mothers and daughters

She was a mother who couldn’t mother. Mental illness absorbed my mother’s maternal soul and left a hollow shell that morphed her.

I didn’t see similarities between my mother and I until years later, after I became a mother. The constant conflict hid how my mother and I are alike.

My cyberstalker is my mother — but it wasn’t always this way.

My daughter moves unabashedly through this world taking up as much space as she damn well pleases. I want to be like my 12-year-old daughter!

Thanks to The Golden Girls, I was able to see those mother/daughter dynamics play out between two adults.

When my mom died, I made a list of things that made me similar to her: My favorite color was purple, I liked to write, I loved reading, I adored cats, I didn’t wear makeup, my favorite soda was Pepsi, I lived in oversized sweaters. I was 11, so I didn’t add “I love to drink” to the list, but it crosses my mind now whenever I’m at a bar with friends, and I decide to order a cocktail.

My mother and I may never see eye to eye on politics, and our value systems may seldom align. Sometimes it feels like we try to breach this divide; other times we dig a deeper rift.

Don’t you all see how fun this is? I wanted to cry out. Instead, I whispered, “Yeah, b-b-books are weird,” and hid Junie B. Jones in my backpack. My classmates treated books the way I sometimes treated Girl Scout girls: with cold, eight-year-old contempt.