I want to start off by saying that motherhood is not an easy job. It’s not light work to raise a whole person/multiple people while also being inundated with the myriad of other tasks that womxn are expected to carry out in the household; cooking, cleaning and generally keeping the home from falling into chaos. I’m not a mother and I don’t plan on being one anytime soon- if ever. And while I cannot understand that specific experience in its entirety, I do know from watching my own mother and mothers around me, that the work of motherhood is severely undervalued. That being said- we need to talk about the relationships some of us have with our mothers, and we need to be honest about how messy it can get. Because it can just be messy, at best, and downright traumatic at worst.
I want to carve out a little space where we can bring some of that hurt to the table and lay it all out. I’m going for a no-holds-barred approach here. I want us to be kind to ourselves, to say, “this is what was done to me”, without fear of judgement. Mother-daughter relationships are so complex, especially in a patriarchal context. Your mother teaches you womxnhood. Of course, she’s not the only womxn who plays a role in this journey but hers is arguably the one that’s a focal point, especially in Nigerian culture. Our mothers were taught that womxnhood means keeping a house and keeping your man- the dual responsibility of economic empowerment and domestic servitude. These are the lessons that some have passed down to us, with some new lessons woven in here and there. After all, our mothers are not their mothers and we are not our mothers either.
We want different things, different freedoms. And because we want different things, this can create conflict. At best, our mothers are sceptical of our decisions, and at worst they are dismissive. At best, they say “are you really wearing that out?”, and at worst they say “no daughter of mine is going out dressed like that”. At best, a difficult conversation, and at worst, she’s laying her hands on you. We joke about the best of it. The worst of it we may tell close friends if we tell anyone at all. Common wisdom assumes that mothers and daughters are supposed to be close. Sometimes the closeness comes later in life, but undeniably the mother-daughter bond is an intense one. Rosjke Hasseldine is a relationship therapist who specializes in mother-daughter relationships, and as she puts it, “I have never found hormones or personality traits to be the core reasons for mother-daughter relationship conflict. Rather, I have concluded that society sets mothers and daughters up for conflict.”
The issue isn’t that womxn are just biologically wired to have conflict with each other. Society dictates that womxn are supposed to view each other as competition. In the same breadth, womxn are taught to follow a narrow path of womxnhood, one that is reinforced by culture and religion. What we “should” and “shouldn’t” do are repeated to us from when we were younger. Be a good womxn, follow the rules. When we don’t follow the rules, trouble. Sometimes, this seeps into the relationships we have with our mothers. The pressure, the insults, the abuse – all projections of fear. Fear that we are deciding for ourselves who we want to be- something they may not have had the liberty to do for themselves. Our mothers may not realize that this is what they’re doing when they pressure us or even hit us. They may think that they are making us stronger, teaching us wrong from right, or preparing us for the harsh realities of the world. That’s not often the outcome though. A strained or toxic mother-daughter relationship can have long-lasting effects on your mental health and your ability to form intimate relationships.
Maybe you don’t think your relationship with your mother is that bad, or that it actually affected you the way it did. Your mother may have done everything that she could to care for you. She may have sacrificed a lot of her time, and her energy, and maybe some of her desires to be your mother. In her mind, she was only ever doing what she thought was right. That’s fair. Like I said, motherhood is not an easy job. And as much as people like to pretend, there is no gene that makes you a perfect mother. No one is born with this knowledge, and no matter how much you might prepare for it, you will make mistakes. It gets a little complicated when these mistakes can, at worst, be traumatic.
Your mother may have done the best that she could. I’m sure she tried her best. But if she hurt you, then she hurt you, and I’m sorry that she did. I think that you deserve to name that harm and have space to begin the healing process. Naming it is, after all, the first step. The rest really depends on you. I’m a big fan of therapy for everyone, regardless of if you’re struggling with mental illness or PTSD or not. I think everyone should have space to just talk about what they’re feeling. Therapy, unfortunately, isn’t as accessible as it should be. I won’t get into my issues with capitalism, and how I don’t think people should have to pay an arm and a leg to have their needs met. If I start, I won’t stop. That being said, therapy comes in many forms.
As we get older, our relationships with our parents change a lot. We start to see them as real people, and not these big, demi-gods that can never be wrong. We might begin to understand them a little more because we’ve had certain life experiences that put some things into context. Maybe your relationship with your mother has changed for the better and you can be open with her about some of the hurt you’ve held inside yourself for years. I hope you can have an honest conversation with her about it all. Some of us just won’t ever have that kind of relationship with our mothers. That’s ok too. I hope you have other people in your life who can hold you through some of the worst of it. I think you deserve that, at the very least.
