Question of the Day | 05/05/2008 8:38 am

Have you turned into your mother? If so, how?

Read more about: Mother, Mother's Day, Relationships

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No, she has turned into a “mini-me! She is fast becoming a computer nut at age 69+ and has learned to enjoy being herself and makes “no apologies” for doing so!

By Linda Clark on 05/05/2008 4:34 pm

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My mother was very beautiful and I look a lot like her ( Think Mary Welles ); however, she nor my dad were NEVER there for me emotionally and spent little time physically. I still hurt today. I have had an extraordinary life both physically and financially…beyond my wildest dreams and nothing has filled this gap. Everyone thinks I have it all and my pride won’t allow others to know otherwise. I give as much as I can to others to make me feel better, too.

By Agyness O on 05/05/2008 4:40 pm

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Plain Jane—I know someone who said the same thing you do…then she met an older woman in a shared interest group…they became fast friends and from this affirming friendship it started healing what she’d missed. She went into therapy and was advised to write very affirming letters to the five year old inside..to mother her young self as she’d wished she’d been parented. This lady was the daughter of two very high profile film stars…the very top, and was always shunted aside…and still hurting into her 50’s when she started doing all of these healing things. It was about ten years ago when she finally wrote a book about it, and it became a bestseller, she was on Larry King, GMA, in People, etc. The reason I mention this is that she was also good looking, a great career, money etc but this loss of what she wanted was huge for her. Fortunately when she decided to heal it…it took time…but she did and removed a tremendous weight. It’s fortunate that you were the affirming person you didn’t have…am sure it made your life much better, and it is a gift to others they will never forget.

By zut alors on 05/06/2008 1:30 am

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Can you recommend the book, it is not ringing a bell.

By Ruth M on 05/06/2008 10:06 am

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Thank you, Suzanne, for your kind words and that you care. Could you tell me the name of the book you mentioned?

By Agyness O on 05/06/2008 11:36 am

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Plain Jane, Glad to if you wouldn’t mind emailing me on my site http://web.mac.com/myfrenchheart I’ll email it back. Am sure she reads the site…and wouldn’t want her to think I was being indiscrete with personal insights. [BTW ladies….saw someone’s email posted here and better, if possible, to give it through a site, or at the minimum as: myname(at)yahoo.com as many web crawlers won’t pick it up that way and harvest it for spam, etc.]

By zut alors on 05/06/2008 1:24 pm

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My sisters and I have joked about this. We all have told each other that if one of us sees us laying a guilt trip on our children like she is so good at doing with us, to smack us! She has mastered the Guilt Trip talent.

By Becky R on 05/05/2008 4:48 pm

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Much to my mother’s chagrin, we are still nothing alike. We love each other, but I worry her something fierce. She says I got all the gypsy blood from my dad’s side of the family. I feel bad about it. But I’ve given her a few things to brag about, so she’s not too embarrassed to have me around, most the time. Sometimes I wish I could be more like she wants to be. She is the sweetest thing you’d ever want to meet. I just don’t have it in me. Not that I’m such a dreadful rogue…just see life through a whole different lens than my mother. She’s very cozy inside the box, and I’d rather be over the edge than live at the top of the bell curve.

By Ms. Dee on 05/05/2008 5:46 pm

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When I look in the mirror I am sometimes surprised to see her face of only for an instant. We were never as close as we were in her last years - when I managed to re-mother myself and we could come together as friends. I am so grateful that I was able to do that, even though that made her death even harder.

By Pamela Munro on 05/05/2008 6:38 pm

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Sooner or later we all quote our mothers. Bern Williams

By Jackie Blue on 05/05/2008 8:19 pm

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More and more, yet somehow less and less, every day. I see in her my anxiety, my dark moods (or in me, her moods). I joke that I’d slip my meds into her tea if I thought I could get away with it. No one in my family would blame me. Hell, they’d cheer. She’s never known the real peace, security, calm I’ve found, never had a husband/lover she could count on. It hurts me for her. She’s 75. I keep hoping she’ll have it all before it’s over. I think she’s stopped hoping. That hurts me for her, too. But she she’s clever, dry and wry, yet can be heartbreakingly earnest when she writes cards for holidays. I got that from her— showing emotion on paper is easier for us than in person. She gave me some of the best parts of me, and some of the worst. But I thank her for all of it.

By Mandy B on 05/05/2008 9:19 pm

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Having lost my mom nine years ago, each year I realize I am more like her. I am grateful for having her as a mom and I am happy with the good traits and trying to improve on the things neither of us liked.

By Peggy Sue on 05/05/2008 10:05 pm

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i am nothing like my mother…she was strictly a 50’s kind of wife..kind of door mat-y…i dont look like her, think like her, dress like her, act like her..every day i thank god i had sense enough to be strong enough to escape the ‘ranch wife’ life she lived and make my own way in the world, mistakes and all…i dont resent being her daughter, but she was never very ‘motherly’…

By theCHEROKEErose on 05/05/2008 10:07 pm

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OMG yes. It’s quite frightening. I see her in myself all the time. The way I look, how I’m aging. I hated her for most of her life, although after years of therapy on my part and some mellowing on her part (after she turned 80), we did in fact end up on fairly good terms. She was an incredibly selfish, self-centered, emotionally violent mother, and she impacted the essential me in ways from which I can never escape. I spent my life trying to earn her approval, and I’m still doing it, despite the fact that she has been dead for eight years! And now I can see myself turning into her! Aaaaargggghhh!!!

By Emma Pathey on 05/05/2008 10:25 pm