Get closer: Building and maintaining the ties
Here are some tips for building and maintaining a healthy mother-daughter relationship from Dr. Christiane Northrup, an obstetrician and gynecologist from the United States, renowned for her empowering approach to women's health and wellness.
1. Recognize and accept the influence you have on the state of your own daughter's health.
As a clinician, Northrup has seen firsthand what the impact of a healthy – or unhealthy – mother-daughter relationship can be. "A mother's often unconscious influence on her daughter's health is so profound that years ago, I had to accept that my medical skills were only a drop in the bucket compared to the unexamined and ongoing influence of her mother," writes Northrup in her book Mother-Daughter Wisdom (Bantam, 2005, $40).
What does a supportive relationship look like? A mother gives her daughter positive messages about her female body and how to take care of it. What does a problematic relationship look like? There's a family history of neglect, abuse, alcoholism or mental illness.
The "Adverse Childhood Experiences" study, a decade-long collaboration between Kaiser Permanente's department of preventive medicine in San Diego and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, provides evidence that people who grow up in dysfunctional homes, where mother-daughter bonds are often strained, get sick more often and die sooner.
"Every alcoholic affects four people adversely," notes Northrup. "Real long-term health solutions would become possible only when [a woman] realizes the impact of her background and takes steps to change it."
2. Break the cycle of self-sacrifice.
First, stop judging yourself by how much you're doing. Then, learn how to replenish the energy you expend nurturing others. When your daughter witnesses you taking good care of yourself, she will be less likely to carry the burden of your unmet emotional needs into her own life.
Symptoms of stress and the need for improved self-care include nighttime eating, increased belly fat, insomnia, daytime sleepiness, and aches and pains. Get support for self-care and ask for help instead of trying to do everything for everybody yourself.
3. Be grateful for everything that you have right now.
Sometimes when we're focused on the things we don't have and how we wish things were instead of how they are, it's easy to lose sight of how good life really is. Make a list of everything you have to be grateful for and read it often.
4. Learn to give to yourself.
Become your own source of pleasure. Choosing pleasure is a discipline that is difficult to do in a culture that worships the no-pain, no-gain philosophy. Turn your bedroom into a pleasure palace as if you were about to receive a visiting dignitary – you! Invest in great sheets, flowers, music, aromatherapy candles – whatever you want.
"It takes courage and it takes practice," notes Northrup. Watch your resistance to pleasure by doing things like getting cranky and nitpicky with your husband or partner. "Humans are programmed for ecstasy through meditation, exercise and orgasm," notes Northrup. "There is no hangover and no downside."
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