This painful sounding title describes a dilemma many people face.
The well meaning yet distracted advice that “your mother loved you in the best way she knew how”, doesn’t sufficiently satisfy the missing emotions and consequences of missing out feeling loved by one’s own mother.
Mom’s life circumstances may have been harsh and overwhelmed her willingness to love her child.
As adults we may feel compassion for the extraordinarily limiting conditions in which our mothers lived.
Let’s not mix up our adult humanitarian empathy with the key effects of mother love missing from the early part of our lives.
Self-definition and the logic of how we relate to others learned while growing up without this key emotional stabilizer, is pivotal to a person’s life.
One result is to expect others to care just as little about you as you felt during your growing up years.
Embedded in this model too, is to either expect yourself to offer the greater share of giving to someone, or to retreat within yourself, depending on which outlook felt most natural for you during your growing up years relation to your mother.
As a grown person who now wishes to establish a balanced and fair system to give and accept love, you are in the position to open your side of relationship terms with your mother who was unwilling to love you in a meaningful way many years ago during your growing up years, and try to create new terms.
For example, expect to receive and feel genuine empathy from your mother for her love you missed because she did not give this to you.
Empathy connects people.
If your mother offers and you’re sincerely open to receive, then you will likely suddenly feel understood and accepted by your mother empathizing with your hurt.
Heartfelt care feels deeply cleansing.
It is the start and foundation to feeling emotionally connected and trusting your mother in a way you hardly knew while you were young.
From this point a new road opens in the mother/child relationship and you each have new freedom to interact in more loving terms.
