The Emotionally Absent Mother and the Weak, Malleable Daughter

While teaching kindergarten, I had the opportunity to experience many amazing mother-daughter relationships that filled me with awe but also left me feeling sad and jealous. Unlike the little girls in my class, I never had a strong, loving mother who was determined to rear a confident, independent daughter. Instead I had the opposite. My mother did things – both consciously and unconsciously – that sabotaged my self-esteem and made me needy. As the grown daughter of an emotionally absent mother, I now clearly see three ways she made me weak and malleable so she could feel superior and in control. 

flickr creative commons (modified)

1. Creating an Adult-Centered, Not Child-Centered World

According to Jasmin Lee Cori, author of The Emotionally Absent Mother, my experience growing up in an adult-centered environment was not unusual for daughters like me. My mother was incredibly self-centered so my siblings and I lived in a household where her drama was front and center. She was always battling with her husband, father, aunt, cousin, or some other family member. When creating this chaos, she felt alive and consequential. She talked on the phone for hours each day, detailing her problems to anyone and everyone who would listen.

During the summer breaks from school, our friends would take classes through Parks and Recreation, go on family vacations, and attend summer camps. But we just stayed home and watched endless hours of TV game shows. At the dinner table, we sat silently and ate while our mother rattled on to our father about her drama. It took all his time, patience, and energy to deal with her neediness so he never had any left over for us. It was an adult-centered world that made us kids feel lonely and abandoned. As adults, we've all struggled with depression and social anxiety.

2. Meeting Physical Needs But Ignoring Emotional Ones

Nobody who knew us when we were growing up would suspect we were emotionally deprived. From the outside, everything looked perfectly normal and fine. Our parents were married. We had a nice home in a safe area. We attended Catholic school, and we always had plenty of food on the table. However, while our physical needs were met, our emotional ones were definitely not.

As a child, I longed for a warm, loving family and would try to satisfy that craving by watching TV shows such as The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. When I spent time at the homes of my friends, I envied how close they were, how they played board games together, talked about their days, and helped one another with homework. I had learned at a very young age never to ask my mother for help with school assignments as it made her mad and she'd belittle me for being so stupid. She'd snap at us kids when we wanted anything from her other than what we already had. In her mind, our physical needs were met and we should be satisfied and grateful, not asking for more.

I was the first child in our family to suffer from depression but certainly not the last. In high school, I became extremely low after a lifetime of not feeling loved and supported. Instead of taking me to a doctor, my mother just berated me and let me go through this period on my own. I blamed myself for my depression and became convinced that I was the world's biggest loser. It was only years later when I became a parent myself that I realized how abusive and neglectful my mother had been. This realization made me want to travel back in time and hug my teenage self. I wanted to take care of her, get her the help she so badly needed, and tell her it wasn't her fault. 

3. Damaging Self-Esteem

As the daughter of an emotionally absent mother, I focused on the feelings of my mom and ignored my own. I was her unpaid therapist, listening to her drama and giving advice even though I was just a kid with little life experience. It was a complete role reversal and I knew it. But it was either be her therapist or get no attention at all.

As a result of playing this role, I grew up with little sense of who I was. I didn't develop a healthy ego with the self-care habits of most preteen and teenage girls - watching what I ate and exercising to stay fit. Instead, my self-loathing coupled with depression led to a huge weight gain and a sedentary existence. I was ashamed of how I looked and isolated myself from the world. I didn't know how to make friends and had no social life.

My siblings and I all struggle to this day with poor self-image. My brother is almost 50 and has never had a serious relationship. He continues to stay connected to our mother in an unhealthy way, acting as her therapist in a role I've long abandoned. I know he'll continue to do this until the day she dies. He knows if he doesn't they'll have no relationship  at all or only a superficial one like I have with her.

The good news is that the next generation – her grandchildren – are much stronger. They don't take the grief that grandma dishes out to them. They speak up for themselves and won't let her nitpick their clothes, hair, and makeup. She can't hurt them in the ways she hurt me and my siblings and I'm so glad for that.