CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: Mother’s Day Edition

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Mother’s Day is this Sunday and it can be very triggering for many individuals for a variety of reasons. Today on the podcast, Whitney will answer calls from listeners who struggle with this holiday. The first caller shares her struggle with maintaining no contact with her mentally ill mother due to the pain she causes, asking for advice on how to handle Mother's Day approaching. The second caller, a childless woman, expresses her resentment towards her siblings for leaving her to celebrate the holiday with their mother alone. Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Head over to cozyearth.com and use promo code "callinghome" for an exclusive 35% off. Click here to get “Toxic Positivity” on paperback.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice or other medical advice or services, is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider, and does not create any therapist-patient or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home’s Terms of Service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. www.ca.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Calling Home Podcast.

Today is a Q&A episode where you call in and I answer your questions. With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, I wanted to take a moment to answer some questions that were specific to Mother's Day. We will be. be discussing some difficult relationships with mothers and how to celebrate Mother's Day. I think this episode will be helpful to anyone who has a challenging relationship with their own mom and also anyone that is dealing with not having their own children on Mother's Day and is grieving that loss and wanting to be a mother. But if any of those topics sound difficult

for you over the next couple of days, please feel free to opt out of this episode now and come back to it a later time or skip it completely. As always, you can join at the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home if you're looking for more support articles, worksheets, videos. We have full courses and weekly support groups to help you navigate some of your most challenging family dynamics. Thank you again for listening and let's go ahead and get to those questions. Hey Whitney, a few months ago, a friend referred me to your podcasts after I shared with her yet another incident that happened with my mother. Your podcast has given me great talking points to use with my own therapist and great ideas

for journaling. My question is about how do I process and handle knowing that being no contact with my mother deeply hurts her. At the end of the day, I don't want to cause her pain, but I can no longer handle the pain she causes me. For about 10 years, I was low contact with her. Recently, after several incidences in a row, I've decided to go no contact. With Mother's Day coming up, the guilt is eating away at me. I lived with my mother until middle school. That is when she left me to marry a bad man in a different state. My time living with her was filled with neglect, abuse of all kinds, and parentification.

As a child, I loved my mom and didn't realize any of it was abuse. And I didn't realize the depth of her mental illness. As an adult with more than a decade of therapy, I see how extremely, mentally and well she is and always has been. She has never received therapy or treatment of any kind, though people have encouraged her to. This will be the first Mother's Day I will not be contacting her, and I can't stop thinking about her mental illness. I know not contacting her is going to cause her pain and probably confusion. For so long I maintain the low contact out of fear of her hurting herself, but I don't have it in me anymore to keep hoping she will become well. I know that she loves me and always has, and then makes all of this a lot harder.

How can I focus on taking care of myself during this no contact period, even when I know it hurts her, especially around things like Mother's Day, birthdays, and holidays? Thank you very much for your time, and I greatly appreciate your podcast. Thank you so much for calling in to the podcast and for listening. I can hear the hurt in this person's voice and how much you're trying to kind of hold space for the empathy, the intellectual knowledge of what's going on with your mom, but also your own experience. And so in my answer, I want to speak to anyone that is dealing with this during Mother's Day and who is in this position of like this being maybe your first

or first of several Mother's Days without contacting your parent, you know, or your mother for a variety of reasons. And I think one of the things you said that was so important was that you loved her as a child and you weren't aware of the things that she was doing and what they actually meant. And this is so normal and unexpected and actually developmentally appropriate for a child, right? We know that we need our parents for survival or for safety that we can't survive without them. And so we will often deny and,

and ignore or not have the capacity to even understand what our parent is going through. And we really can't recognize it because that would threaten our attachment to them. And so it can be so difficult in adulthood to look back and say, wow, look at all the things that my mother did. Look at the things that she put me through. Look at what I had to endure as a child that I couldn't see then that I see now. And part of you is just like grieving for that child and wanting to protect that child. And you also have this adult level of intellectual understanding of like, but my mother has mental illness and she was struggling. And I can understand and empathize with why she was doing what she was doing, but that doesn't take away

the impact that it had on me. And it also doesn't take away the impact that it's having on me today. And I think that's the biggest piece of this is that you clear, this caller and anybody else listening, I would bet that you actually have a lot of empathy and understanding for your mother's pain if she's dealing with a mental health issue or something that made it difficult for her to care for you during childhood. And maybe you could find a way or have found a way to make peace with that and to understand it. But what often ends up being the thing that drives you apart in adulthood is that that behavior is continuing and it's not being change. And you get to this point where it's like, I'm doing all this work on myself to understand

my mother, to empathize with her, to be there for her. And she cannot do the same for me. She continues to hurt me in adulthood. She continues to not get the help that she needs or to prioritize her wellness so that we can have a relationship. And that's why people get put into these very difficult situations of having to make choices between their present and future selves. And the person who gave birth to them. And so from a practical angle, this being your first mother's day that you're not contacting your mother, I think going ahead and saying this day is probably going to be pretty hard for you is important.

And almost setting yourself up for the worst case scenario of like, let's say I really, really struggle on this day. How do I want to set myself up for success? What will that look like? Should I have plans with other people? should I have space to myself? Should I have the plan in place to maybe write something to my mother that I don't send her? Do I want to journal about this?

Should I set up something with my therapist on this day? Or I know inside calling home, we are hosting a special Mother's Day group on Thursday when you're listening to this episode for adult children who may not be speaking to their mothers or are struggling on Mother's Day. And so making sure that you have access to some outside support is very helpful. And having a plan for this day or leading up to the day, I think is super important. And if you end up not meeting it, great. But the worst thing I think you can do is go into the day saying, I'm going to be fine. And then it not going that way. So make sure to have some different things in place and even doing something nice for yourself,

having some type of distraction or supportive thing planned can be really, really helpful. And the last thing I want to say to anyone in this position is that I know you wouldn't be doing this if you can relate to this caller unless you really had to. And so sometimes you need to shut out the world on a day like this where everybody is posting pictures of them and their mother and they're talking about Mother's Day and they're posting these, you know, long thought out captions or giving cards or you go out. and everyone is with their mother and seemingly looks happy. And it's important to remember that the people that are doing that,

that are presenting that way, they don't have a relationship with their mother like you do. It's not that they're better than you at swallowing it and making it work or ignoring it or being tough. A lot of the time it's because it's just a fundamentally different set of life experiences. And sometimes people don't understand that. You know, if they haven't been through it themselves or they haven't worked with a lot of people who have been in the position that you're in

and you don't want to try to seek approval from people like that during this time because it's not going to help and you may actually get counterproductive feedback. So just know that if you've had to make this type of decision like this caller did on this day, I trust that you're doing it for a reason. and nothing is permanent when it comes to these things unless you want them to be. And so you really can turn your focus on how can I make sure that I take care of myself so that I can get through this day. I can send my mother, you know, through my thoughts and my feelings and my actions, love and peace and kindness and hope that she's also able to take care of herself on this day. And that doesn't mean you have to have contact with her.

to do that. You can also remember that it's a little bit of a false belief that you can control your actions to such a degree to make sure that your mom stays safe and happy. That ultimately isn't always in your control. And sometimes we convince ourselves of that because that's how we kept things under control throughout childhood. So I wish you all the best this weekend and leading up to the weekend for anyone that might be in this position. Cozy Earth offers bedding products that will transform your sleep. I know that when I had my first child, I'm getting ready to have my second, I was so sleep deprived and it was really nice just to have like something that made the nighttime a little bit

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calling home, C-A-L-L-L-I-N-G-H-O-M-E, calling home all one word for 35% off at cozy earth.com. Let's get to our next caller. Hi, I'm really enjoying the podcast. I wish I had found you sooner, but I'm taking this opportunity to call with a Mother's Day question with Mother's Day approaching. So I'm 48 years old and single, childless by circumstance. I don't know if you're familiar with that term, but I would love to be a mother, always thought it would be a mother. It just hasn't happened for me. I have two younger sisters. They each have two kids. The youngest of all the kids is six, and they're two older teenagers. So, you know, the kids are.

sleeping through the night so my sisters are both you know getting getting sleep the handling life very well and we all and all three of us ended up living about three hours away from my hometown when my mom still lives this has happened for many mother's days in a row where my sisters are aware that i carry a lot of grief and i'm struggling to work through that i might not get to be a mom you know like i said i'm 48 so mother's day is tough but for many mothers days they have decided upon themselves and it's their right to have their mother's day as they want to but then I'm left as the childless one to celebrate Mother's Day with my mom for the three of us which I love doing she's wonderful I'll drive all the way to see her make her day as special as

possible but it is very hard for me to stuff down these emotions and so you can tell in my voice So I guess the thing I'm torn on most is I really am feeling this resentment and not even wanting to tell them what I, what I'm sure they are assuming is going to happen that I'm going to go drive to see our mom. But I feel like the right thing to do would be like, do you have any gifts that you want me to take to her? But I also feel like, I don't want to do that because they make no effort to see our mom for Mother's Day, who they will usually go the next weekend or something. but I'm feeling very conflicted about this. We'd love to hear your opinion. Thank you so much for calling in. Everything that this caller is saying,

it's reminding me of this debate that has, like, broken out on tip-chalk about who Mother's Day is for. And there's been a lot of, like, back and forth, so many videos on this. I recorded a few that have created a lot of polarizing reactions. And so I want to try to approve. this with a lot of nuance and a lot of questions and just some different ways of thinking about this. I imagine that it's a lot of pressure on you to be the one sibling that is kind of carrying

the weight of celebrating your mother while also having these different feelings about the day because you haven't had children and it's something that you still want to happen and are grieving the loss of like that potentially not happening or will it happen. That's a lot. And I understand how on a day like Mother's Day are being bombarded with people who have young children in your own family celebrating that day or being celebrated and you wanting to have that. And so that can bring up these really complicated feelings where on one hand you're saying, I love my mom. She's great. I want to celebrate her. But this day also causes a lot for me. And maybe I'm I'm resentful of the fact that my siblings get to have what I want to have, and that also allows

them a little bit to, like, check out of this burden of carrying everything for our mother. And so all of those things can be true and accurate at the same time, even if everybody doesn't understand it. And that's what's the hardest about this, I think, is that everyone around you may not totally get those feelings or validate them or understand them. And I think anybody in this position has to get comfortable in some way with saying, okay, this is how I feel. And this is what happens to me on this day. How do I want to handle those feelings? Now, in adulthood, I think as siblings, all of you guys have to decide how you each want to celebrate your mother. And if you have been

carrying the burden of always going over there, bringing the gifts, making sure that your siblings are able to show up for your mom because they're celebrating their own Mother's Day. It's okay if you're getting kind of tired of that. And maybe you want to have a conversation with them if you feel comfortable and share how you're feeling and try to come up with a different system. I don't know. Some families, all the siblings do gifts together. Some they do it separately. And it really just depends on how things are arranged in your family. And it's okay to renegotiate that and talk about different ways of doing that that work for everybody as time passes. And you might come up against some friction,

you know, especially because the holiday is only a couple of days away. But maybe this could be a chance of saying like, okay, we'll do it again this way this year. But next year I'd like things to be different. So can we start talking about what that would look like to give everybody some time to get on board and adjust and come up with different options, whether that's them bringing gifts another weekend, everyone handling their own gift and mailing it, sending cards, calling, whatever it is. There's so many different ways. I also think if you have a good relationship with your mother, and it sounds like that's what you're saying, that it might be okay to talk about this with her and express, you know, that you love celebrating her and being

there for her, but that if you seem a little bit off or like you're not celebrating in the same way that you used to that you're having these feelings about your own identity of motherhood and what that's going to be like for you that really have nothing to do with her. And if she's the type that can hold space for the fact that you love her and you want to celebrate her as your mother, but you're also having these feelings, that could be a really good conversation for the two of you to have and it might make you feel more supported, which would be nice. And if that's possible with either of your siblings, I think that could also be something that would be really helpful. That way, you're not feeling like you're walking around

stuffing all of this down and having to be like, I need to celebrate all the mothers in my life without acknowledging my feelings about this day at all. And this is also when it's important anything to find support and other people, whether that's online or in groups, friends, in therapy that can understand how you might feel on this day and validate that for you. And so you're not kind of living in this space where people are like, oh, you have a mother, you should celebrate her and not looking at any of the other sides of this. So if anyone is in this position, I would say, you know, that resentment is a normal feeling. It's not because you don't love your mom or you don't respect her.

You don't want to celebrate her. It's because you're having another set of feelings about this day. and that's all right. That's allowed. And so telling yourself, you know, I love my mom. I want to celebrate her on Mother's Day. I want my siblings to have a good Mother's Day when they have children. And I also want to address how I'm feeling on this day. And all of that can be true at the same time, even if other people don't agree or understand that because of their own life experiences, that can be a really helpful practice for you. So I hope that. I hope that. that this was helpful. And I hope that you're able to get through the day in the best way that

works for you. Thank you so much for calling in with those amazing questions this week. I love getting to speak with each of you and learn more about the difficult things that your families are going through and hopefully help you navigate some of those situations. If you have your own situation that you're working through with an adult family member, please don't hesitate to call 866-2-25-5-4-66 and leave me a voicemail. I may choose your question for an upcoming Thursday Q&A episode of the Calling Home podcast. If you would like to join the Calling Home community and interact with other family cycle breakers in groups, work on worksheets,

read articles and take everything you're learning from this podcast to the next level. You can join me at callinghome.com inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.