My visit with my mom was, well, nice.\u00a0 But, I find myself, this Monday morning, looking up article after article about mending the\u00a0strains between mothers and daughters that seem, in the most cliched way ever,\u00a0inevitable within our culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is hard for some of the elder women of the tribe to see younger women change the course of things, I guess.\u00a0 For every ounce of effort that I put toward balancing my<\/em><\/strong> life with the life of my children and husband, she gains fifty more ounces of confusion about it.\u00a0 In general, I think that most women my age struggle with either a mother that holds very true to a more modest and self sacrificing style of living for<\/em><\/strong> her family OR a mother who is a stringent feminist and isn’s supportive of anything to do with family or “settling” down.\u00a0 Mine would be the former.\u00a0 Either is dangerous and it leaves\u00a0us girls who are starting our real lives (the lives that we will be in for the next fifty years – you know, as opposed to those early 20’s when we were\u00a0making decisions for today rather than for tomorrow..) are left out in the cold because there is no one there to say “damn.\u00a0You’re doing well.\u00a0You have a passion that isn’t<\/strong> at all about your family AND a family that you are passionate about.\u00a0 WELL done!!”.\u00a0 Sure, our husbands and our friends are there as support systems but when it comes down to it, we just want our mommy to look at us and be proud and, more than that, UNDERSTAND what our lives are about.\u00a0<\/p>\n My mother and I are far from estranged.\u00a0 I am happy to say that we have a lovely relationship, for the most part.\u00a0 But I hold back.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 and I see the confusion in her eyes when she comes to visit.\u00a0 My need to write.\u00a0 My urge, and subsequent decision to hold back, to show her the art studio that my husband and I share and the paintings that I have started and finished.\u00a0 The girlfriends I have made who are all, themselves, quite talented artists and musicians and scientists – some who have kids and some who don’t.\u00a0 All of these things do nothing but challenge her upbringing and her idea, I guess, of how my life was supposed to be.\u00a0 I feel like she is wondering the entire time “where’s\u00a0the Tupperware party?\u00a0 There is no Tupperware party.\u00a0 There never will be.\u00a0 I just wonder when my idea of success will match up with hers.\u00a0 I guess that has been the question for thousands of years between mothers and daughters.\u00a0 Funny how it never seems to get answered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My visit with my mom was, well, nice.\u00a0 But, I find myself, this Monday morning, looking up article after article about mending the\u00a0strains between mothers and daughters that seem, in the most cliched way…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-building-and-maintaining","category-communication","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}