—With thanks to Martha Beck and Elizabeth Gilbert.
Katherine Woodward Thomas’ contribution to the field of personal growth is deep and wide. Her work has influenced many of the thought leaders who have influenced me. I am grateful for and honored by her endorsement of my own work. Even more so, I am profoundly thankful for the groundbreaking work she has done in the world. Thank you, Katherine, from the bottom of my bottomless heart. ~ Karen C.L. Anderson
Table of Contents
Chapter 2 A Note to Daughters…and Their Mothers
Chapter 3 Why I Do This, Plus FAQs and an Invitation
Chapter 4 Living in Either/Or Land
Chapter 6 “So, Tell Me about Your Relationship with Your Mother.”
Chapter 8 You Are a Courageous, Conscious Creator
Chapter 9 But What About the Anger/Sadness/Grief/Bitterness/Guilt I Still Feel?
Chapter 10 Triggers and Buttons and Thorns, Oh My!
Chapter 11 Deactivate Your Triggers, Unbutton Your Buttons, and Pluck Out Those Thorns
Chapter 12 A Quick Note about Our Little-Girl Brains
Chapter 14 Boundaries with Myse-helf
Chapter 15 “But She Manipulates Me into Not Having—or Ignoring—My Boundaries”
Chapter 16 Guilt, Anxiety, and Fear Are Not Inevitable When It Comes to Setting Boundaries
Chapter 17 But Mothers Aren’t Supposed to…
Chapter 18 The Myth of the Unloved Daughter
Chapter 19 Taking Yourself onto Your Own Lap (a.k.a Re-Mothering)
Chapter 20 Re-Mothering in the Face of Big Emotions (Like Shame)
Chapter 21 A Radical Way to Banish Shame from Your Life
Chapter 22 When You Decide to Change
Chapter 23 Choosing Unconditional Love
Chapter 24 What’s on the Other Side of the Struggle?
Chapter 25 Dear Mothers of Women Who Are Reading This Book
Chapter 27 How Does This Book End?
One of my earliest memories is of fiercely scribbling letters to my mother, which I’d quickly hide behind a small wooden bookcase in my bedroom. There were dozens of them stuffed into the small, narrow crack between the wood and the wall.
Rather than confessions of devotion and love, my writings were a rant of rage. Tear-stained confessions of wishing I’d never been born. To my strict mother, I’d say nothing directly. Yet behind her back, I’d let it tumble out messy, mad, and manic on the page.
One day, as she was cleaning my room, she stumbled upon the hidden missives. Unfolding and reading them one by one, I sat frozen in fear on my bed, barely breathing. When she finally looked up, her fiery, accusing eyes shot right through me.
She beat me with a wooden brush and sent me to bed without supper. I was eight at the time.
If you’ve picked up this book, it’s most likely because you too have stories to tell. Perhaps you also had a mother who either neglected or engulfed you (or some crazy-making and confusing combination of the two). Maybe she covertly competed with you in ways that set you up to fail. Perhaps you felt undermined, undervalued, or undernourished by the one person in this world who was “supposed” to be your safe place. Perhaps you’ve been continually confused by all of the crazy-making double binds you’ve found yourself in time and time again. Perhaps you were made to feel unworthy, as though nothing you did was ever good enough, though you tried—year after year—to please someone who was, on some level, devoted to never being pleased.
In response, you may have felt handicapped as an adult woman by a nagging and pervasive sense of inadequacy or by a cavernous lack of confidence. If so, these feelings have likely been at the source of painful life-long patterns, such as giving your power away, self-abandoning, creating co-dependent relationships, isolating yourself, sabotaging your success, and failing to realize authentic happiness in life—and in love.
If so, then you’ve come to the right place.
This heartfelt guide, written by the brilliant Karen C.L. Anderson, will lead you step by step through the labyrinth, to the promised land of liberation. She herself has walked this gnarly path and found her way to true freedom. And now, in these pages, she lovingly shines a flashlight to help you follow in her footsteps, so that you, too, might find the same.
Though nothing that happened to you back then was your fault, it is now your responsibility to evolve. I wish we could just pay someone to do this for us. Yet, no one but you can set yourself free from the many ways you’ve