Healing mother-daughter conflicts

          Daughters will say, “I find mom’s comments to be condescending.  It’s like she does not see me as my own person, able to make my right decisions.”  Mothers say, “I never meant criticism, I was trying to be helpful.”

          Mothers protected and nudged their daughter’s during their growing up years, and it is easy for them to continue doing so when their daughters are adults.  If their daughters don’t listen mothers feel powerless to help them.  Then they push some more.  At other times, mothers’ insistence is veiling some other feeling, like “I miss you; I wish you would call me more often.”

          Daughters can be sensitive to it all and may regard their mothers’ persistent and uninvited advice as disrespectful and rude behavior.   Naturally, mothers want their adult daughters to still need them, and to respect them, and to be close, if not best, friends. 

          Because mothers often want their daughters to have better lives than they did, they may place on them too-high and confusing expectations.  Even when daughters have successful careers and marriages, mothers may, unconsciously, see them as able to do better, and/or, as extensions of themselves. 

          Effective mother-daughter healing-therapy can with each of them individually, and together.  When done right, such therapy provides a safe emotional setting where they can honestly reveal and learn how their behavior affects the other. 

          Individual prayer can be a tremendous healing force when we permit WISDOM-TRUTH to change us with new ideas and approaches.   The universal and preeminent LOVE-INTELLIGENCE transforms receptive thoughts/hearts.  It replaces hurts, insecurities, fears and doubts with honest, generous and enlightened affection.  MIND’s intelligent and loving influences help us accept viewpoints beyond our own, and this makes us more sensitive to others’ needs and wiser in our responses. 

          Here are some proven solutions for relationship conflicts:

LOVE-WISDOM guides mothers and daughters to establish and accept each others’ boundaries.  Uninvited advice yields to an acceptance and appreciation of each others’ differences.  No hurt feelings will ensue when we learn to ask first: “Is there something I can help you with?” or “Would you like to talk about something that is troubling you?”  

It is also essential for healthy relationships for the one who is used to asserting control to ask the other for help.  Humility helps us do this.  By understanding that WISDOM-LOVE works through all of us, we can welcome each others’ help.

LOVE-TRUTH encourages us to be honest, even vulnerable, about our feelings, but without blaming the other.  For example, without anger or putting blame on the other, one can say: “I feel lonely;” or “I feel hurt;” or “I want to please you, but am feeling I cannot measure up to earn your approval;” or “I may be wrong about this, but I don’t feel respected for my own opinions and ways of doing things.”

Ever-expanding LIFE-SOUL can liberate from past habit-traps.  It can clean and change the mental filters through which we interpret and judge each other.  It teaches us how to encourage, help and celebrate each others’ evolving personalities and lives.  Then our relationships become SPIRIT-energized, ever-expansive LIFE-journeys which help us learn and adapt to new concepts, and these expand and enrich our relationships.