Breaking with the maternal lineage is, sometimes, the price of becoming authentic

Breaking with the patriarchal essence of the emotional legacy that the maternal bond gives us, that is, with the maternal lineage, is sometimes the price we have to pay to achieve the authenticity and freedom we long for.

There is an indisputable premise that guides our lives and that is that every daughter carries her mother with her. It is an eternal bond from which we can never separate ourselves, we will always contain something from our mothers. That is why it is essential to purify and smooth out those rough edges that have been created through upbringing and maternal influence in our past and present history.

It is a complicated process, a hard experience that involves realizing that you are subconsciously submerged in insignificance by a legacy that perpetuates dependency through upbringing based on old educational beliefs.

It is a heartbreaking feeling because the desire to separate is linked to the need for care. and to the idea that the person who gave you the greatest experiences of affection and sustenance assumes your empowerment as his own loss. Out of human (or rather educational) necessity, a mother sometimes tries to mold and adapt her female daughter away from the essence of individuality.

This is not usually a conscious process or need. The mother, in her heritage as a woman, can sense that the daughter’s life will be easier the less complex and intense it is. For this reason, she promotes that in essence her feminine conforms to the qualities that “the culture of patriarchy” looks like attractive.

Subtle labels like “the rebel”, “the lonely one”, “the good girl” they only convey a message “You don’t have to grow up to be loved.” At this point it is advisable to become aware and heal that essence, even if this means a disengagement that is partly aggressive and, therefore, painful.

Read Also: The 6 basic emotions: characteristics and functions

Patriarchy is becoming increasingly weaker, so generation after generation, feminine strength becomes evident, urgent and necessary. Somehow the need for women to be authentic is penetrating the collective unconscious.

“Patriarchal beliefs promote an unconscious knot between mothers and daughters, in which only one of them can have power. It is an “either/or” dynamic based on scarcity that leaves both powerless. For mothers who have been especially disempowered, their daughters can become “the food” for their atrophied identity and the dumping ground for their problems. We must allow our mothers to walk their own path and stop sacrificing ourselves for them.”

-Bethany Webster-

The longing to be authentic and the longing for the mother

Bethany Webster summarized this authentication process we talked about in a more than accurate way. In her text, translated by Valentina Saracho and reviewed by Carlota Franco, we can understand what the anchor points are to start this process.

“This is a dilemma for daughters raised in patriarchy. The longing to be yourself and the longing to be cared for become competing needs, it seems that we have to choose between one of the two. This happens because your empowerment is limited to the extent that your mother has internalized patriarchal beliefs and expects you to abide by them.

Your mother’s pressure for you not to grow up depends mainly on two factors:

1) The degree to which she has internalized her own mother’s limiting patriarchal beliefs.

2) The extent of her own shortcomings due to being divorced from her true self. These two things mutilate the mother’s ability to initiate her daughter into her own life.

The cost of becoming your authentic self often involves some degree of “break” with the maternal lineage. When this happens, the patriarchal threads of the maternal lineage are broken, something essential for a healthy and powerful adult life. It usually manifests itself in some form of pain or conflict with the mother.

Breaks in the maternal lineage can take various forms: from conflicts and disagreements to distancing and uprooting. It’s a personal journey and it’s different for every woman. Basically, the break with the maternal lineage serves for transformation and healing. It is part of the evolutionary impulse of feminine awakening to empower herself with more consciousness. It is the birth of “non-patriarchal mother” and the beginning of true freedom and individualization.

The price of becoming authentic is never as high as the price of remaining a false “I.”

On one side, In the healthiest mother/daughter relationships, the breakup can cause conflict, but it actually serves to strengthen the bond and make it more authentic.. On the other hand, in aggressive and less healthy mother/daughter relationships, the breakup can trigger unhealed wounds in the mother, causing her to lash out at or disown her daughter. And in many cases, unfortunately, the daughter’s only option will be to keep her distance indefinitely to preserve her own emotional well-being.

Read Also: The story of soup and communication problems

So, instead of seeing that it is the result of your desire for growth, The mother may feel your distance/breakup as a threat, a personal and direct attack on her, a rejection of who she is. she. In this situation, it can be heartbreaking to realize that your desire for empowerment or personal growth can make your mother blindly see you as an enemy. In these situations we can see the high price of patriarchy in mother/daughter relationships.”

“I can’t be happy if my mother is unhappy” Have you ever felt this?

The belief that we cannot be happy if our mother is unhappy because she suffers from our own shortcomings is another legacy of patriarchy. When we give up our own well-being for that of our mothers, we prevent an essential part of the grieving process that we are trying to carry out.

We have to mourn the wound in our maternal lineage because failure to do so causes a high degree of stagnation. No matter how much we try to do so, a daughter cannot heal her mother, since each person has the responsibility for themselves. That is why it is necessary to break and seek a balance, which is only possible if we alter patriarchal patterns and do not surrender to the complicity of a superficial peace.

It takes a lot of courage to begin this process of disengagement, but as Bethany Webster states, Letting our mothers be individual beings frees us as daughters and as women to be individual beings. It is not noble to bear the pain of others, it is not a duty that we should assume because we are women and we should not feel guilty when we do not assume that role.

The fact that our mother recognizes us and accepts us is a thirst that we have to quench, even though we have to suffer to do so. This represents a loss of independence and freedom that turns us off and transforms us.

That role of emotional caregiver that is given to women is a role that is part of the legacy of oppression. That is why we must understand that this is fictitious if it does not obey our explicit needs. Only maintaining this perspective will help us put guilt aside so that it does not control us.

Read Also: Fear of losing control: when anxiety thinks for me

The world’s expectations of us can be very cruel. In fact, in my opinion, they constitute a real poison that forces us to forget our individuality. It’s time to break through.