I have a 19-year-old daughter. When I stumbled upon
womenbloom.com and logged onto Dr. Nancy Oelklaus’ article
A Mother and Daughter: A Midlife Story, I was truly touched.
I have always had a wonderful relationship with my mother. I recall being a little girl of 8, standing in front of the church on Sunday morning as she and my father said their hello’s and good-bye’s, clinging to her hand and hiding just a little behind her long slender leg. I remember her holding my hand just firmly enough to let me know everything will be alright.
I recall when I was 13 or 14 and people in school had said hurtful things to me, I remember my mother saying, “don’t pay attention to those people. You are a wonderful, loving, talented person. Know that and leave the rest by the wayside.”
I recall when I was about 38-years-old – I had stopped eating and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because the father of my beautiful daughter of 6 at the time had left with no warning and disappeared. All that he left was a note for my daughter – oh yes, let me not forget the back taxes he left for me. My mother took us in and nurtured us and began to consistently remind me of how powerful a force I was before I met him and that that powerful person is still me.
My daughter hated me for her father leaving. She thought that I sent him away, and that was only because I spent years making every effort to never say a bad word about him in front of her, so she held onto the picture in a little girl’s mind of her daddy being the perfect man. I wanted for her to know for herself who he was and what he did to our family. And because she thought that I was the villain, she put me through more than most children do to their parents. I won’t go into detail about some of those horrible things, but I do remember going into a parent support group sharing some of the incidents that had occurred with my daughter and knowing that when I heard the symphony of audible gasps that these people could not help me.
The scariest day of my life was when I went to my mother pleading with her to help me understand what my then 16--year old was doing and instruct me on how to help her and she said to me “I don’t know what to do.” MY WORLD COLLAPSED! My mother ALWAYS knew what to do. That was the day I knew I had to grow up and become a full-fledged woman and become a force to hold up my own family, my daughter and I, no matter what.
Somehow we survived 16, 17 and 18 -- we just got tired of the arguments and began to learn how to step back and actively hear one another rather than forcefully trying to be heard. We began to accept that although we have similarities, we are two very different people. Learning and accepting those things was like sloughing off the “calluses” that Dr. Nancy Oelklaus talks about – the ones we develop “to protect our hearts and souls from being wounded.”
At 19, my daughter has ceased the outrageous and dangerous behavior she used to exhibit, either to hurt herself or to hurt me. We still occasionally fuss at one another, but it’s in a loving way. And every now and then she kidnaps, asking me to come with her to run an errand or two and we end up, like yesterday, having her insist on taking me to lunch and surprising me with flowers just because it’s Tuesday.
I cannot begin to tell you the joy in my heart and the solace I have found in knowing that I truly do have a sweet baby girl.
CACMIL, a 50+ Jill-of-All-Trades who has been a classical musician; a fashion model; a school teacher; a designer of print, web, children’s knitwear and pottery (yes, pottery!); a painter; and a writer. Currently CACMIL is a retailer sharing some of the products that have soothed her soul and delivered solace when going through the DPC’s (daily puberty clashes) with her daughter (www.solacefound.com). SOLACE_found is about facilitating comfort and consolation in the daily ritual of living in the world. 
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