced sexual abuse in my relationships. The experience was very painful but I still chose to be in such relationships because I thought it was a norm.

One weekend, I decided to attend a session at school and the speaker was talking about how to deal with our childhood traumas, that’s how I got courage and sort psychological and physical help. I am glad I started my healing journey, my therapist asked me to write my mum a letter but it was so hard, I cried all through. During my final year in university, I decided to go home. I hadn’t been home for a very long time. I shared the letter with my mother before travelling back to school. Two months later, I was informed that mum died. I am glad she died knowing that I didn’t know her as a mother because she failed to protect me, I am glad I had jolted down everything I needed to tell her because she died.

Lilian Kasanga, a counselling psychologist at Mind and Beyond Counselling Centre limited, says that emotionally starved mothers who have no way to voice their anger are in danger of turning it to the closest female, often their daughters, because they see in their daughters the next female who is supposed to be caring for others’ needs.

“Some mothers treat their daughters as if they are somehow the cause of their emptiness. Others withdraw from their daughters because their daughter’s freedom reminds them of their own suppressed dreams. These daughters end up feeling hurt and confused about how or why they have upset their mother. In the worst case, a daughter will stop claiming her own life in the hope of regaining her relationship with her mother,” she added.

Lilian also says that the denial of female emotional needs is lethal for women’s emotional wellbeing and the mother-daughter relationship. Mothers need to learn to save and reconnect with themselves, as they do so, they will also be saving their daughters and changing the reality their daughters and granddaughters inherit.

“There also needs to be a paradigm shift within the mindset of men and women everywhere who recognize that silencing women’s and girls’ emotional needs is the same as sentencing their lives to emotional starvation, invisibility, inequality, and being set- up for abusive relationships,” Lilian emphasized.