It is no lie that many mothers and daughters don’t get along. It isn’t necessarily their fault.
A mother watches her little girl grow up the same way she once did and wants to make sure everything will be okay for her daughter. Meanwhile, a daughter, who inevitably wants to figure out the world for herself, may not want her mother dictating her life.
Of course, this isn’t always the case. Some girls are best friends with their mothers, and that is a lovely thing in itself, to have such a close friend from the beginning of life. But if a girl and her mother aren’t best friends, it isn’t a problem either. There are enough people in the world to make sure that someone will find a mother to mother them and a friend to friend them.
I have never been one of those people who calls my mum my best friend, and I unfortunately went through that long period of time when I would just not get along with her at all. My mum and I have very similar personalities, and while that might seem ideal, for us it meant that we would clash a lot. As I look back on my adolescent years, I realize that a lot of the time my mum and I would fight about everything and anything simply because we just would not want to agree with each other. I know that at one point it got extremely bad and we would do anything to defy one another.
Thankfully, we got over that when I moved across the country from my lifelong home of Los Angeles to Boston to attend college. I have always been very family-oriented and tend to miss them when I’m away for any period of time. However now when I miss my mum, it’s different. Because I know that I only get to spend the winter holidays and the summer months (roughly one-third of the year) with her every year until I graduate, I value her so much more when she’s with me. I’ve known people who I only miss when I’m not with them, but the second we reconnect that sentiment is broken, however with my mum it is not like that at all. I miss her when I am not with her, and when I am with her, I enjoy the time we spend together.
I have a lot of advice for girls who are struggling to form relationships with their mothers, but I will only mention the two biggest components now. First, it’s not your fault and it’s not her fault. You are definitely not the only people going through this and if you take me any many girls as examples, you and your mother will find your footing. Even if you don’t become best friends in the end, the two most important parts of your relationship should be love and mutual respect. The most important part of your relationship should not be if you can talk about even the most taboo topics or if you gossip a lot. If you are lucky enough to form a friendship out of it, that’s great, however it is important to understand the other’s perspective.
I know many people wonder how to achieve that, or if it will ever happen. In taking from my personal experience with my mum, I can 100% say that the number one reason we are so close now is because we learned to find things we have in common and focus on those. Sure, we share the same hard-headedness that made us disagree, but we also love art history, traveling to London, watching home renovation shows, and reading entertainment magazines. I got some of my less favorable traits from my mum, but I got the ones I love the most from her as well.
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