Daughters of Emotionally Absent Mothers: Finding Our Voices and Using Them After Years of Silence

 

A woman recently blasted me over one of the posts I'd written about my experiences as a daughter of an emotionally absent mother. She lambasted me for being critical of my mom, calling me selfish and ungrateful. She told me to get over myself, stop playing the blame game, and get on with my life.

 

While it's never fun to receive such brutal condemnation, it made me stronger in my resolve to keep telling my story, using it to heal my pain, and connecting with others who've had a similar journey. It also made me appreciate how important it is that we daughters of emotionally absent mothers don't let ourselves get silenced ever again like our mothers did to us as kids. Without a doubt, we need to understand, acknowledge, and articulate our personal histories to become stronger and move forward. While that woman accused me of wallowing in the past, I know the truth: my past is the map I need to propel me to a better future.

 

The irony of this woman's criticism was she was giving me that same old message my mother had given me as a kid: your emotions don't matter, your opinions don't matter, and you just need to stuff them both. I had done just that most of my life and became a nothing of a person, overeating and taking anti-depressants instead of articulating my thoughts and feelings. I kept silent for so long because I was told what I had to say was either wrong or worthless.
 

In the news recently, there's been story after story of prominent people getting in trouble for voicing their controversial opinions on Twitter and Facebook. In their bubble of celebrity-hood, these famous folks believe their adoring public want to hear all their rants and ravings on a wide-variety of topics, political and otherwise. They don't express themselves for therapeutic reasons but to feed their egos and garner more attention.

We daughters of emotionally absent mothers are in the opposite position. We grew up with mothers who, for a variety of reasons, couldn't deal with us expressing our emotions and opinions so they shut us down time after time. Then we eventually shut ourselves down, believing we had nothing valuable to contribute. There were decades of my life were I lived isolated from others because I was scared to voice what I felt and believed. I took anti-depressants instead of talking.

 

Unlike celebrities, we don't have a national platform to let ourselves be heard. Some of us use social media but this often leads to even more isolation and despair so we need to be cautious. The good news is writing doesn't need to be read by anyone else to have a powerful therapeutic effect on us. It doesn't need to be put out in the universe for public consumption but can be kept alone in a journal.

 





 

While I temporarily felt like a little girl scolded by her mother when that woman blasted my words, I eventually felt empowered. Who the hell was she to tell me what I can or can't write? Who is she to tell me to get on with my life when she doesn't even know me or the journey I've traveled? Voicing our feelings and opinions, though, means we'll always meet up with that type of person who'll try to suppress us. They may spot a weakness in us—the part from our childhood that feels unworthy—but we need to prove them wrong and voice our truth and never be silenced again.