Episode 118: Healing the Mother Daughter Relationship with Ann Dillard
/For this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, we will have the second installment of the motherhood series. And in this episode, we are going to dive deep into the mother-daughter relationship and figure out how we can have a healthy relationship between us and our daughters, and our Moms too! To help me in this conversation, I am joined by Ann Dillard who is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist offering mental health services to teen girls and their families. She hosts conversation circles and coaching programs internationally, where she helps women of all ages to navigate challenges in their mother/daughter relationships. If you are having challenges keeping a healthy connection with your daughter (and your mother), then this is for you! Here is an overview of what we talked about:
The mother-daughter relationship and what it a healthy relationship looks like
The healing process of repairing a strained relationship
Healthy boundaries: What they look like and how to establish them
To get more resources, visit her website at www.anndillard.com and follow her on Instagram @AnnDillard.LMFT.
Facebook Group: Building Authentic Mother Daughter Relationships
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody! This is Dr. Laura Froyen. And on this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to be diving in to the mother-daughter relationship. So we're gonna be figuring out how we can have a healthy mother daughter relationship and what are some of the things that we need to know to set us up for success for a lifelong relationship that's beautiful and lovely between us and our daughters.
And then also looking kind of backwards through our ancestral line and thinking about what are some of the things that need healing in the mother daughter kind of story that's going on in our family. And so to help me with this conversation, I'm bringing in a new friend and colleague Ann Dillard um she is an expert in all things mother daughter and she also really works primarily with older kids and young adults and so she's going to be this like sage kind of guide who's ahead in our path and letting us know what we need to know right now to set us up for success down the line. So, and welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk with you.
Ann: Well thank you Dr. Laura, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here to talk about this very important topic. Right? The mother-daughter relationship and what's ahead and how do we kind of nestle in for healthy ride? Right.
Laura: Absolutely. Well why don't you just tell us a little bit like about yourself for just a few minutes.
Ann: Awesome. My name is Anne Dillard and like yourself, I'm a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and I am licensed in the state of Georgia and Minnesota where I served my clients primarily. Well, 100% virtual now. Since Covid-19 I have been doing telehealth across these two states. I have, I do have a private practice brick and mortar in Decatur, Georgia. I'm working from home, so we're not in the office someday.
I look forward to going back into that space where I can work with my teams and their mom's face to face. Alright, I still look forward to that, but right now we do the best that we can. I am the creator of the Mother Daughter Conversation Cards, the mother daughter prompt journal as well, and the team talk, conversation cards that I share with my audiences and I'm just excited to be here and I'm sure as we talk a little more about me will come out along this, this journey.
Laura: Okay, well, awesome, thank you so much. Okay, so I think one of the things that I'm really, really curious about and that um lots of my listeners struggle with is they're trying to figure out how to have healthy relationships with their children and you know, we're focusing on mothers and daughters right now, but in general, they're trying to have healthy relationships with their children when they perhaps not experience a healthy mother daughter relationship themselves. And it can be really hard to go into that goal when you, you only really know what you don't want and you don't know how to actually get to where you want to be. And so it's just, you know, can we just start there?
Ann: Yeah, I think that's really important because as we talk, one of the things that you'll know about me as well is that pretty transparent about my my mother daughter journey, right? And so I have one daughter, she's now 32 years old. And as I was growing up, there are things that would come up in my relationship with my mother that I was like, I will never do that to my child. I would never say that this will never happen.
And so that is the desire going into parenting, right? But what happens is if we have not intentionally identified those things that we want to change in our lineage and if we have not intentionally thought out, help learn different coping mechanisms and do some rewiring of our brains when we get in stressful situations.
Those are the things that pop up and that's what you know, that's what you learn. And so without that intentionality we repeat what we don't repair. And that is one of the quotes that that I love to use and the name of the author is slipping me right now and she says we repeat what we don't repair. It sounds so simple, but there's so much depth to that.
Laura: So much truth. And so, okay, so now I feel like the folks who are listening are like, yes, that makes sense. I'm just part of me wants to help them know how to repair, especially for our listeners who have lost their mothers or who have relationships with their mothers that are really strained and or they know their parents will never engage with them. How can we go back and repair what needs to be repaired if we don't have the buying.
And I'm super lucky my mom is right there with me and willing to do the work. It's beautiful the way she is vulnerable. She's on my post on Instagram, on Facebook. She really engages with me like the healing process, It's gorgeous. But not all people have that, not, you know, and so how do we go about repairing when we don't have that? Or maybe even we don't want to forgive the hurts that came towards us.
Ann: That's pretty loaded right there, right? And kudos to your mom, that is such a gift. That is such a gift in. And kudos to her being a trendsetter because usually in my practice I find young adult daughters who are reaching out to say, hey, I want to do this. But my mom isn't necessary. You know, she said in her ways, she doesn't necessarily see a need for anything to change. Um, but I do it right.
And so when we think about, there might be a parent who might be unwilling or unavailable to do this work, we still have to do the work for ourselves because if we don't do the work, then we're passing it on to our children to do, right? And so in my mother daughter coaching program, I've really set up about five steps to, to really navigate this space. And the first one is introspection and reflection. We have to have that level of awareness of what is it that we want to change what it is, What is it that we want to be different?
And what do we bring to the table? Right. Kind of like in this space also focusing on what is in my control? What about this relationship? Can I control? And what can I not control? And then focusing in on the things that you can control. Right? So that that is like first step and then we look at how do we establish healthy boundaries, right?
And when we hear boundaries, especially for our moms who are, you know, a little older, it's like you're setting up walls and you're the boundaries are not really walls boundaries are really saying how we're gonna operate in our relationship so that you can be safe and I can be safe.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So then what do healthy boundaries and a mother daughter relationship look like and at different ages. So, you know, for we all, you know, most of us have had a mother and most of us, you know, we have children who are listening to this, right?
So how like how does the health like healthy mother daughter relationship look with our own mom? If we have one who's who we're working with right now who were around and spending time with and then also what does it look like with our own children? Can we talk? What are the characteristics of those healthy boundaries?
Ann: Right? And you're you're so correct. It it looks differently at different ages, right? For example, I'm going to give you an example in my own life. So my daughter is 32, she's married and they recently had a child or to hold this I should say.
So I have my thoughts and my ideas of how she should raise her child, right? Because the mother with all the wisdom and I'm older than you kind of think, but I remember specifically when I went to stay and spend some time with her after her baby was born and I remember just looking at her trying to figure things out and I'm like, you know what? It's really not about me right now and this is the part where you can be if you are able to be reflect and interesting this this is where it comes in.
I'm like it's really not about me right now, it's about her having this experience. And so one of the things that I did was I assured her and reassure her that you have everything that you need to be amazing parents just tell me how I can support you, right?
And so even when he was crying and in the back of my head I was thinking this baby is hungry, we need some more food, right? I said to her, you know, I I just gently say, what kind of cry do you think that is? You know, just just inviting her to explore because for me, I've been doing my work and I know that it's important to have boundaries. I don't get to go in and Bogart and take over her experience.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. And you know, it's funny, like I know that we were saying that this looks different at different ages, right? But it's pretty like it's similar to when a kiddo is building legos are magnetized when they're little holding back and thinking like this is their experience, this is their play. I don't need to step in. I need to support and having that attitude of this is there's this is their life and I can be there to support them. I think that that carries through all, you know, all through our relationship with our kids.
Ann: It does. And again, we're talking about mother daughter, but this applies to all of our relationships, right? And so that was a healthy boundary to ask her, what is it that you want for him? How do you want to raise him? And I'll support you in those efforts versus were in third grade, I think it might have been my son and they were studying the solar system.
I had to make that contraption to be, you know, no Pluto goes here and it's got to be this color, it is that was so unhealthy, right? But learning along the way how to endorse their own personality and give them space for autonomy and agency is so important and not be so wrapped up where their identity is so connected to mine that I forgo who they are as individuals.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. So much. It's also not easy when again, you know, our models were different too, you know, and so I, one thing I do feel curious about, so you were talking, you gave this beautiful example of you having healthy boundaries with your daughter as she became a mother and I feel curious about when you're in the mother, like in your daughter's shoes, you've just become a mother and you are having an interaction with your mother. What would a healthy boundary setting look like from on her part because people have lots of opinions about how we're supposed to raise our kids, right? So what would a healthy boundary setting sound like coming from your daughter's place?
Ann: Yeah, I think that's really a good example or a good place to look at boundaries. So it might be that a daughter said mom, I, I know you want to be with my son or I know you want to be with your grandchild, but can you give me some time, you know, asking for time because a lot of times, especially when our daughters have children, we feel like we need to, you know, assert ourselves in there a little more.
But even respect and respecting that space or just saying things like I understand that you know this or gel worked when I was a kid but now they have new studies that we need or a gel with a different ingredients and, and just to be as a mother to be able to accept that and say okay and give her that space instead of feeling like she's attacking me or she's saying you don't what you did wasn't good enough.
Laura: Oh absolutely. I think that we run into that so much that when we try to explain our way of parenting differently to the older generation that we, we inadvertently hurt their feelings. We, it feels like a rejection or dismissal or an criticism of how they did it things and you know, if we think about how wrapped up we are our identity is in rearing our children and being a parent, being a mother is a big piece of identity and then to be on the receiving end of I didn't like how you did it and I'm doing it differently. It's quite a vulnerable thing to be on the receiving end of that.
So I love that you're encouraging us to tap into compassion for our parents and of course there are parents who did did real harm but for the most part, most of us have parents who did the best they could with what they have the information they had at the time coming in from that place of compassion and just, you know, acknowledgment of, you know, I know you care assuming the best.
I know that you really want, what's best for me, my new child and, and I know you have good intentions and I know that you had good intentions when you were raising me and now we just know things are different, we know more and and now I'm doing things differently and that doesn't mean how you did it was wrong. All right, good coaching, you know, like that's the therapy term, right coaching things.
Ann: And it helps if if mom is doing her own work right, because again, so much of our identity as mothers, you know, caught up in what our children do. One of the things that I coach and teach my clients is that your children aren't here to fulfill your unmet dreams, they have their own and we get to support them or not, but they're not here to fulfill our unmet dreams.
Laura: And I think, you know, it's funny, I think that that like for those of us with younger kids, I feel like that feels really obvious, but as they get older and they start moving towards the teenage years and or moving towards thinking about college or careers, I think it's hard to remember that at times, especially if you've seen them take a very different path.
Ann: Right? And we're dealing with the generation that we're dealing with now, things are so different, right? We have people who will quit jobs on the, you know, in a minute. Whereas we might be from the school of thought that you give them 30 days, You give them, you give them two weeks notice and you have another job before you quit your job.
And and then here we have these young girl with millennials and they take risk and they don't necessarily care about being on a job for 30 years, right? And so that looks totally different than the values that we have as older parents. And so how do we trust them to navigate their own path and just be a soft place for them to land?
Laura: Yeah, I like that. That's a soft place for them to land. That's beautiful. Okay, so I have a couple of questions that I want to know, kind of what you're your teens and young adults would say like, if you could ask them, what are like the top five things that moms can do when their girls are young to set them up to have a healthy relationship. What would your your clients, your young adults and teen clients say?
Ann: oh my, they would say mom could listen listen to me listen, listen, listen, right? And I've been paying attention. Even when I'm having a tantrum still listen to me because some of my teams feel like their mothers or or their parents love is conditional only when you behave the way I want you to behave or I expect you to behave, right?
So then there becomes this separation when I don't act right. Or I don't behave properly. And there's this separation and during that time of separation or isolation, there's so much that happens within their cognitive state. It just is not good. Right? And so listening would be one, being there is an extension of listening but also allow me to take risk.
Laura: Yeah, allow me to take risks. That can be hard. Okay.
Ann: It can be hard, especially when you've lived this life already, Right? That's like that's where that agency comes in, right? Allowing them to take with, they would say that one of the big things that my teens say is Miss and I don't always want to hear the comparative story like when I was your age, I didn't have to da da da and and I had to walk and I had to do this kind of work and I had to do this and I had to do this and you have it so easy.
Laura: I bet that feels really invalidating to them.
Ann: Very much so. And very minimized into their experiences. And so if parents would understand that they might not have the exact same experiences but their experiences are valid and there's reasons or are reasons why they could be stressed or having a mental health really challenges around their lifestyle even though you have worked as hard as you can to make it cushy or comfortable or you know, offer the things that you didn't have. It doesn't mean that they're not faced with their own challenges.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So listen, allow mistakes. Yeah, I know comparing experiences. Okay. I need other wisdom from teens.
Ann: Yes. They would say don't share my business with other people.
Laura: Respect my privacy.
Ann: Oh my goodness. Oh, I have, I posted something like that on facebook a little while ago and one of my friends who was a little younger than me, she said when she got started her menstrual cycle, her mom walked down the street with a box of pads and saying my girl is a woman now. And so I think it's important that parents realize that it is a difference when you have a support system and you have a village that you know, you consult with or you, you have to encourage you and your child along than when you're just sharing their business and also for them to to hear you share their business.
That could be so so hurtful. And yeah, so even in in the instance where yes, it's the village, but you might need to or consider asking permission. Is it okay that I share this with grandma or is it okay that I share this with auntie.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that this is something that can be practiced early. I I practice this with my kids. My kids are nine and 6 and we practiced this and have been for years. It's one of the reasons why I rarely talk about my parenting struggles here because my parenting struggles include my children and that's their story and I, and they're little, they can't really give good consent for me right now to, to share their stories. So I really appreciate that. Okay, so listen, allow risks, no comparison. respect my privacy. Let's do you have one more so we can have five.
Ann: no comparison, respect my privacy. And then the other one would be, let's see, I'm thinking about, I have a few teams in mind that's coming up and the one that I'm thinking about really ties back into listening and it's like not minimizing the things that that I'm experiencing and that that kind of ties together.
Yes, believe me. So that the door can be left open by, but also an extent of this one right here, which is I think believe me would be a good topic for this one, but also in that belief, not forced me to do things or engage with people who I don't feel comfortable engaging with. Right? So growing up in our household, you respected adults. You respected by hugging people, you know, without regards to your autonomy right with, without it's totally disregarded, right?
You did this because you're showing respect and if you did not greet and kiss and hug and did all of those things, the people might look at your parents and say, what kind of parents are they or what kind of children are they raising? But I think for parents to take a step back and say, and if the child doesn't want to engage with people in a certain way, trust in and believe in that they have a reason or they might know. Yeah, something.
Laura: Yeah. And that's another thing that can start right away from the beginning or forced affection right away. Yeah. And I mean and this is these are teaching healthy boundaries too. And it's healthy boundaries aren't just what happens between you and your children, but it's how you support your children and holding them with other people to its beauty.
It's absolutely to give to your children to teach them how to listen to their intuition, how to trust themselves and to know that they are trustworthy by trusting that Yeah. it's just right
Ann: That's right. And by believing them by trusting them and giving them, you know, support in knowing that you can listen to yourself and that, you know, so many times we have been taught especially as women to override our intuition so much. And even though, you know, we might say I had a gut feeling about that, but we've been, it has been minimized so much.
It has been invalidated or seen as wrong or we've been called sensitive or too emotional or so many different labels have been attacked to us really cueing into our our intuition that we lose sight and we override those feelings. And I think embracing them in our children the whole such a gift.
Laura: It's such a gift. You know, I so agree with you. We've been so conditioned. I think the world is afraid of the power of women who listen to their intuition. I think that it is a a thing that happens on purpose where we get conditioned to not listen to it because the world, I mean, we would be so powerful, you know, just as women, like, we would just be, our intuitions are so beautiful and wonderful and spot on, we are so good at seeing injustice when we're trusting our gut. We're so good at seeing patterns were, I don't know, the intuition of women is something that's so beautiful to me. It's one of the, like my biggest goals for my girls is that they never quiet that voice within them.
Ann: because we're intuitively good at our core. We're intuitively ourselves, that part of us. It's intuitively good and and it'll it'll guide us right and and that's where our personal power comes from. But if we keep quiet in it and if we keep overriding it and ignore our children when they express their their emotions. And yes, they might be big emotions, the more we override it or dismiss those emotions, the more we quiet those intuitions and those intuitive parts of them.
Laura: I so agree. And I, you know this all goes hand in hand with doing our own work. So many of my clients and I'm sure your your parent clients to the moms that you work with have such a hard time trusting their own intuition as parents um and reclaiming that for yourself, Learning to trust your intuition.
Learning not to run to the next parenting expert like you and me, but rather turning inward to be your own inner guide is a crucial practice. And I think sometimes when we are nurturing that in our children they can be such an inspiration to us. They can really teach us how to do that if we let them, you know.
Ann: Oh that's so beautiful. He said absolutely.
Laura: Yeah. Oh goodness, okay so I feel like I could talk about mother and daughter relationships with you you know so long and I know that my listeners are going to want to learn more about what you have to offer. So where can they go to find you and learn more about. You know, you have great free content on Instagram, you do a really nice job of putting prompt like prompts, you know things to say to your daughter things Mother should say to their daughters. I love those posts of yours. So where can they find you?
Ann: Well, they can find me on my website. First of all that will take you to all social media platforms, www.anndillard.com, and Instagram @AnnDillard.LMFT, Facebook, and KIP Consulting Services is the name of my, my business, my practice, but I also have a mother daughter group that's called Building Authentic Mother Daughter Relationships and I, I share lots of free content in that group as well.
Laura: Oh my gosh, well, I'll make sure that all the links to those things are in the show notes and and I really appreciated connecting with you on these topics today. I love the, the attention and space you give to mother daughter relationships. We need more of it.
Ann: Thank you so much and thank you for continuing to do the work that you do serve in your audience. It's a breath of fresh air.
Laura: Well yeah, again, I really just loved chatting with you. So thank you so much.
Ann: Thank you Laura.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this