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What I learned as a daughter from healing my relationship with my mother

Writer's picture: Hawa K. BondHawa K. Bond



Healing our bodies also comes with extraordinary experiences with healing our minds.


As seen on Medium.com - June 2020 by Hawa K. Bond


Almost a decade ago, I reached a tipping point in my relationship with my mother. I remember the moment I let out the deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding as I literally gave up the fight. I was weary from decades of unnecessary battle, yet somehow energized as equal parts sadness and relief washed over me. She and I didn’t speak much for the next two years, but what I did with those two years changed everything.


As daughters, we expect a clear and easy blueprint from our mothers. We demand our mothers show us the clear path to healing. We demand they reflect the women we want to be. We expect them to have a complete and utter handle on demonstrating every layer of womanhood. We expect her to master her physical, mental, and emotional health. We expect her to embody the “every woman” our fathers need her to be. We expect her to be a doctor, healer, housekeeper, advisor… basically the Superwomen we hope to become.

I wholeheartedly believe this is the beginning of the rifts with our mothers. The moment she falls short, we deem her a failure.


Spoiler: Your mother is the home of a wounded little girl who’s trying to heal and navigate this world while making this world a safer place for you, her precious daughter, to exist.


My mother became an orphan at the age of 9. To this day, I try to imagine the pain of losing a mother while dealing with a wholly absent father. My mother bounced around and ultimately landed with an aunt who was more military than nurturing in her approach. My mother hasn’t shared all of her traumas with me, but it’s obvious they are many.


Then one day she had me, the free-spirit she so vicariously lived through, as she would so often say. I felt so proud about this until I realized this arrangement came with the unspoken agreement that I would only make the choices she approved. I ultimately experienced her as controlling, disapproving, and utterly disappointed with me as her daughter.


If I had to choose one story to describe this history, I would choose this singular moment at our dinner table…


I got pregnant at the age of 20 while attending the University of Pittsburgh. My mother was cold and resolute: “I’m sending you $500. You can either use it to get an abortion or use it to go start your life somewhere.” She was clear about her preference as I sat in the pain of her rejection. Although I gave up alcohol and cigarettes to support the beautiful life in my womb, I made an appointment at the local abortion clinic. The burden of her disapproval made this the default decision.


When I arrived at the clinic with my lovely and supportive boyfriend, I paid my $500 and waited my turn. When my name was called, I slowly marched my way to a counselor’s office, a required step at this clinic. The woman asked me a few questions, then offered me a cigarette. (Yes, I was pregnant when you could still smoke indoors.)

“No thank you. I’m pregnant. That will harm the baby.”


She dropped her lighter and gave me one instruction. “Go back to the desk. Get your money back. You’re a mom. You want this baby.”


I cried my way back to the desk because she was absolutely right. The beautiful fetus I named Darius was already the love of my life.


With nowhere to go, my son’s father’s family took me in. I’m FOREVER grateful to the Futch family for the love and opportunity to grow my precious son in a healthy environment. But mom caught wind. And she wanted me to come home. Just six days after I gave birth, my dad came to retrieve me and move me back home. I was under mom’s roof once again.


I didn’t think much of the move. “If she sent for me, she must be okay and love me, right?” Well less than one year later, when I was 22 years old, she dealt a crushing blow at the dinner table:


“There’s a group called Jack and Jill where plenty of single moms go to meet up and support each other.” I was deeply uninterested, but I agreed to check them out to keep the peace. Then she followed with something I’ll never be able to forget, “But don’t tell them you’re my daughter, because I’m so embarrassed of you.”


I kept eating, but my food went tasteless. I kept chewing to give the appearance of moving on, but tears started betraying my resolve as they rushed down my face and spilled onto my plate. She loved and accepted my son, but not me. I was completely devastated as I heard my father chastising her in the background. Even he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. In my mind, she was hurting me on purpose. And although we had issues during my tweens and teens, this was the first time as a mother and adult I stopped believing my own mother loved me at all.


This was how I experienced my mother for the next 20 years. I found her to be controlling, unloving, and unaccepting. I had no idea how to be seen… truly seen… because my heart was set on the anger and frustration of being her greatest disappointment. Then one day after I turned 40, I threw a grenade into the center if it all. I didn’t give a single flipping fvck how it all ended. I simple punctuated our phone call with a simple request: “Don’t you EVAH call my house again speaking to me that way.”


“Don’t ever call your house again? Fine…”


Her interpretation was symbolic of our relationship up until that point. It was the essence of me and my intentions not being seen for how I thought I presented them. And hence began the two years I spent alone, healing that relationship the only way I knew how. Here’s what I learned:


1. The patience and grace my mom seemed to have for others wasn’t about her loving them more than me. It was about her wanting more for me.


2. The home I shared with my parents as a child was full of verbal and physical violence towards each other, and I rarely considered how this reality impacted my precious mother while I blamed her for my experience.


3. My mom’s effort to insulate me from the pains she experienced simply created more pains she didn’t understand, and it was my responsibility to share them with her.


4. When mom told me “I stayed with your father because of you,” she wasn’t faulting my existence for her pain. She was expressing what she was willing to endure to make sure I was OK.


5. Mom’s seemingly incessant criticism was not about rejection, it was to motivate me towards freedoms she never experienced.


6. Every time mom said, “I love you,” she was holding up a mirror in search of a deep and everlasting love for herself.


So here I am, a healed and daily-healing woman with a fiery desire to help other mothers and daughters mend in this way. Your mother is, and always will be, the most significant relationship in your life — whether you experience it that way or not. I’m not sure I was ever a more powerful advocate for anything in my life. Mothers and daughters deserve the beauty of understanding.

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