I don’t know when exactly I realized that my mother doesn’t like me, but I knew it for sure during my yoga teacher training. In my training we did a lot of trauma work and learned a lot about non-judgement and forgiveness, and like any newbie I probably went a bit overboard in talking about it at home. And it was probably annoying. And one day my mum and I were having a disagreement about some celebrity scandal or other and she said to me something like – what would you do if it happened to your daughter? Oh I know you’d just say you don’t judge like you say about everything else.
It’s not that what she said was so bad; she’s said much worse to me before. Every time she leaves my house after a visit she sends me these really long vitriolic emails or text messages about everything that disgusted her about me while she was here. She never ever says anything nice to me or compliments me. She’s not proud of me, she doesn’t think I’m a good mother, and she finds ways of letting me know that all the time. So what she said in that moment wasn’t a big deal at all. It was the look on her face when she said it. This look of the most intense scorn I’ve ever been on the receiving end of.
And I thought to myself – wow, she really does not like me.
I accept this realization with surprising equanimity. In fact in a way it’s a relief to be able to understand exactly why things with her are so fraught and why she gives me a hard time about everything. And in a way I even feel for her. I cannot imagine what it would be like to feel that way about my own daughter. It must be so confusing. And since my mother is not exactly given to self-reflection, I doubt she even realizes how much she dislikes me. Which means she’s probably never figure out why.
I don’t know why exactly either. My training in compassion and non-judgement tells me that there is something about me that triggers something in her; but since I know so little of her life before me, I can’t pinpoint what. I think it has something to do with this quality I have of doing my own thing (being very “own-way” as she would call it”). I think it triggers something in her; probably because she feels like she never had the chance to do the same.
But don’t misunderstand me. As magnanimous and understanding as I try to be about the knowledge that my mother dislikes me, it still hurts. When she says mean things to me, it doesn’t just roll off my back. At the end of the day I am still a little girl who needs her mother’s approval even though I know it’s impossible to get.
I don’t really hold out hope that this will change. If anything, I think eventually I’ll stop trying to make her like me, which probably will result in her liking me even less. In the meantime I’m focusing on making sure my daughter never feels this way, and comforting myself with the fact that even though my mother doesn’t like me, she does love me. And that’s more than a lot of people get.
So. Tell me about you and your mother? Anyone else have a mother who dislikes them? Drop a comment or tell me a secret if you’re shy.