Are You My Mother?

Dipping my toes into therapy

I wrote this post on April 30, 2013 following my first series of about 5 sessions with a professional therapist in New York.

Interesting how life weaves and turns - I am currently halfway through a Master’s program in Mental Health Counseling leading to licensure to become a professional therapist myself.

At the time of this first writing (2013), I was in the 6th year of my Ph.D. program in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, and doing dissertation research in Taipei, Taiwan.

Unbeknownst to me, I was about to enter a multi-year phase of deep healing work involving personal therapy, plant medicine, women’s circles, and spiritual exploration.

The unpredictable nature of Life

This inner work would eventually lead me to quitting the Ph.D. program, training in life coaching, Reiki, and Family Constellations, and moving to Israel with an Israeli man I met in Taipei.

I lived in Israel from 2014-2017. Though I was able to build a thriving coaching practice in Tel Aviv, my relationship with the man eventually broke down (rather dramatically), and I moved back to NYC in an attempt to reconcile with my biological family - mother, father, brother.

That period in NYC was one of the toughest two years of my life - the only one in which thoughts of suicide floated through my mind for a few weeks.

I eventually made it through and followed my heart to Hawaii (Kaui’i and Big Island) where I focused on integrating all my intense experiences (divorce, abortion, family conflict and reconciliation) and also heal my physical body after a sudden accident in which I fainted and broke several of my back teeth.

Looking back with a full heart

I offer this raw piece of writing below as a glimpse into my early days grappling with the impact of mother on my psyche.

This was the beginning of a long period of “blaming” her for all of my issues (a typical healing phase, but one I wish did not last quite so long), before finally, over the course of several years, learning to forgive and take responsibility for my life moving forward.

It is only having gone through this painful journey of mother-daughter healing that I feel confident and passionate about guiding others through it.

If you are seeking support and healing, feel free to contact me to discuss working together. I would be honored to share the wisdom, the lessons, and the love.

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April 30, 2013

This post is inspired by the graphic memoir Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel (2012).

Last summer I decided to start seeing a therapist for the first time in my life. Before that time, I had never even contemplated it.

Everything in my life always seemed in control, my happiness, my sadness, my guilt, my anger. It was all manageable.

I considered myself a pretty “happy” person.

I always had my sh*t together.

Until one day, I realized I didn’t.

During the second to last session with my therapist, she recommended Are You My Mother? to me.

She knew I had a complicated and at times painful relationship with my mother.

In this graphic memoir, author Alison Bechdel rips open the curtains to her own lifelong “drama with the mamma”, using her personal therapy sessions as windows into the relationship.

The book covers so many layers of psychology and mother-daughter issues, and in such a unique and raw way, that it would be difficult to try to summarize it all here.

I want to suggest to you, dear reader, that if you’re looking for some insight into either of these themes, read this book!

I didn't find it completely mind-blowing, but it was soul stirring in a way that is rare.

Bechdel often refers to the ideas of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott throughout her novel.

One of Winnicott’s major contributions to the field was his concept of “true self” vs “false self.”

Through his work with patients, often children, he began to understand the crucial role of the parent, especially the mother, in the development of a person’s sense of self -- a process which begins in infancy.

According to Winnicott, if the baby is able to act in a spontaneous way and consistently receive the reassuring love and acceptance of her mother, she will develop confidence and feel safe to express her feelings and wants without inhibition.

On the other hand, if the mother is unable to do this, due to death, too-soon birth of another child, or depression/personal preoccupations, the infant will learn to develop a false self which “complies” with those around him. By not taking on the risk of being “true” and spontaneous, the child attempts to protect himself from an environment that he feels is unsafe or overwhelming.

Can anyone relate? I can.

It seems that this protective layer of falsity only gets reinforced as we get older. The message that it is unsafe or undesirable to be just as we are invades our minds from all directions, from education to advertising to film. Most of us are taught that the proper way to act in life is to please our parents, teachers, bosses, and country by doing X, Y, and Z.

When are we taught to develop our true self? When are we told that we are unique individuals with our own gifts and contributions to make to society? When do we feel safe to be utterly spontaneously and wildly creative?

It is only now, at the ripe age of 28, that I am creating the conditions for myself to develop in this true way. It is only now that I am learning to give myself unlimited permission to do the things that I feel like doing, without considering who it pleases or does not.

It feels great, but it still saddens me to think of how much time I’ve wasted. How much time others are still wasting.

I know, I know....it’s all part of the journey and all that jazz.

Bechdel also goes through a transformational journey in this book. It revolves around learning to forgive her mother - I suppose this is a universal human theme?

She describes the “vital core” of Winnicott’s theory as follows:

The subject must destroy the object. And the object must survive this destruction. If the object doesn’t survive, it will remain internal, a projection of the subject’s self. If the object survives destruction, the subject can see it as separate.

By the end of her graphic novel, Bechdel proclaims that she (subject) has at last destroyed her mother (object), and her mother has survived her destruction.

In her final pages she writes:

There was a certain thing I did not get from my mother. There is a lack, a gap, a void. But in its place, she has given me something else. Something, I would argue, that is far more valuable. She has given me the way out.