Are you afraid your daughter is going to repeat your mistakes?
Sigh.
Let’s give some examples:
(1) Your daughter wants to wear SHORT shorts, or a crop top to school — you remember the comments your body got when you were her age.
(2) She just had her first drink of alcohol. (You found out by accident, or she told you). You remember how you got into alcohol too young, and no adults knew what was going on, or what to do.
(*Eliza woke up Sil the first night she got drunk, confessed, and then vomited everywhere. TMI? We think not, this is Mothering & Daughtering after all, where we thrive on authenticity).
(3) She’s an epic procrastinator, like you, and she chronically doesn’t do her homework. You’re worried she’s going to fail, and not get into a good college.
There is a multitude of ways that well-intentioned mamas can look at their daughters and go: CRAP, she’s going to repeat my mistakes. She’s going to hurt the same way I hurt when I was her age. How can I change this? How can I protect her? How can I fix this?
Sometimes parts of this story you’ve concocted (about your girl, and who she is becoming in the world) are REAL.
And sometimes, it’s just your fear talking. Your unhealed stuff coming to the surface. (Because, GOSH, does raising a teenage girl call forth a mother to RISE and grow herself in all the places that her daughter needs her — so that it is no longer a girl raising a girl, but a woman raising a girl.)
Today, on the blog we’re talking about the difference between fear and intuition — the difference between a story from your past coming to haunt you, and your deeply grounded knowing as a mother that this is the present and it is different. This one comes up a lot with our community of mothers, and we’re so excited to share this episode with you.
Click the video below to watch.
Maybe your girl isn’t pushing any of your fear buttons with how she lives her life — and yet you’re noticing your own emotions coming up in raising a girl in today’s world? That’s normal, mama. This one is for you too.
Once you’ve gotten a chance to check out the video, leave a comment below — because collective wisdom rocks, and we want to hear your take. We need each other, mama.
Great video – wondering what your opinion is on how honest one should be about their own past experiences? You don’t want to give your daughter a permission slip based on what you’ve done, so maybe a little fibbing in this area is ok?….on the other hand, maybe full disclosure is the way to go to truly open up the lines of communication….Any thoughts?
Hi Leslie! Such a great question. Really trust your intuition here. Truth be told, our girls don’t want TMI! Generally, I don’t recommend full disclosure until late teens or early twenties, and even then it may not be appropriate. So the point here is not so much what we say- or don’t say- about our past behavior; but that we moms have healed it and made peace with it and that we trust our gut about what to say to her and at what age. Trust your intuition when it feels like a little transparency around your past behavior would actually serve her- help her to know you weren’t perfect and/or how you managed a difficult situation when you were a teenager. If we have healed our “stuff,” then we are less likely to project our fears onto our daughters and we are more likely to have the capacity to be more present with our daughter’s unique challenges about making safe choices with people, places and substances.