When Love Overpowers Us
Healing the Mother-Daughter Split
Growing up, my mother spent much of her life trying to be the kind of mother she never had.
And yet, to me, she often came across as overprotective and interfering.
That tension—between her intention and my experience—eventually fractured our relationship. It led to seven years of estrangement.
Healing the Mother–Daughter Split
This is the stage of the heroine’s journey many women fear most: healing the mother–daughter split.
For my mother, the process was layered. She was confronting the unresolved wound between herself and her mother, as well as the rupture between herself and her daughter.
In earlier posts, I’ve written about Miriam’s relationship with her mother, Etta. Etta never wanted to be a wife or a mother, and that truth shaped the emotional environment of Miriam’s childhood. Affection and empathy were nonexistent. What Miriam longed for—warmth, support, being seen—was never given.
Instead, she received passive-aggressive messages that lingered long after childhood ended.
Miriam spent much of her life trying to reconcile two competing realities: a mother who couldn’t mother—who made her feel she was not enough—and her longing for the physicality of maternal love.
An Attempt at Repair
In one final attempt to heal the rift, Doug and Miriam decided to move Etta into their home. Part of this decision was hope. Part of it was obligation. They imagined proximity might soften old wounds—that shared space might create understanding.
The experiment lasted a year.
Life became unbearable. Etta’s angry outbursts, relentless negativity, and constant meddling overwhelmed Miriam and began to affect her relationship with Doug. The emotional cost was too high. Eventually, they helped Etta move to a nursing home closer to Miriam’s cousin.
Was that split ever healed?
Not really.
But Miriam believed she had done her best.
Still, the experience left her with a bitter aftertaste—and a deepened longing to repair what she could: her relationship with her daughter.
What Miriam did not yet realize was that the wound she carried as a daughter was now manifesting from the other side of the relationship—as a mother.
From the Other Side of the Split
Around this time, I had a reckoning of my own.
I believed that I couldn’t be my own person if I stayed in a relationship with my mother. I felt too close, too needy, too guilty for not living up to her expectations.
So I severed it.
Seven years later, a fateful phone call from my brother opened the door. By then, I had two children who had never met anyone from my family.
I reached out and called my mother. She responded tentatively. I could tell she wanted me back in her life.
She was angry and confused.
Was growing up with her so terrible?
Had she done—or not done—something that made me move thousands of miles away?
We were both determined to figure out where our relationship had become untenable.
Over the next several years—through letters, overseas phone calls, summer visits, and more than a few knock-down, drag-out shouting matches—we slowly uncovered what happened.
Our love for each other was simply too big for either of us to hold.
I’m reminded of a line from O’Henry’s The Gift of the Magi—a story that exemplifies the cost of love:
She started to try to cover the sad marks of what she had done. Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks. It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends—never easy.
That line has stayed with me, because love—especially between mothers and daughters—can be compassionate and deeply wounding at the same time.
Our perspectives on life were colored—perhaps discolored—by our pasts. Until we shared everything, and I mean everything, there was no way to build a healthy mother–daughter relationship.
What Healing Is (and Is Not)
Healing the mother–daughter split does not mean rewriting the past or making peace with everything that happened.
It means honoring complexity and staying in the journey.
For my mother, that meant facing both the limits of what she received as a child and the limits of what she should give as a mother.
For me, it meant learning that separation was not the solution to becoming my own person.
In Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey, this stage asks us to reclaim what was lost along the way:
not performance, but playfulness
not introspection, but intimacy
not control, but compassion
That reclamation does not happen all at once. It unfolds through conversation, rupture and repair, learning to stay present, and listening deeply.
Where the Journey Leads Next
Mother–daughter relationships are rarely simple, and healing does not always mean reconciliation.
This phase of the heroine’s journey leads us toward the next: healing the wounded masculine.
If Miriam’s story resonates with you, I hope you’ll stay with me as this series continues and as I explore the many ways we journey toward belonging—together.
‘Healing does not always means reconciliation’ 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 Yes! It’s sad to say but it’s true.