I wonder if it will ever feel natural for me to watch a movie like Lady Bird (so amazing, I highly recommend it) and relate more to the mom than the daughter (or to relate to both equally). For my whole life I was the latter, but now I recognize myself in the former, and it’s so disorienting.
I didn’t see my own parents as actual people, with faults and backstories, until I was a sophomore in college. Will it take my daughter that long?
My mother lost her own mother at the age of seven and I wonder how she watches a movie like Lady Bird. How did she have any idea how to mother when she never had one herself?’ Her father was a schizophrenic alcoholic so she wasn’t learning anything helpful there…
It’s hard. To be both. It’s complicated. We are always all parts of ourself, even if we know others don’t see us multifaceted beings.
I watch a movie like Lady Bird and I see all the ways I am not the parent I want to be, all the ways my humanity assures I will fall short.
So humbling.
Ask your mom how she learned her mom role and how she figured out parenting. Privately. Ask how she felt and feels about her mom role both now and when you were younger. Ask her how the loss of her own mother impacted her. This is not something most will talk much about without the adult child raising questions. It isn’t easy so have time when you ask. You might then want to ask her how/where she sees you as being a good, effective parent, and what she is glad you know as a parent today in opposition to what she was told when she was parenting. The ‘knowledge’ when I was parenting was so limited compared to parenting information today.
I lost my mom when I was 17; I often felt as a parent like a bird flying with a broken wing. My kids think I did a good job; I am not so sure. I say my kids grew them selves into remarkable and wonderful people. But I tell you to be kind to yourself because I often fail myself on that score.
That was a good movie. I don’t know if I related to anybody in it, maybe the mom – but I do think a lot about how we learn to parent, our role models, our peers, our own family – our mistakes. I know a handful of people who seem to project a sense of confidence about their own parenting but I don’t know how much of that is smokescreen or bravado and how much is truly feeling like they’re getting it right. And it’s a pretty tiny handful.
I take encouragement from reminders that I’m doing more right than I am getting wrong; but the mistakes do tend to get magnified in our minds.
I’m with purple & rose – be kind to yourself as you would be to a dear friend!