Excerpt: 'Mother-Daughter Wisdom'
May 2, 2005 — -- Christiane Northrup, M.D., an obstetrician-gynecologist and author of "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom," writes about the mother-daughter relationship in her newest book, "Mother-Daughter Wisdom."
Northrup says most of women's deeply held beliefs about themselves and their relationships with others are a product of their relationship with their mothers -- their first and most-powerful role models. Understanding this complicated but rewarding relationship can help women lead healthier lives, she says.
The mother-daughter relationship is at the headwaters of every woman's health. Our bodies and our beliefs about them were formed in the soil of our mothers' emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. Even before birth, our mother provides us with our first experience of nurturing. She is our first and most powerful female role model. It is from her that we learn what it is to be a woman and care for our bodies. Our cells divided and grew to the beat of her heart. Our skin, hair, heart, lungs, and bones were nourished by her blood, blood that was awash with the neurochemicals formed in response to her thoughts, beliefs and emotions. If she was fearful, anxious or deeply unhappy about her pregnancy, our bodies knew it. If she felt safe, happy, and fulfilled, we felt that too.
Our bodies and those of our daughters were created by a seamless web of nature and nurture, of biology informed by consciousness, that we can trace back to the beginning of time. Thus, every daughter contains her mother and all the women who came before her. The unrealized dreams of our maternal ancestors are part of our heritage. To become optimally healthy and happy, each of us must get clear about the ways in which our mother's history both influenced and continues to inform our state of health, our beliefs, and how we live our lives. Every woman who heals herself helps heal all the women who came before her and all those who will come after her.
A mother's often unconscious influence on her daughter's health is so profound that years ago I had to accept that my medical skills were only a drop in the bucket compared to the unexamined and ongoing influence of her mother. If a woman's relationship with her mother was supportive and healthy, and if her mother had given her positive messages about her female body and how to care for it, my job as a physician was easy. Her body, mind, and spirit were already programmed for optimal health and healing. If, on the other hand, her mother's influence was problematic, or if there was a history of neglect, abuse, alcoholism, or mental illness, then I knew that my best efforts would probably fall short. Real long-term health solutions would become possible only when my patient realized the impact of her background and then took steps to change this influence. Though health-care modalities such as dietary improvement, exercise, drugs, surgery, breast exams, and Pap smears all have their place, not one of them can get to the part of a woman's consciousness that is creating her state of health in the first place.
Before birth, consciousness literally directs the creation of our bodies. It is also constantly being shaped by our life's experiences, most especially those of childhood. No other childhood experience is as compelling as a young girl's relationship with her mother. Each of us takes in at the cellular level how our mother feels about being female, what she believes about her body, how she takes care of her health, and what she believes is possible in life. Her beliefs and behaviors set the tone for how well we learn to care for ourselves as adults. We then pass this information either consciously or unconsciously on to the next generation.
Though I acknowledge that the culture at large plays a significant role in our views of ourselves as women, ultimately the beliefs and behavior of our individual mothers exert a far stronger influence. In most cases, she is the first to teach us the dictates of the larger culture. And if her beliefs are at odds with the dominant culture, our mother's influence almost always wins.
Maternal Attention: An Essential Lifelong Nutrient
When a TV camera focuses on audience members in the studio or at sporting events, what does the person on camera shout out? More often than not, it's "Hi, Mom!"
Each of us has a primal need to be seen and noticed by our mothers, and that's why the loss of one's mother can be so devastating. In a letter at the beginning of Hope Edelman's book, Motherless Daughters, a woman whose mother died when she was thirteen wrote:
No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional, and strong as a mother's love. And I will never be loved that way again.
One of my newsletter subscribers recently used nearly the same words, although her loss came much later in life:
I lost my mother four years ago when I was forty-nine. And I sure do miss her. Mother-daughter relationships are one of the most intimate we will ever have and often one of the most complicated. One of the most painful things I realized when my mom died was that I would never again be loved as unconditionally (in this life) as a mother loves.
A daughter's need for her mother is biologic, and it continues throughout her life. Not only was our mother's body the source of life for us but it was her face that we looked to, to see how we were doing. By gazing into our mother's eyes and experiencing her response to us, we learned crucial first lessons about our own worth.
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