Today is November 14th 2023. 6:34 p.m. I am 76 years old. I live in Marina Del Rey California.I live by myself with a 2-year-old Chihuahua mix. His name is Whiskey. I decided to start this blog to post my thoughts and feelings about my relationship with my daughter. I am frustrated and saddened by how I have failed to develop a loving mother daughter relationship. If I post my experience here i hope it will help somebody else in the future. After all, i’m sure I’m not the first mother who has failed and I’m sure my daughter is not the first who felt unloved.
Her name is Marnie. She was born in 1974 . She is 49 years old. She’s married to Jeff and they have four children Rylan Rachel Abby and Anna. Rylan and Rachel are attending University of Virginia. Abby and Anna are still at home. Both Jeff and Marnie work full time.
First let me try to explain what has happened for my perspective. I say from my perspective because my daughter has a very different way of seeing things.I no longer know what’s real,What’s important,What matters,What can be changed,What’s good,What can be communicated,And why/if anything really matters. I am very much aware of how small I am in the huge universe and how there is another but perhaps more complex universe that is smaller than me. I am surrounded by things that are too big or too small or too difficult for me to comprehend — the size of the universe, the size of atoms, the speed of light, space/time cuvature, conciousness, love, hate, justice, fairness, truth… I am very much aware of how little I know and how insignificant I am.
Unique but insignificant.
Here is the problem as I see it.
My daughter, Marnie believes that I did not love her as a little girl. She felt extremely lonely and tried to commit suicide as a teenager. She blames her father for mistreating her and blames me for ignoring it and letting her suffer on her own. She feels i neglected her because I was interested in enhancing my own life. I was interested in work, dating, and playing tennis. She had no part in my life.
As her mother, i had a totally different experience. From her birth until her teenage years i loved her more than my own life. I thought she was aware of it. I did not have the slightest notion that her father was abusive to her and she felt i loved and ignored by me.This is a strange conceptBecause I somehow thought mothers and daughtersCould understand each otherMind to mind. I was sure she was experiencing the world as I was experiencing it. I could not realize that she and I almost lived in two separate worlds.I wish I could go backand relive those days.I wouldSit down with herand make my feelings known explicitly in words.I thought my actionsspoke for themselves.From her perspectivemy actionsshowedthat I did not love her and neglected her.
This is the point I would likeother mothers and daughters who have less than desirable relationships to understand. Reality is more complicated then it seems. We assume the other person’s brain works in the same way ours does. If we treat someone as we would like to be treated this could be positive on one side but it could be interpreted negatively on the other side. I always thought treating other people the way I would like to be treated was a concept to live by. No and my old age I realize it is not. I treated my daughter the way I would have liked to be treated. In my mind i was bringing up a smart, confident, independent young woman Who could think for herself and expend her horizons in whichever ways she chose. I never bought her typical toys for girls such as dolls tea houses or encouraged makeup, or painted nails. To use a phrase that was popular at the time, I wanted to bring up a liberated young woman, feeling totally free incapable of doing whatever she chose. I also thought i was providing her a role model as best I can to show that a single mother can have a full life just as a single father including working, having a romantic partner, and playing sports. When my parents were divorced, i wanted my mother to have a full life and to be happy. I never expected that she would find all her life expectation by being a mother. I know she wanted much more in life and that was perfectly acceptable to me. I saw her as a modern trailblazing mother and was proud of her for being who she was. Upon reflection i recognize that the relationship between my mother and me was not like those portrayed in Hallmark movies where mother and daughter are best friends, talk to each other about everything,Tell each other I love you all the time. In fact when I was growing up the only people that said I love you to each other were people who are in love of the opposite sex. It was not a term used by friends and family members never said I love you to each other. They expressed their love doing nice things for each other, not by saying: I love you”
I am going to stop here. My mind is getting tired.
MOTHERS.DAUGHTERS 