I began working with Sharon* after she had done a year’s intensive therapy. She wanted a way to bring what she had learned in therapy into her everyday life in a gentle way.

Sharon experienced abuse in her family of origin. She was emotionally and physically abused; her siblings and father “treated her as the family servant”, and her parents denied ongoing sexual abuse by a prominent man in the community’s social circle. Much of the physical and emotional abuse came from her mother, who was also narcissistic and addicted to pain medication.

As an adult, Sharon thought she didn’t want to have children at all.

“Then, when I found the courage to have children, I didn’t want to have girls,” she said. “I had to really examine why that was, especially when I found during my first pregnancy that I was having a girl. I realized that I didn’t want a daughter to despise me as much as I despised my mother.” She was afraid that she would repeat some of the patterns that she experienced as a child.

In our practice together, Sharon and I worked on releasing the “concrete boots” of angst around her family dynamics today, especially about providing care for her mother in old age and managing less-than-ideal relationships with her adult siblings.

“I no longer despise my mother,” she said. “I have a much greater ability to take into account the circumstances of her life and have compassion for her. This allows me to be kinder to her, with strong boundaries.”

On Mother’s Day, Sharon called me out of the blue and told me the story of the beautiful event her daughters had created. They asked her to stay in her room while they cooked a special dinner, set up a themed ambiance, and created a bar in the corner. They made her favorite drink, fed her a delicious dinner by candlelight, and then danced around the living room with her, laughing and having a great time, all in celebration of her as a mother.

“As I looked at our smiles in those pictures, I realized that I no longer need to prove to myself or to anyone else that I’m not a bad mother. This is huge. I may not be perfect, but no matter what happened to me in the past, I’m a pretty bloody good mother now. And I’m more relaxed around my kids. I’m no longer seeking evidence that I’m a good mum. Not only that, but I know in my bones that I’ve stopped generational family violence. And the work that we did was absolutely part of that shift, Holly, so I thought you would want to know.”

*Story shared with permission. Names changed to protect privacy.