Copyright © 2020 Karen C.L. Anderson
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The Difficult Mother-Daughter Relationship Journal: A Guide For Revealing & Healing Toxic Generational Patterns
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2019948632
ISBN: (print) 9781642501308, (ebook) 978-1-64250-131-5
BISAC category code: FAM033000—FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Parent & Adult Child
Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to women in all their glorious forms and to painful generational patterns that want to be healed.
It is dedicated to all the women who have come before us, who sacrificed their spirits and their dreams because the world didn’t value them as they were and as they wished to be.
It is dedicated to the fierce, wild, liberated women who will come after us.
“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed in the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythm of our mother’s blood before she herself is born, and this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother.”
—Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women
Table of Contents
The Anatomy of a Healthy Boundary
Recommended Reading & Other Resources
Christmas Day, 2018
On a day that would normally be filled with busyness and family, my husband was in bed with what we thought was the flu (it wasn’t…and he’s fine) and I was zoning out on Facebook.
A message request came through from a woman who wrote, “Have you ever thought of writing a book called Great Mothers, Difficult Adult Daughters? I feel there is just far too much mother blaming and mother shaming in this world today.”
(She was reacting to the title of my previous book, Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide For Separation, Liberation & Inspiration.)
She had a few other choice words and an accusation: “You are preying on vulnerable adult daughters who aren’t taking responsibility for their appalling behavior to their mothers who love them unconditionally, who gave their all for their beloved daughters.”
I noticed feelings arise in me. Defensiveness, anger…fear, even. A weight on my solar plexus. I also rolled my eyes.
I took a deep breath and responded. Kindly but honestly. I expressed that my work isn’t about blame or fault for mothers or daughters. It’s about taking responsibility for oneself.
She had more accusations.
I responded with a recommendation: Dr. Joshua Coleman is an expert on family estrangement and is the author of When Parents Hurt.
“He’s