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Things she never told me

To the daughters of mothers who were or are in denial - this is for you

By Roxanne CottellPublished 3 years ago 15 min read
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I am a daughter of a mother who was always in denial about something

Lots of us were raised to follow in someone elseʻs footsteps, as though creating our own path would somehow lead us into something like temptation or damnation or just, possibly, somewhere out of the line of judgement by others who behave, believe, and tell us all that they know better than we do, know better what is best for us, and all of it looks like nothing that we would have chosen or choose to do ourselves.

And, like Lena Simons wrote in her pieceAn open letter to the kids who raised themselves, lots of parents who parented my generation (the world of marketing and labels call us "Gen-X"....astrologers like me call it "The Pluto in Virgo" and "The Pluto in Libra" generations combined) have no real idea that even though they paid the bills, made sure that we had a roof over our heads, etc., etc., there was, an emptiness that those who raised us never considered - that we were not looking to impress people with what we did for a living, or who we knew, or anything to impress others. All we wanted was for you to love us as we were, as we are, and for some of us, for a lot of us, it never happened. For me, it will never happen.

She passed away.

And it would not have mattered, because it seemed to never have mattered, that I loved her like I did and still do - all that mattered, it seemed, was that I followed whatever narrative it was that in her head, she was creating for me, her eldest daughter, her first born child.

And yes, of course, she was lovely about it, to the point where I was just literally basking in the glow of her love, no matter how fleeting I felt it was - how else would any person have been able to know that their mother loved them and who they were and are if they were not made to ask for it, right?

Beg for it.

Demand it.

Be denied it in the manner that you, that I needed it from her, specifically.

To this day, there are more of us in my generation who have issues because our parents were not aware of things that they were teaching us, and more - NOT teaching us, simply by denying their own living vicariously through us, their children.

Particularly mothers, particularly with their daughters.

Many mothers who parented my generation do not like to admit to the idea that even as they were on the brink of bringing into being all of these rights that we now have, what the Pluto in Leo generation (those ...Boomer folks....) did not, does not and will never "get" is that your daughters are very well aware of how much you wanted to believe yourselves to be all you wanted to be...but, our fathers, a whole lot of them, would not allow it.

Thatʻs right - a whole lot of the people on this planet want a whole lot of their daughters to never ever believe this one thing....that our mothers, LOTS OF THEM, were more mouth than might.

In the words of a past beloved editor named Christine F., I said it, so deal with it.

Many who parented my generation are and were the sort to boast, and hope, and encourage us, but lots of them had nothing to show as the example for us, and all of it, for lots of us, was nothing more than lip service.

And there you all were, with your hopes and dreams nestled in those kids of yours, kids who you went and told every one of your church friends, and every one of your siblings, and every one who you could tell that your little girl was going to become a (fill in the blank with whatever horrifically over-the-top occupation you told her she was going to be when she grew up) and when she did not, you chose to slam on her, rather than to check yourself (which consequently caused you to wreck yourself and continue to do the things that wrecked her all of her life).

There is nothing more beautiful than a woman who has figured this out

I could sit here all day long and write about this. I could sit here and tell people things that plenty of us know, but that plenty more of us will never say because we have been taught all of our lives to honor our mother and father, which lots of us were taught meant that we were to be seen and never heard.

Lots of us, myself included, got caught up in all of that energy, caught up in all the beliefs that in order to be a good human, you have to still do what your parents tell you is the right way, still have to "make nice" when all you want to do is tell the truth very loudly and angrily.

Because of this energy that has been in our lives forever, there is still the issue with lots and lots of fifty-something women still feeling like that almost twenty-something self who is trying hard just to accept how she feels about herself and who cannot figure out why she does not do that already.

We were taught to go out into the world and make our "best lives," but some of us were raised by women who put more faith and fear in their unseen god and that man we each called "Dad" to take the bad people away than they were to admit they had no clue what they were doing or saying - all they knew, a lot of them, was that their little girl had to shine brighter than all the others.

What I would like to know is why did we have to outshine the very people who we were told were our best friends and why did we have to make them look bad, or at least not as good as we were told we looked in front of others?

And for that matter, being a mother of a daughter, myself - I would like to know why the hell it mattered so much that we looked good, but once the show was over, it was back to the same old ways of being that was called "constructive criticism," but was actually a way to push us to what was better for them, but rarely for us.

Lots of them did not realize that this is what they were doing when they went off into their own worlds of church functions and PTA meetings, dance recitals where we were expected to look like anything other than our own tiny little child selves. Lots of them had no idea that the reason why we balked at the suggestion of doing things because "all of your little (church, school, girl scout, dance class) friends are going to do it and you will be forgotten about..." was because in those moments, those parents of ours had no clue that they were breaking who we were at that time.

...and sadly, some of them meant to.

No one made it a big deal that our parents were turning us into little adults, taking away that wonder called childhood, and doing so because there, in their heads, was still the ongoing recording of our grandparents telling our parents the same old things - work hard, get married, have kids, retire, and die, and that is all there is to life. They, with all of their own addictions, to churches, to money, to power, to the never ending Peter Pan like energy that no one seemed to think was strange, not even them.

Pluto in Leo doing the job of parenting people....this is where the greed and the lies happen, and not too many of them are willing to think otherwise -that whole biblical honoring of parents, regardless if lots of them were totally clueless, selfish and horrifically abusive. We are the children of those unions and for all of our lives, we have been told we are wrong, that we need to "suck it up buttercup," that if we did not go and wash our faces people would think that we were hookers.

We are the ones who, when memories and truth collide, in all of our five senses can recall very vividly everything that we were told we were lucky to have in our lives, even as my Spirit also reminds me that there were things that lots of us did not have, and one of those things were a set of parents who were no longer trying to worship their own parents and continue to honor the rules of dead people.

And people wonder why it is that so many people in my generation have abandonment issues, issues with confidence and self-esteem, issues with partnerships and marriages... issues, period.

Ones who many of them went to college, hold degrees and professional licenses to practice things that are meant to help heal us.

What it did, instead, was give many of our parents a false sense of power, make us question the things that we were told were the truth, even more than we already did, long before we realized, when it came to be our middle-age time, that we did not and do not have to do things the way that we were never taught to.

If we were never taught to do the things that they wanted us to, and they were never taught to go on ahead and have an original thought, and if no one ever says anything to anyone about things like this, things like this ongoing, permeating and insidiously dangrous energy will continue.

"The more that we resist, the more those ugly things persist."

No one who feels like they are never wrong will ever believe this, even as it is their generation who created this saying. Perhaps they said it as one last shot at keeping the narrative going, at keeping the status quo where it is at.

As a Lunar Taurean with everything that matters in terms of things our parents taught us about us, about who we are and what we can do, methinks it is time that, since we are all the own CEO of our lives, and since we all have that right and that ability to make up our own minds, and since all of our time as kids all we did was seek out and create ways to rebel without getting into trouble, I am telling everyone who felt a little something when you read this to please unshackle yourselves.

We have been honoring these people for all of our lives, and mistaking it that their rules are unchangeable, all because we do not want to hurt them or make them feel disrespected.

Ask yourself how long ago it was that you felt respected by anyone who would tell you that storks bring babies, and that everyone will love you if you just do things the way others want you to.

Ask yourself how much longer you plan to keep on asking your parents their advice for things that they have no clue about, and see how far your healing gets and how quickly you end up right back at the dragonʻs tail, when in reality, you ought to be the head?

I am so NOT picking on us.

I am merely stating the obvious - we have got whatever "this" is, and we always have. We were just told that it did not look the way that we were taught it ought to look, because the way that we did it was not the way that we were told it had to happen (that, or it was not a valid representation of anything, no matter what). Some of us did not trust ourselves to get to this point in our lives without the help of those who taught us to do otherwise...but, here we are, every single one of us.

Some people might think that these words are being written from a place of bitterness, which indeed may well be the case. Yet, who could really blame me for the way that I and many others in my generation actually feel about everything happening now, and everything that happened before now?

And instead of telling yourself that I am yet one more "Xer" with a bitch to pitch, think instead that I might just be one of those daughters of a mother who was always in denial.

About lots of things.

Lots of it about herself.

These words do not mean at all that I did not love my mother. They mean that I did not idolize her like so many in her generation idolized their mothers.

I canʻt.

I was taught by my mother to follow the Ten Commandments, which in and of themselves are actually just rules of good moral behavior in whatever context it is that fits your life. Even if you are an evil person.

One of those commandments tells us that we are not supposed to worship any other gods before whoever it is that "Me" is in that verse in Exodus in the Bible.

I love how the interpretation that I was given to follow was my dadʻs. He was our church pastor. So was his uncle and his cousin of their churches, as was his cousinʻs old man. It makes sense that I, too, would be another Ordained person in a family line of the same. Their interpretations only involve one God, and the one who I was raised to believe.

Mine involve the Goddess...

...whatʻre you trippinʻ for? That I state, always, that there are two halves to every whole, including anyoneʻs biblical ideals and interpretations of what anyone will fail to see the one-sidedness that we have been taught to believe, and that plenty of our mothers, if we are fortunate enough to have them in our lives still, are still believing?

Our mothers ought to be the very last ones to tell ANY of us daughters about how it was only a MAN god who did all of this, all on his own....and still expected us, their daughters, most of us at the age where our own daughters are having children, themselves, to believe that a male god was the only one who created all of this, and was good enough, as that man god, to make us ...in HIS image....HOW????

We get pregnant the old fashioned way, but this God guy who my folks believed controls everything...didnʻt need a female other half, but we do, because we are human?

And your big ugly mean and torturesome god guy...didnʻt?

Is that why we are still told that sex before marriage is a sin? Because the god guy forgot to have all of his minions over the course of history forget about two equal halves?

I doubt it. I have yet to see this god guy with a pen in his hand, let alone at all, and the last thing that I am telling my daughter is to fear something that she does not know is real to anyone but her.

Yet, this is not the way that an entire generation of sinful, lusty women taught us, their daughters.

They wanted us to carry the weight of the shame for the things that they could never tell their own mothers, and that we had a hard time, a lot of us, telling ours.

We mothers of my generation, most of us, do not fear telling our own daughters the truth about everything, even when it breaks their hearts.

I forget at times that it is the generation that at one time was coined The Me Generation. All that a whole LOT of these people wanted, as far as my memory shows me, is to never be questioned in what they believed.

They taught us what they believed, and they wanted us to believe them to be these demigods that we were told in church about, all those years growing up, that we were not to place before their lord God Almighty. At the same time, while they were telling us this, they were teaching us through their unconscious actions and ill-spoken words and teachings that we were to worship the truths that they believed - and for a lot of us, this included the very intensity that was theirs, but never ours, even to this day.

Some of them, even now, even though they do not realize it, even as they do not think or believe it, want absolute conformity to their demands, even now, to what it is that we are willing to believe in, no matter what it is. It is almost as though lots of these people want us to worship them, or at least worship the ground that they walk on.

I do not know.

I have no idea.

What I do know is that it is time that the very lot of us chose to become the things that we were never told we could be, that no one seemed to have the faith in us to get those things done.

Is this my stating that my parents did not love or care about me?

Not at all.

This is my stating that there are lots of us on this planet who are still walking around controlled by the rules of dead people, and dead people who are likely looking at you all right now, shaking their heads, and wondering why we are even listening to their kids still.

To the daughters of the mothers in denial....

You were born with that big beautiful brain in your head. It is there for a reason.

Remember how many times we were told to use it or lose it....it would be the only time that I would tell any one of us to take them seriously, because maybe, just maybe, they see who we are.

Who we are is Magick, even if you were told there is no such thing, made to believe otherwise.

You are powerful, even if they told you that you are not.

Our power never rested in their hands, but in our belief in who we are, regardless of them.

I said it.

Deal with it.

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About the Creator

Roxanne Cottell

Iʻm a certified NLP Life coach in SoCal who writes about healing, astrology, my life as a community voice, as well as making sure the world knows that Hawaii is home to lots of people - my people, Na Kanaka Maoli O Hawaii Nei.

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