With every passing year, I am reminded just what an amazing human being my daughter has become. The transition did not arrive in a single moment. It unfolded slowly, almost imperceptibly, as she became more fully herself. Less my little girl and more the woman she was always destined to be. It makes me wonder: was it nature, nurture, or something more mysterious altogether?
Slipping Through My Fingers – Part II
The Silent Invisibility
She changed
Not overnight, but piece by piece
After every overlooked word
Every dismissed feeling, Every ignored plea.
She became quieter
Less available, Less emotional
Not because she stopped loving, but because she finally started listening to herself.
Perhaps our daughters are not clones of ourselves, but reflections, shaped by both inheritance and experience, by what we give them and by what life teaches them beyond us.
For that, I can take only some measure of credit for the beautiful, self-assured young woman who stands before me today.
There is something profoundly emotional about watching a daughter grow into herself. So often she becomes a mirror to our own younger lives, to the girl we once were, and perhaps to the woman we might have been. In that vibrancy and youthfulness, it is hard not to see our lost opportunities, our abandoned dreams, perhaps the roads we did not take.
Her freedom can stir in us a fierce instinct to guide, protect, and sometimes redirect her away from the mistakes we once made. Passions and desires no longer deemed possible are replaced with reflection on what we might have done differently, presenting an urge to foster the best for our daughters. However difficult it may be, love sometimes requires stepping back. She must live her own life, make her own mistakes and discover, in her own way, who she is.
As mothers, many of us know what it is to sacrifice.
Whether we stayed at home or built careers alongside raising a family, motherhood has often meant setting aside parts of ourselves; our ambitions, desires, even identity, in service of those we love.
Sometimes those choices were made gladly. Sometimes they were made because they had to be. And sometimes, years later, those sacrifices can return in quieter forms: resentment, exhaustion, invisibility, or a feeling that our own needs no longer matter.
This is where mother-daughter relationships can become emotionally complex.
A daughter, forging her way into adulthood, often sees the world through the lens of possibility, yet may not understand the weight of the choices made on her behalf. At the same time, it is understandable for a mother to be struggling with her own pain, fears and disappointments from the life her daughter is now creating.
Without meaning to, both women can begin to miss one another.
The subtleties and signs that their perceptions are not necessarily aligned can cause tension.
When we consider that we live with different societal expectations than our parents and then furthermore when on reflection to our grandparents, the contrast is very stark. Commitment meant marriage. It drew on dependence, security, children and a home. Today, commitment is based on love and affection. Our daughters’ generation is free to not only raise a child independently but also undertake the creation single-handedly. Free to walk away from situations that are not favourable, to forge lives independently. Not just from a partner, but from family commitments. Nature and nurture play a considerable part but the influence that society holds over our daughters cannot be underestimated.
The Quiet Invisability of Women
Holding together the invisible threads, whether smoothing conflict, carrying worry, or absorbing the needs of everyone around us, is a familiar stance for mothers in most families. We are so often the emotional architects of family life. Much of this work goes unpaid, unseen, and too often unacknowledged.
When a woman’s own emotional needs are consistently overlooked, something profound can happen; she begins to disappear from herself.
This silent invisibility is a reality many women know intimately.
Psychotherapist Rosjke Hasseldine writes powerfully about the emotional crisis between mothers and daughters, observing that:
“A daughter’s relationship with her mother lays the foundation for her relationship with herself.”
This feels profoundly true.
What we model as mothers, how we honour our own needs, how we allow ourselves to be heard, how we set boundaries, becomes part of what our daughters learn about womanhood.
If they witness us constantly depleted, unheard, and emotionally starved, what does that teach them about their own future?
It is little wonder that resentment can follow. Sometimes daughters retreat. Sometimes mothers do. Sometimes, both women are speaking from places of pain, and neither feels heard.
The tragedy is that love is still there, but it has become buried beneath unspoken needs. Sometimes their emotional needs create conflict and misunderstandings. Arguing about literally anything that diverts away from their own emptiness, both pulling away from each other as each becomes confused.
“If we do not learn to feel what we need, it is hard to feel what our child needs”.
Rosjke Hasseldine
Changing The Script
This is where we must begin to change the narrative. Our approach can reflect how healthy and secure your daughter can voice her needs in the company of others.
Rosjke had noticed that too many mother-daughter relationships suffered conflict and hurt from mothers subsequently not being heard or understood. Looking after the family or others whilst starving yourself of your own needs is not a healthy attitude. We must teach our daughters, and ourselves, that having needs does not make us selfish. Helping them to know what is right, setting their boundaries, being authentic and above all heard.
Saying no is not cruelty. It is not needy or selfish to want our needs validated. Where women are listened to and respected, mother-daughter relationships usually suffer less conflict.
Boundaries are not rejection. Being heard is not too much.
Self-love is not vanity. It is survival.
If we want a different future for our daughters and granddaughters, it begins with the lessons we embody now. We hold the keys to changing women’s rights by the lessons we teach our daughters, or else everything Emily Pankhurst and subsequent campaigners for women’s rights will be a continuous, long and exhausting battle.
We teach them through what we accept.
Through what we tolerate.
Through what we refuse.
Through the way we love ourselves.
“Every female has the right to be heard, valued and respected, and to know that anything else is just not okay”.
Taken from Rosjke Hasseldine The Silent Female Scream Revolution
