Being a girl is the simple art of surviving a series of character-building seasons. From falling in love to falling out of it, to healing through falling back in love with yourself, there’s so much mending for your fragile heart. Life requires learning and unlearning, reconnecting with your inner child and forgiving your mother for how she operated when she was mending her own heart.
As you get older and your relationship with your mother evolves, you may find yourself entering a new stage. There was the child self who clung to her mother, in need of her warm shelter and unconditional affection. There was the rebellious adolescent era, where you may have made an enemy out of her. Many then awaken in their 20s, confronting all the ways in which your inner dialogue is modeled after how she spoke to you. This may lead to confrontation and consequential boundaries, therapy and deep rewiring. But there’s something that happens soon after, a result of healing to the point of unconditional self-compassion.
You begin to realize how soft and tender it is to be a woman. You realize that your mother is made of the same delicate insides. That she was once young, scared, brave and disoriented. You watch her learn new technologies, play with makeup and clothes, laugh at silly things and grieve her youth. It is in those moments that you realize that your mom is just a girl, too.
A Daughter’s Journey
Being a woman is an emotionally laborious journey. As you move through rebuilding your relationship with your body, you learn that these insidious ways of thinking have reared their heads generationally. Fortunately, you’re now gifted with a very progressive rhetoric that challenges antiquated ideologies. Your mother’s critique, however, could be a result of decades worth of internalized insecurities, or her own mother’s nitpicking. Her desire for you to live a certain way simply the result of her own survival instincts.
The same little things that make a girl overjoyed, from sweet treats to cute animals to comfort shows, are all true for your mother. Observe your mother as she’s enjoying the simplicities of womanhood and you’ll begin to see her own inner child. You’ll notice that she also experienced crushes and hobbies, rejection and not feeling like enough.
To look at your mother is to look into a mirror, a version of yourself with only more years lived. Whether you decide to become a mother yourself or not, you’ll age into her shoes. You will experience all the complexities of every age you’ve been and the trauma you’ve endured along the way. You’ll try to build upon her parenting and correct the mistakes she made while making new ones. You will uniquely understand your mother’s journey because you’re still just a girl, too.
The Mother Wound Is Complex
It’s important to note that there’s no blanket way to approach healing a maternal wound. You should never feel pressured to forgive or accept a person who brings more harm into your life than not, even if they’re your family members.
It’s still important to know that this is your mother’s first time doing life, too. Her first time being a girl. Her first time in a scrutinized body, navigating unrealized dreams, heartbreak, loss and the winding road of female existence. As you restructure your relationship with her as two adult women rather than child and caretaker, you can accept and forgive easier knowing she can only do her best, and that her inner world is just as dizzying as yours. Compassion comes from realizing you’ll one day be her age, looking at the world through a withered lens with all the scars and triumphs from every chapter.
Ultimately, both you and your mom are just girls. Maybe you can try and be girls together.