Linked Circles of MADness

I took a little time away from recording episodes to do some thinking, and I want to talk about the preface of MAD Issues for a moment. Maybe I’m going a little backward here or maybe I jumped ahead of myself in the first place. Most episodes of this podcast are informal, where I just talk and express my thoughts (and hopefully encourage others to think) about various topics and articles related to mother and daughter relationships. Once in a while, I find that the topic I want to discuss requires a more formal handling, and I feel the need to write first and then speak. That leads me to today’s topic: “Linked Circles of MADness.” I found a quote that speaks to this exact topic after I had the idea for it and had already started writing this post. Anyway, you guys can find it on the MAD Issues companion page on Facebook @lifecoachsienna and it is amazingly apt:

“Mothers of daughters are daughters of mothers and have remained so, in circles joined to circles, since time began.” – Signe Hammer

As you know, MAD Issues is a forum for overlooked and rarely discussed concerns regarding mother-daughter relationships. I realize the word “issues” has negative connotations and, to be fair, the word usually does refer to problems; however, for this podcast, “issues” is more about the quirks and confusing or contradictory aspects of mother-daughter relationships. The tagline for this podcast is “Women coming clean about the complexities of mother-daughter relationships” – and “complexities” is the operative word. Mother-daughter relationships are intense sometimes, weird sometimes, combative, competitive, and lots of other not-so-good descriptions. But above all, mother-daughter relationships are COMPLEX because there is usually a great deal of inherent mutual love. In fact, it is the presence of love, amid everything else, that makes mother-daughter relationships so complicated. If it weren’t for the love – if it were only about the problems and the tensions – well, then it would be simple - just a bunch of women who can’t stand each other!

The MAD Issues podcast is new but I have faith that very soon there will be lots of mother/daughter subscribers because the issues discussed here are real, relevant, and so often ignored. In short: we women need MAD Issues.  Hopefully, MAD Issues’ listeners will also begin to include some fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, and husbands who want to better understand the women in their lives – both in their immediate and extended families.

MAD Issues is a passion project for me, an idea conceived and born out of a terrible moment in my life. My goal and wish is to help women by opening a space where we give ourselves permission to acknowledge, examine, and discuss “the elephant in the room.” Ladies, sometimes “the elephant in the room” is the elephant in our LIVES. Unacknowledged, unexamined, and undiscussed psychological baggage that we lug around everywhere we go. Its weight makes us cranky and irritable on some days, withdrawn and emotional on others. It is the voice in our heads. It is our personal inner critic. The elephant casts a shadow so big that it shrouds our entire lives and we get used to the distorted view. MAD Issues is the hungry and territorial elephant that devours our precious resources and takes up space in our relationships where trust should be. Or intimacy. Or faith. Or hope. But MAD Issues isn’t all bad because it also includes MAD love.

Each one of us has an elephant, ladies, and your elephant has a real face – and that face is attached to your mother’s, and her mother’s, and her mother’s, by a coiling invisible umbilical cord linking you through time and generations. We are our mothers’ daughters whether we like it or not. We are connected whether we acknowledge it or not. Human beings in general are products of environment. As women and daughters, we are products of our mothers’ presence in our lives and mutual interactions. This is equally true when our mothers’ presence in our lives is limited or even missing completely. Whether we feel victimized or empowered as women relates directly back to the quality of our relationships with our mothers.

If we are very lucky, we have a wonderful relationship (I said wonderful, not perfect) with a great mother who fulfills most of our emotional needs as daughters. If we are very lucky, we have a great mother that makes us feel loved and lovable, worthy and valued. But what happens when that person who should be mother doesn’t truly exist and the relationship that should be is hollow? Like the anomaly of an eggshell with no white and no yolk, bearing only the rounded shape and silhouette of a mother, but with no real parent inside… What happens is that we develop a relationship with the idea of who we think our mother is or who she might be. We love and hate according to this idea, this phantom mom. We form attachments, grow up, make life decisions, and live out our womanhood based on a figment of our imaginations. 

When we don’t really know the woman who gave birth to us – or that woman has decided for whatever reason not to be in the picture – we make something up. Nature abhors a vacuum and women are builders of relationships. We cannot reconcile ourselves as women absent any concept of a mother at all, so we create one. We need something to fill the empty spaces in our heads and hearts - even if that “something” is comprised of all the worst negative emotions and perceptions: anger, resentment, pity, self-pity, fury, disappointment, disillusionment, grief, etc. As a daughter, you simply cannot escape this woman who bore you, and the woman who came before her, and so on and so forth. We women, as daughters who become mothers who have daughters are inescapably tied to each other. Hence, there is love.

Some of you may have heard of an awesome novel called The Shack by William P. Young. I first read this book several years ago, and I remember that one of the characters describes love as simply “the skin of knowing.” This character, who is a manifestation of God, went on to explain that the more time you spend with someone and the more intimate you become, “it is only the knowing that grows,” and the love stretches to “contain the knowing.” And it’s true: usually, the more you get to know someone, the more you understand them, start to like and then love them. I would venture to say that besides just “the knowing,” love also includes the spark of connection. With some people in our lives, it is a family connection, a feeling of shared roots and tradition; with others, like friends or romantic partners, it is an emotional, mental, or physical bond. Either way, when you feel connected to another human being, there is something in you that resonates with something in them, and vice-versa. To my mind, that certainly is the beginning of love. The love that exists between mothers and daughters springs from the deep and abiding connections of shared bloodlines and shared feminine experience.

Last year, I read that scientists discovered in the 1970s that women who have given birth to a full-term baby actually have some of that child’s cells living in their bloodstream, organs, and tissues for decades after birth – and often for life. It was determined that this happens with every pregnancy a woman has, as long as the pregnancy lasts at least 4 months. Do you understand what that means? Women are biologically and physiologically forever changed – their body composition permanently altered – by the act of carrying children in their wombs. Long after you are born, living pieces of you reside in your mother’s system for the rest of her life. So, while you are, in effect “carrying” your mother inside your body via 50% of your DNA, she, in a very literal sense, never stops carrying you. The connection is there at the cellular level, forged not just from genetic inheritance but from presence. Your mere presence changed things. The moment of your conception started a ripple effect in the world whose influence can still be felt and measured. That’s how deep this thing goes.

If you are both a daughter and a mother (and a mother of a daughter), as so many of us are, then you too have been permanently changed. You, too, carry, and will continue to carry, living, physical remnants of your daughter(s) within your body forever. As daughters, we sometimes claim to dislike or even hate our mothers, but those professions are self-destructive, because to hate them is to hate ourselves. No intelligent being with any interest in self-preservation wastes time and energy trying to hate themselves. At the end of the day, we must love ourselves – our whole, entire selves – female parental lineage included. And at the very least, we should respect one another and the miracles of our collective female existence and our collective feminine power. Mothers and daughters, we are each one circle that is a small yet integral part of a vast chain of MAD circles. The linked circles that make up this ancient chain of motherhood does not allow for exclusion, and, how can it? It’s impossible to break free from a structure that has no beginning and no end. Fellow daughters, we need to let whatever joy there is to be found in relationships with our moms be the takeaway, and leave whatever pain there is behind. Mothers, even if we sometimes want to cut our adult “girls” out of our lives, we can’t do it (at least not completely) because mothers and daughters each carry the other within themselves.

Through coaching, I have found that in family conflicts, so much love, or so much longing for love, often lies just beneath the surface of what looks like the fiercest animosity, and what seems like pure, naked hate. The funny thing about hate is that it is the other side of the coin from love. True love and true hate are positive and negative expressions from the same deeply emotional source. And you know what, ladies? Hate seems like the worst thing, but, it’s not. Whether you are the one that feels hated or you are the one being the “hater,” there is something far worse. You know what’s worse than hate? Indifference. Indifference is the antithesis to both love and hate because it is the complete absence of emotion. Indifference is the absence of acknowledgment, or even awareness. Indifference goes beyond hating, or not caring, or being pissed off or hurt. Indifference says: “I don’t see you.” Indifference says: “You don’t exist for me.” Indifference says, “I’m sorry, do I know you?” Mothers and daughters, we cannot afford to be indifferent to each other, because in doing so we disregard and disrespect ourselves, our own daughters, and our future generations.

We all know that MAD relationships are fraught with MAD issues regardless of race, nationality, age, etc. But I’m here to tell you that issues can be resolved, hearts can be healed, lines of communication can be opened, repentance can happen, forgiveness is a choice, and acceptance is possible. The core message and belief of this podcast is that where there is love, there is hope, and all things can be achieved. Mothers and daughters – may we never stop loving each other, in word or deed, regardless of the depth of our issues. And may we always honor the joined circles of motherhood to which we are all inextricably linked. 

This is your host, Sienna Tarniella. Until next time…thanks for listening. 

#MADissues #MADlove #itscomplicated