As a mental health therapist, I’m passionate about helping daughters heal. Daughters who have experienced repeated abuse, hurt, trauma, or neglect from their mothers will often grapple with the decision to stay connected to their mothers or estrange in adulthood. Many of these women come to therapy for additional support on their self-discovery journeys and have felt validated and seen when books were written for their experiences and perspectives. I’ve seen how these books have helped my clients heal their attachment trauma over the years, and I’m confident they can help even more women from here!
A painful mother-daughter relationship can lead the adult daughter to become estranged. As many as 1 in 12 people are estranged from a family member. The choice is a challenging one and typically follows an emotional cycle that eventually lessens the grief and leads them to discover a new sense of self.
While each individual’s journey is unique, therapists, as well as those contemplating or trying to heal from estrangement, can benefit from recognizing the energy cycle of estrangement as they tackle the emotional rollercoaster of family estrangement.
I love this book because it gives adult daughters clarity on the generational trauma mom might be acting out with them when in conflict together. By looking at patterns of behaviors (criticizing, dismissing, avoiding), social expectations of each generation (i.e., stay home, be small, be a caregiver, be polite), and mom’s own trauma, adult daughters can look at mom with more awareness and compassion.
I loved the grandma-mother-daughter genogram exercise in this book, which maps out these patterns in such a powerful, visual way!
From the sales desk to the boardroom, too many women feel as though they are "giving from a place of empty," constantly putting their wants and needs last in a culture that expects them to give and never take. If this describes you, take heart! The source of your dilemma might well spring from the relationship you have (or had) with your mother, your daughter, or both. In The Mother-Daughter Puzzle, Rosjke Hasseldine, an internationally recognized expert on the mother-daughter relationship, provides a step-by-step guide on how to connect the dots between what's happening in your own mother-daughter relationship and…
I think about this book a lot. Breaking down the roles daughter might play with a mom who struggles with personality characteristics that lend to the mother-daughter relationship being difficult is compelling!
I enjoyed the author’s style of writing as she makes you feel like you are in the room with her, and she’s offering a lot of acceptance, validation, and compassion that serves to help the healing process from attachment trauma with mom. This book is full of examples of how mom might show up and how adult daughter may choose to respond in ways that support healthy boundaries and healing.
You love your mother, but she drives you crazy. She controls, criticizes, and butts into your life constantly. Then when you try and set boundaries, the pushback, and resulting guilt is so bad you tell yourself... it's just not worth it.
Is your mother narcissistic, borderline, or just plain difficult? Are you empathetic, sensitive, and kind?
Do you feel stuck in your relationship with Mom- -trying to please her but never feeling good enough? - feel responsible for Mom's emotional well-being? -struggle to set boundaries without feeling guilty or get so much pushback you end up feeling like ...it's just…
Karen has written about mother-daughter dynamics for decades. Her willingness to share stories from her own life, as well as the women she’s helped over the years, adds a lot of heart to the content of this book.
My favorite element of this book was Karen’s visual exercise of letting go and healing generational trauma and shame. Similar to what I’d explore with a client in therapy, these visualizations are empowering and bring hope to adult daughters wanting to heal themselves with or without their mom being a part of their life.
"Karen is the wise voice you want whispering in your ear when shame knocks on your door, reminding you that you are so much more than your relationship with your mother." -Maggie Reyes, master certified marriage coach & bestselling author of The Questions for Couples Journal
#1 New Release in Adult Children of Alcoholics and Parent & Adult Child Relationships
What is your relationship to shame? How can you overcome it and live an intentional life of vulnerability? You Are Not Your Mother guides readers on how to see shame, and live separately from…
There’s a reason this book remains popular and is “therapist recommended.” Many therapists, including myself, have found the content affirming to adult children wanting to heal their attachment wounds. The ideas and validation found throughout the book are healing too, and bring hope to adult daughters who now realize they aren’t alone in how they feel.
Are you one of the countless people who grew up with emotionally immature parents? If you suffer from this troubling parent/child dynamic, you may still recall painful moments from your childhood when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of maturity in an effort to "compensate" for your parents' behavior. And while you likely cultivated strengths such as self-reliance and independence along the way- strengths that have served you well as an adult-having to be the emotionally mature person in your relationship with your parent is confusing and even…
This book makes a big impact when we think about attachment trauma and generational trauma. To think about trauma living in our cells and being passed from one generation to the next adds depth and perspective on how to break the negative cycle an adult daughter is experiencing.
I like this book’s look at the past to inform how mother-daughter conflict might be showing up now, giving readers another layer of thought on how to heal attachment trauma.
Inherited family trauma is currently an area of growing interest, as science increasingly explores what we know intuitively: that the effects of trauma can pass from one generation to the next, and that the answers to some of our greatest life problems often lie not within our own story, but in the experiences of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and extended family. Here, pioneer Mark Wolyn shows readers how they can overcome inherited trauma and reclaim their lives.
Cleo Cooper, a cross-cultural psychology professor, is living the dream on the Big Island of Hawaii. With ocean-dipping weekends, she enjoys her dog, her job, and her boyfriend Ben - until the day she’s on a research vessel and a dead body is caught in the dragline.
The police determine it is murder and set their sights on a gentle former student, Kai. It doesn’t take much urging from Kai’s auntie for Cleo to investigate. But Ben grows distant, and Cleo’s dog grows ill. A couple of accidental deaths later, and someone makes an attempt on her life.
What happened to Cleo’s life in paradise? Can she discover the true killer? Can she stop the killer before the killer stops her?
Paradise is shaken when the body of a young woman is dragged onto a university research vessel during a class outing in Hilo Bay. Cleo Cooper is shaken when she finds her favorite student is on the hook for the murder. Danger lurks on land and sea as Cleo and her friends are enticed to search for the true killer. In between paddling, swimming, and arguing with her boyfriend, Cleo discovers all is not what it seems on the Big Island of Hawaii. But will she figure out the truth before she becomes the next victim?
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