Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (31 page)

If you’re a mother, you also have to look at the relationship you have with your own children. By now, they’re probably teenagers or adults. They need their independence. Are you having a hard time letting them go? I remember the first time I went to New York City to visit my oldest daughter, who was sharing her first apartment with friends. I stayed in a hotel. At midnight that first night, she walked away from our meeting to catch a subway back to her apartment, waving good-bye. I hated to see her go. I worried. I fretted. After all, I’m from a small town in Maine, and for me, the fast pace of New York still takes some getting used to. But then I realized that because she had visited the city with her friends all during college, she knew her way around. I hadn’t been with her even once when she was exploring the city. It was time for me to let her take flight, and I did.

Today’s parents have more opportunities to be overly involved with their kids than ever before. Though I applaud close family ties, I don’t think this trend is ideal. A friend whose daughter has just gone off to college on a sports scholarship tells me that
the college has a very strong parents’ association for this sport. My friend has been warned by other parents in the association that if she is not present for all of her daughter’s games, her child is likely to feel depressed and left out. The problem is that the daughter’s college is a 20-hour drive or a plane ride away. I was shocked! My friend, who has three younger children who are also involved in sports and other activities, is feeling enormous pressure to go to all the games—mostly from the other parents, not her daughter.

The cultural pressure to be a “good mother” by staying actively engaged in your children’s lives really should start to lessen when they go off to college. Otherwise, when are they going to develop the skills necessary to live independently and happily without you? When are you going to develop the skills to live without them? I am extremely close to my daughters and to my siblings. But each of us has a separate, large circle of friends and activities of our own. When you’re together with your children, bring your fullness, not your neediness. If you love sports and it’s easy for you to spend every weekend away during that sport’s season, flying to your son’s or daughter’s college games, then good for you. But it’s distinctly unhealthy for you to expect your children to fill holes in your life, or for your children to expect you to fill holes in theirs.

Recently, my oldest daughter, Ann, moved back home from New York, with my blessing. She was at a crossroads in her career and there were problems with her apartment, so she asked to come home for a bit. Ann had been self-supporting for nearly ten years, so I knew she wouldn’t get stuck in dependency. Plus, a move back home for a while would give us a chance to bond again. She had left for college the year of my divorce, and we hadn’t spent much time together since then.

As I mentioned earlier, she soon became interested in participating with me in the local tango social life. There she met and befriended Paul, a good friend of mine. Eventually, a romantic relationship between the two of them blossomed.

Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I began to feel like a fifth wheel. On one level, I was thrilled for both of them. They seemed
like a great match, and I knew both of them intimately. But I couldn’t help thinking,
Ouch. What about me?
Luckily, my good friend Deb called me while this was happening and I was trying to talk myself out of how I was really feeling. Deb encouraged me to get my feelings off my chest on my own so that Ann, Paul, and I could all move forward into the future freely. I invited Deb over to be my supportive witness as I lit incense and waved it around to clear the air while I ranted and raved. I let all of my feelings of loneliness and abandonment and jealousy out. After about 45 minutes, I told Deb I felt ten pounds lighter from having released the feelings. She said, “Okay, good. Now turn around and walk into your new life.” I never had another moment of pain about the situation. Only after I processed the feelings did I mention to Ann and Paul how I had felt. They didn’t need to start feeling guilty about what I was going through. And after doing my healing work, I found that other people and opportunities came rushing into my life. My social life flourished with a slew of new friends and experiences because I had created space for something new to come in.

Like most of us, I had been trying to cover up my grief and loss by painting a happy face on it instead of releasing my emotions so that they wouldn’t get stuck in my tissues and age me. Always let go of shame and accept your emotions so you can move through them. Create a safe way to get your feelings up and out of your body, with a friend to witness and emotionally support your process if possible. Being embarrassed about how you really feel and trying to be the perfect mom who doesn’t have human needs and feelings leads to illness.

My relationship do-over with my oldest daughter has been one of the biggest gifts ever. Living together with your adult children offers an opportunity to redefine the dynamic and make it a healing one instead of an unhealthy one marked by power struggles and hurt. The heavy lifting involved in the growth of the soul happens with family. You will have to negotiate with each other to ensure both of you have your needs for independence and togetherness fulfilled. With Ann and me, there was a lot of texting that went on around dinner plans, movies, and
other things. We were mindful of including each other but not burdened with unreasonable expectations.

So whether you’re living in a two-generation household, or you’re thinking about it, or you realize you’re stuck in the same old dynamic with your mother or daughter, start the healing process today. Let your new relationship unfold. It’s tempting to revert to your original nurturing role of caring for your child if you’re a nurturing type. And it’s tempting for a child to let herself be pampered and mothered as if she were still seven years old. But if you and your daughter live together and you do your daughter’s laundry and put it away in her drawers, and remind her to fill up the gas tank, you’re both going to drive each other crazy. Cook as a love offering, not a duty. Don’t keep score or keep track of who does what. That’s the only way to make a mother-daughter relationship—or any relationship—work over the long haul.

A do-over can happen at any time. I have a former patient named Eva who is 87 and has just begun family therapy with her daughter. After becoming widowed, Eva moved in with her daughter. Soon her daughter told her she couldn’t deal with the fact that her mom was going to die someday and leave her motherless. Eva recognized her daughter’s pre-grieving of her death as a sign that the two of them ought to work out their relationship. When issues are unresolved, we hold on to the people we love energetically even after they’ve passed. And nine times out of ten, those who “hang on” are mothers.

And if you’re a mother holding on to resentment about the way your daughter treated you when she was a teenager, or you’re a daughter still steaming about the way your mother raised you, you have to let it go. You need to release the emotions and choose to forgive her—and yourself—for what happened in the past. There’s nothing more pathetic than two older women still having the same argument they had 30 years ago. Aren’t you both sick of the old story? Have the courage to write a new one. Otherwise, as I delight in telling people, in your next life, you will come back as identical twins!

THE CHOICE OF FORGIVENESS

No matter who hurt us or what they did, we played a role in getting hurt. That can be hard to admit. But freedom and joy begin when we acknowledge that on an energetic level, we invite everything that comes into our lives. On a soul level, we pick our parents. Of course, this intellectual knowledge doesn’t help the hurt child within us.

If you’re still holding on to resentment or blame toward someone, you not only have to release the feelings—you have to make the choice to tell the story differently so you don’t get stuck in emotional responses, such as resentment, that will age you. Blame is defined as a way to discharge pain or discomfort. Forgiveness means being willing to remember the past differently instead of trying to force the facts to be different. The facts will remain the same. How you frame them is what changes.

Forgiveness has to include not just the other person but yourself too. Here’s what you can forgive yourself for: Not being perfect. Not knowing better. Lacking the courage to stand up for yourself and speak your truth. Needing a loving mom and wishing your mother were able to be the mother you needed at that moment.

Many women hold on to feelings about their former spouses but feel guilty for failing at marriage. Our culture is relentless in driving home the screwed-up message that divorce is devastating to children and that women who divorce are selfish. This myth doesn’t seem to go away even though there’s no evidence for it. Every article on how divorce devastates children cites the same old study by Judith Wallerstein that’s based on substandard social science. That bad nickel of a study simply will
not
disappear! And its message is just plain wrong. What’s devastating for any of us is chronic unresolved stress and conflict, which you’re all too likely to find in a family where the parents are still married despite their anger, resentment, and unhappiness. I am certain that neither my daughters nor I would have the level of health and happiness we now enjoy if their father and I hadn’t divorced. I consider my 24-year marriage a huge success. It supported me during the formative years of my career and produced two beautiful daughters who are loved by both their father and me.

Let’s rethink the idea of a “broken home.” Why is it “broken” just because the parents are divorced or separated? A split is better than chronic depression, anger, and conflict. By addressing the unhappiness instead of just deciding to stay in the marriage “for the sake of the kids,” parents can transform the family and make it healthy and whole. Then, if they do stay together, it will be a better situation for all—and if they don’t stay together, the family won’t be “broken.” It will just be shaped differently. Chronically being unhappy ages you and leads to health problems. Make a conscious decision to live happily—with or without your partner.

And get over the idea that because a relationship has reached its conclusion, it is somehow a “failure.” At this time in history, marriage is no longer the economic arrangement that it was for centuries. Now both men and women want more from their relationships than ever before. We want true partnerships in which both of us can grow and thrive, not everyday familiar misery nailed in place by the outmoded belief that divorce is the worst thing that can possibly happen to us.

After we got divorced, both my husband and I flourished. (Not instantly, of course. But in time. And with a tremendous amount of effort and healing on my part.) He’s happily remarried, and my daughters love their stepmother and little half-sister—the daughter my former husband had with his second wife. My daughters also have an excellent relationship with me. They don’t have a broken family; they have two families who love them unconditionally. If my husband and I had stayed together, they wouldn’t have the loving relationships with their father’s second wife or their half-sister. While we don’t all spend holidays together as one big happy family, we get along well, without conflicts. You can have that too.

You and your kids and your former husband get to choose how to frame the experience of divorce. By being willing to see what everyone gained from it, you can forgive each other for causing each other pain and commit to enjoying what you have to offer each other now. Forgive your ex and yourself, and let go of any residual emotions from the divorce. And if you’re thinking
of divorce but figure there’s no one out there for you and you might as well end your days in the marriage, you need to stop thinking that way. You are
not
too old to start over. Choosing to stay in a bad relationship will quickly age you because of the stress you’ll create for yourself.

PERFECTIONISM AND RELATIONSHIPS

Beating yourself up or stressing yourself out for not being the perfect wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, or neighbor is a sure route to premature aging. In
Working Ourselves to Death: The High Cost of Workaholism and the Rewards of Recovery
(HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), Diane Fassel, Ph.D., writes that most women do too much and develop what’s known as the “disease of doer-ship.” Workaholism, she explains, is the addiction of choice for those who feel unworthy.
²

Goddesses who never age give up the insanity of trying to make everyone love and approve of them at all times. The belief that you must be active all the time, working to please everybody, leads to worry, overwork, and obsession. It also results in an increased amount of inflammatory chemicals in the body that set the stage for chronic degenerative disease.

I’m inspired by the words “You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.” God knows us completely, with all our failings and faults, and loves us fully and unconditionally—and wants us to love ourselves the same way. God is not looking to get us to iron the sheets, iron over everyone’s hurt feelings, and be Little Mary Sunshine every minute of the day.

When you try too hard to make everyone happy or get them to conform to what you think is the perfect way to live, you end up being too controlling and smothering—and you drive people away. Perfection in relationships doesn’t come from being perfect people but from allowing ourselves and others to be who we are. Do this and you
will
achieve perfection—the perfection of harmony.