Episode 364: Healing Mother Daughter Relationship

No need to whine, it's whiny palooza! Have some wine and join us on the whiny palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene. Welcome to the whiny palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family. Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whiny Pluza Podcast, and I am very, very excited because I get to talk to the fabulous Dr. Deborah Mandel. Dr. Deb— see, and I just said Dr. Deborah and you just told me not to say Dr. Deborah.

Dr. Deborah's good. No, you know how many times people call me Barbara Mandrell? Because that was a famous singer. So I'm like, Dr. Barbara Mandrell, Mandel. Anyway, it doesn't—

you get it, you get it all. Well, I am so excited to talk to you and I can't thank you enough for doing this with me today.

Thank you. I'm excited too.

I'm gonna tell you about this fantastic lady, and you're all gonna love her. She is a nationally renowned psychologist with over 30 years of experience, and she brings her no-nonsense yet compassionate approach to the forefront. As the author of 4 books, including the best-selling Dump That Chump— oh, that sounds good— Dr. Deborah has been featured on national television and radio shows as a relationship expert. Expert. Dr. Deborah Mandel's latest book, Sassy and Rude: Her New Attitude Is a Game Changer, dive into the shocking truth of mother-daughter dynamics with Dr. Deborah. Well, we are going to talk a lot about mothers and daughters, and I know that all of my listeners are excited to learn about improving this relationship. And I would love to start with asking you, what inspired you to explore the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship.

Okay, so I'm gonna try to not be too long-winded because there's so much that went into the background of this.

Sure, sure.

But the funny story I have about it is that I wrote a proposal for this, which was called Why Is She Such a Bitch, approximately 14 years ago. And It, it, my agent could not sell it. So it's okay. Sometimes those things just go on the back burner. And this is when my daughter was, she was quite a bit younger, you know, so she was in her late teens, I guess. Yeah. She would've been in late teens. Okay. I happened to be in the hospital for a paper cut gone rogue where my hand swelled up the size of a baseball mitt. And I'm lying there checking emails because I don't really have anything else to do. It's not like I'm incapacitated. I just simply have to be there on antibiotics. Biotics, which I'm allergic to lots of them, yada, yada, yada. And I see this note from my agent who I haven't talked to in years, and she says, hey, you have any interest in selling that proposal? I'm like, of course, why not? And now I have so much more to add to it because it's been so many years. Yeah. But the truth is, is why did I write that book? I wrote, I wrote this book because I had a really strained relationship with my own mom. My, my parents were immigrants. My dad was a Holocaust survivor. My mom was, uh, part of the whole— she was from Estonia, and then there was Russia, and then it was communism and this and that, and her family trying to get out, and just a big long story. So when my parents met, 13 years apart in age, dad much older, they were not equipped to be parents, quite frankly. And my mom, she gave up a modeling career. She just wasn't in it, in the sense of I want to be this loving, oozing mom. And I was that super uber sensitive little girl who needed an oozy, oozy mom. So my mom was pick it up by your bootstraps, there's no complaining. You put a glass down, you don't pick it up, it's gone, you're now punished. I mean, it was just a tough kind of go, but this is what she was best. So I have that backstory along with my own trials and tribulations with my daughter. So it just turned into this fabulous way to express all I think a lot of moms experience.

Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes. You're going to help me too. I have 2 daughters and 1 son.

Are they grown-ups? Yeah.

17, 15, and 11.

Oh, okay. So right at the perfect time to start thinking about these things. Oh my God.

I mean, the timing when I got this, when my producer sent me information on you, I was like, yes, I need this. Everybody needs this. So I mean, what are you finding are the most common challenges that you see between moms and daughters?

Oh, so many. Uh, one of which is that the daughters today— I'd hate to say this because I don't want to be outing my own daughter in some way because she's really not like this— but a lot of daughters are very entitled. We did this pendulum swing over the years where we wanted to do— and I get this— everything for our girls. Like, oh my gosh, give them everything we didn't have. So it's, you know, pendulum parenting. Oh my gosh, I didn't get that. I'm going to give you 100 times that. And just this continual indulgence. And so a lot of these gals, they grow up and they feel like they're on top of the world and they deserve everything. And then there's no real respect for boundaries or limits or the, hey, Mom, moms really are not superwomen. We, we do have our limits. We have our, uh, capacities, and then we can exceed them and max out, and we need some time too to chill out. So I call this the too nice mom syndrome, and that's it. That's a big one. Does that resonate at all?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're shaking your head.

Oh, thinking. Yep. Yep.

Yes. Um, I don't know if I'm gonna let my husband listen to this podcast, but I will tell you I will tell you that, you know, I bought my daughter these really expensive sneakers and my husband was like, really? And I was like, you know what? I never would have gotten these. Like, my mother never would have spent money on these sneakers. You know, she's much more conservative than I am with money. And I was like, do you know how good it feels to be able to buy her these sneakers? And my husband just shakes his head.

And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I want to say that, that we do these things from our hearts. But I think what happens is that a lot of times we're doing it so much because we have our own backstory of a wound. I know that was true for me. I so didn't want to make the same mistakes that my mom made with me. And I love my mom, by the way. She, she passed away very young. She died when she was 58. I had just, just been really an adult and had my daughter. And so she, my daughter never really got to have her grandma. And it's sad because I really wanted to have a better relationship with my mom. I would have loved that. That's what my first book was called, Healing the Sensitive Heart. And it was all about that sort of broken bird internal experience. So, so we're— I'm— nothing I'm saying here that should be shaming or wrong or bad. It's like, look, we make mistakes. I told my, my daughter when she was like, she was 10, I said, don't worry, honey, I have a college fund for you and a therapy fund because I know I'm going to do it wrong.

Oh my God, that's hysterical. Well, and I know I don't do everything right, and I'm open and ready to learn from you. So when you say too nice, I'm nodding my head that I know I'm too nice. So teach us, how does this contribute to communication breakdowns and trouble with the relationship?

Yeah, great question. So a lot of times when we are living in that world of being too nice, we're not really thinking about the whole picture. We're just thinking about making sure that we're loved, we're given the feedback that we wanted to receive, almost like a wounded bird child who's coming to their daughter to get their daughter to validate that which they didn't get validated in their own youth, if that makes any sense. So, so we have to be really careful of that. So what we're looking out for is things like— I, in the book, I talk about, you know, friendly Frida, woo-woo Wilma, the, the kinds of moms we can relate to who have these characteristics where a perfectionistic PIA these clients that I've worked with over the years where we have these characteristic styles that are in an attempt to do it right. I wish people could see, maybe some can, quote unquote, do it right. Yeah. But there is no real right. So the, the guidebook here is about learning to trust, learning to be self-compassionate, learning to take a deep breath, learning to self-regulate in a way that you're not looking toward your daughter to be your healer.

Oh my God, 100%. I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking about the fact that as mothers— and please correct me if I'm wrong— we don't want to go to our daughters to get our needs met. We want, right? We're the parent. We're meeting their needs. We shouldn't be going to them to get our needs met. Does that make sense?

That's correct in theory, but does it happen in reality? Because the truth is, if we're wounded in some way, then our wounds are going to take us. So part of the Part of the process in the book is really about learning to understand one's own wound. So I do direct moms to go through a very deep inventory of their own experience of what they didn't feel like they got met from childhood. And by the way, again, not a blaming process, not a shaming process, but a self-exploratory process that we're really learning how to dive into something with curiosity, kind of like a detective that says, Wow, this is a cool case. Let me get, let me get invested in this instead of, oh, I'm going to dig deep and I'm going to find so much dirt and I'm going to be upset, angry, and hurt.

Yeah. Well, and you may be like me where I would say, you know, some people say they had a really challenging childhood and they can identify their wounds easily. And they may say I had a really good childhood, but I don't know that any of us escaped childhood without some wounds.

100%. And I don't think it's about deciding whether we had a good or bad childhood. I think it's about uncovering what was right. Being in real sense of, hey, this hurt me, this helped me, this hurt me, this helped me. When I, uh, when I first went into therapy as a, a budding psychologist, as part of the requirement, I actually asked my parents when I was 15, could I go to therapy? And they said, why, are you crazy? I said, yes. Let me go to therapy. They're like, no. Okay. Because I think they didn't— they felt like they would be exposed in a way that probably would hurt them to some degree. And I really wanted to go because I wanted to learn about myself. Part of why I got into this field was because I knew I could get to therapy. My dad would help me pay for it because he really supported my education. So that's very interesting.

That's so interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, but I learned, I learned that I could sit there and be a victim and point fingers and say, oh, you didn't do this for me, you didn't do that for me. And I really tried to understand the capacity to be a thriver. And being a thriver is to embrace that which we endured, not as a survivor, but literally take that and turn chicken shit into chicken salad, like make it work for you. So yeah, my parents were not so great at certain things. My mom she had a really rough go herself. She was not nurtured. When I really could put her into a context, I could see that my mom was such a wounded bird herself. She was doing the best she could. And then there was so much love and forgiveness and compassion in my heart to say, all right, she really tried. And I, and I hope— because you asked me a little bit earlier before we started rolling here about, can we talk about daughters and what they can do for their moms too? Oh my gosh, it's such a precious gift that a daughter can do for her mom, is to put her mom in a context. Okay, it doesn't give moms license to abuse or mistreat or do anything of the sort, but sometimes we kind of just— we're quirky and we fail because we don't have a better way. So step up yourself. Step up and say, hey Mom, if you really want to get me, do it this way. Yes, yes.

I was just listening to a podcast and laughing because the woman was complaining about her mother. Her and her friend said to her, yeah, but you're like an adult now. Step it up. Take care of yourself. It's enough blaming your mother.

Yes. But historically, don't we want to do that? Right? That's what the whole Freudian concept was. Blame everybody for something that happened instead of understand it. How about we just be compassionate?

Yes. Oh, I love that. So tell us what you think some common misconceptions are about repairing strained mother-daughter relationships?

Well, I think that people want to believe it's going to be a totally one-sided approach. Mm-hmm. And I'm definitely of the Oprah camp, if you will, that you bring the, you bring the mom on, the mom does the healing first, you start the process. But for it to really get better, it's going to require both to do the hard work. I've worked with a lot of mother-daughter duos and they both have to get in there down and dirty and get with whatever it is that their pain is about and heal it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if we think about this as a one-sided approach, like mom's gonna somehow magically repair everything that's occurred for you, it's not gonna happen. So it takes a lot of forgiveness, willingness to try, willingness to do something different. And I wanna say probably one of the most important parts of my book is understanding where you have control and where you don't. Because we do not have control over another human being. We do our best to take care of and, uh, corral our little ones, but as we all get older and we become adults, we cannot control other people. So a misconception is somehow I can get you to do this, or I can get you to feel this, or I can get you to take— I can't get you to do anything. Here's what I can do to help you understand what it would be like for me to take ownership of something, be self-reliant, self-responsible, take ownership of that which I did that hurt you and move from there.

That's so good. I mean, I realized for myself a lot of my conflict with my little one, my youngest daughter, was me wanting to be in control. And I felt like I wasn't having control and I wasn't trying to understand what was going on for her at all. So I relate to everything you just said.

Oh, that's great. So, so what you have— you discovered then, it's really the difference is about boundaries versus control. You have the right as a mom of taking care of a child who is still under your roof. You do have that capacity to set boundaries. Can you ever control her thoughts or her feelings or her reactions to things? No. And that's where we get stuck, is that we want, we want our our loved ones to understand us in a way that we sometimes forget that we can't make that happen. We can just encourage it. I do talk about the difference between manipulation versus influence in the book. So accept that manipulation is something that is, uh, dangerous when we act upon it in a way that is harmful. But all of us manipulate. It's, it's one of the dirtiest words on the planet is, oh, you're a manipulator. But All of us manipulate because it's part of survival, but it's to what degree and when does it become dangerous. So I do talk about that too.

And can you give us an example of a dangerous manipulation?

A dangerous manipulation is, is that which we read about and hear about with sociopaths. It's literally talking to somebody in a way that you are doing, in your own mind, mind control over them. You are literally doing your best effort to get you get that person to become what you want them to be, and you're selling them a bag of garbage in order to get there. So that's a conscious, choiceful, destructive manipulation. But the concept of how many times do we manipulate when we tell somebody, I don't really— not going to go to the party because I don't feel well, when you feel just fine and just don't really want to go to the party.

Like, just be honest.

Just be honest. But most people feel like that's dangerous to be that. Yeah. Kind of thing to be that level of candidness when in fact we can do it in a way that's very kind. And that's a really important component of what I'm trying to teach people in this book and learning myself along the way. By the way, I like being a little bit of a teacher, but also showing that I am a student every step of the process.

I relate to that a lot. And, um, there's lots of mother-daughter conflict. I mean, you know, through all of your work on this, that mothers and daughters can have some major conflicts. What can we do as their mothers to reduce the conflict?

Great question. Also, try to get out of the power struggle component, right? A lot of times we want to be right, and being right doesn't get us anywhere but being wrong. So the, the best methods that I suggest are understanding. So be empathetic toward the experience that's occurring in the moment. It's kind of like if you have a 3-year-old that falls down and scrapes his knee, and he says, oh, Mommy, it's bleeding. And you say, oh, it's not that bad, let's just put a Band-Aid on it. Okay, that's not bad advice. But how about, oh yes, it is bleeding, sweetie, and that scares you a little bit. Now we'll put a Band-Aid on it. Well, we're going to fix it, it's going to get better. So we just go back to that initial experience of what feels good in our own hearts, which is usually that we are acknowledged appreciated, understood in some way. So we go there first. So you get out of the conflict by saying, honey, I know you think that I'm being a friggin bitch. I get that. And I'm your mom, and I don't want you to perceive me that way because I don't like it and you don't like it. And I need to set certain boundaries for you because I want you to grow up and be safe. I love you. So it's kind of like the whole circle. You're doing the whole circle dance.

Well, and I think that what mothers would probably relate to when I say this is sometimes I succeed and that whole thing that you just described goes well, and sometimes I lose my cool and the battle continues.

Yes.

And so what do we do then?

We can break it at any part of the process, right? Anytime. Okay. So I like, like to look at this as we have harmony, disharmony, and repair. So if you look at conflicts in that way, first we're harmonious, we're doing great. You and I are talking right now. We're smiling, we're laughing, we're having fun. Maybe I'm gonna say something that hurts your feelings. I don't know. That would be disharmony. Then you would tell me. Dr. Deborah, that hurt my feelings. That was unkind. I didn't like that, or it felt like you were shaming me, or whatever, whatever your experience is. Now I have an opportunity to either blame you and shame you and attack you, or I get to say, oh honey, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to do that. My intentions were pure, but let me see if I can understand how you got there. So that's what we're trying to do with our kids. And when they get older, because they have more of a voice, because we can't really have as much influence over them as when they're under our roof. Oh, that's a whole other topic too in the book about those who launched and then came back because they had been on their own. I have lots of stories about that as well. So it's, it's a tough call, but what we're trying to do is always stay in that healing process, that, that process of repair, because we're gonna have disharmony no matter what. How quickly can we get back into that process of repair, which is the most important component that we can bring to the mix? And our daughters may not always be that friendly and kind to that process because sometimes they're the ones who want to stay angry.

Yes.

And can be punishing.

Well, and it's such good advice because I think that what we don't realize is that when we do lose our cool, we can gain it back and repair at any moment in the conflict.

Maybe you could give me an example of what you mean when you say— I'll switch the, the roles here for a second— is when you say you lose your cool, does that mean that you yell? Do you call names? What?

Oh my gosh, I mean, what I want to call her—

remember, the original title of the book is Why Is She Such a Bitch? This is what the moms want to say.

I mean, it's going to relate to my next question about teenage development. Norma, some of it— okay, so the whole developmental appropriateness and what's appropriate and what's because they're a teenager and what's because of, you know, I have to have boundaries to how she's allowed to talk to me. And I also understand she's going through puberty and has major hormone meltdowns. But anyways, so In an argument, um, you know, if she gets sassy and rude with me, you know, there is times where I am super successful and I know in my brain I'm like, you know what, she didn't get enough sleep, she's really tired, just end the conversation, give her space, go downstairs, she'll, she'll regroup, she'll come downstairs, hopefully it'll go better. Like, that's something that might go well. In a way where it doesn't go well is she's sassy and rude and, and then I get pissed and I, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm yelling, but I'm really angry with how she's talking to me. So then my anger escalates with her and I make fire and fire meet.

Mm-hmm.

So the fire gets bigger. So if I can cool my flame, it goes really well. I'm not going to tell you I do that every time.

Of course not. Do you think any of us does? Anybody, anybody who says they do, I don't believe. Um, no, we can't. But what you're, what you're highlighting, which is so critical in understanding how we do a repair process, is in the first scenario, you're self-regulating. You're not getting engaged, and you actually are doing a wonderful job, which is kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You got to go to baseline first. Is there enough sleep?

Especially with her. Yes. Did she eat? Did she drink? Did she sleep?

Yes. Checklist. Check, check, check, check, check. Because so many of us fail in that department. And what we role model to our gals is sometimes not that great.

Mom's too busy.

Didn't have time for this. Didn't have— so we're not really teaching that process, which is so critical to self-regulation. So in that first scenario, you're self-regulating. You're not getting engaged. In the second scenario, you're no longer self-regulating. You're completely biting the bait and the sassiness. And that's probably because you're defending something about yourself because you yourself don't feel validated or acknowledged in some way. And that's where it's really hard as moms is to be able to stay the mom, stay the course, and still recognize that, you know what, I need that validation. Let me call a friend.

Well, it's like, it's like in my brain I might be thinking, I am so freaking good to you. How could you ever talk to me like that? Yes.

Right. Isn't that— isn't that so much of what goes on here? I talk about that as well in Sassy and Rude is, geez, we do so much for these girls. Gosh, you take them to their soccer games or whatever their games are, their sleepovers, their parties, their endless amounts of puberty questions and, and attitude and rudeness and unkindness, etc., etc. And you love them through all of it. And then they have the nerve to tell you, you didn't— Mom, you forgot to pick up my baseball bat. Like, what? How come you didn't hear the hundreds of compliments of what you just did for them? But that's where we get stuck. So this is why I was saying about the challenges of today, though, is we do overindulge to some degree. I think that we don't teach— I was a proponent of teaching my daughter to do her laundry by the time she was 8. People look at me and say, that's insane. It didn't matter if they were the same colors or not. You just put it in the wash, wash it on cold. You can do it. Learn how to do it. Make your bed. So many moms today feel like to keep up with the Joneses, to keep up with this family and this family and all their different extracurricular activities is to forget about teaching just some of the basics of how to take care of oneself and be a self-reliant human being.

Yes. Yes, I know. And unless you're too controlling. No, I'm kidding. And want to do all the laundry.

Well, yeah. Okay. Okay.

But there—

but that may be a hotspot, right? Somebody may say, I don't want my kid to do my— do the laundry because they're going to wreck it. Okay, but have them do their own laundry and just cold water. It's really not going to do much damage unless you're buying them designer clothes where that shouldn't be in the laundry anyway. And I just don't— I'm not a proponent of that, but I know there are people who do that. So I don't— I do not want to get on that track. I think it's a little bit of a dangerous one. But I mean, there are a lot of things that we are giving kids today that are not, I don't think, teaching them the values of, uh, love and cherishing people and relationships. And instead it becomes sometimes about things. And that's where a lot of conflicts stem from in these mothers and daughters that I see. It's like, well, what— but what about me? Like this entitlement kind of thing. It's like, well, hold on, hold on here. Where's this core value that we really want to have, which is about love and kindness? I think that's my opinion.

Oh, that's really good advice. And I know that you touched on such an important topic of self-regulation. And I think that there's mothers who just feel so overwhelmed by their own emotions that they're struggling to self-regulate and control themselves in the conflict. Can you give them some advice? Yes.

Yeah, that brings us full circle back to healing one's own wounds that we have and that we carry forward because we all have them. So if, if the idea was that your own mom or your dad or stepmoms or stepdads, anybody in the mix who was a caregiver for you, hurt you, mistreated you, didn't, didn't acknowledge you, didn't appreciate you, and that's what you're carrying forward, then you need to find a way to bring that compassion to yourself. To be able to really give that love to yourself. That's like so important because when we can do that self-compassion, we have the opportunity to share that in abundance with others. But if we don't have that for ourselves and we're still in our own shame, blame, guilt mode, feeling hurt or being defensive, then it's going to be really hard to just stay in the present moment with whatever is in front of you. And trust me, this is a life journey. This is not something I'm talking from myself to say like, I got this down, I've got this wired. No, I don't. I'm still trying, still challenging. And there's things that you get faced with that you don't necessarily want to deal with, you know. Your, your child could grow up and have, have a, you know, a difficult relationship with somebody, and you want to help them and you want to rescue them, or a child who has disabilities of some sort. And again, you want to be there. And maybe, you know, it's just, there's a lot of challenges that we can face that test our values, that test our abilities to be present. So it's a journey. It's a life journey.

That's such good advice. I'm, I'm listening to everything you're saying and absorbing it. So you've worked with a lot of mothers and daughters. Is there a certain maybe success story that jumps out to you that you can share with us of someone who improved their relationship?

I, I want to pat myself on the back and say I have lots of them, but I'm not going to pat myself so much as I could pat all of us on the back because it is, it is a process and it is a collaborative effort. So some of the women that I have worked with, in the, the adults, the mother-daughter adult duo have been amazing. Amazing. So one that comes to mind is, I love this one. So I have to be really careful because I'm bound to confidentiality and anonymity. And in the book, I disguise everything so nobody can tell who's who and what's what. But I'm going to give you the best of the realness here that I can. This, this mom who basically had a daughter who had to come back to live at home. And this was a, a separate, uh, a divorced mom. And the mom and daughter had a lot of conflict because the daughter came home and felt like she didn't have to really collaborate with her mom at all about now living back in the home, which now as an adult she was responsible for many things, but she regressed, which is what's very common for gals who come back is— and boys, many guys who come back— is that, okay, I'm, I'm back in child role, and mom wants to get back into mom role, which can be very dangerous because it's not what's so anymore now that once somebody's an adult. So anyway, this— in this, uh, mother-daughter situation, we had to teach. I had to do with them what I would do with any Buddy in this situation is like, haha, hello! Had to help the daughter understand you don't get that entitlement. You're, you're back in Mom's house, Mom's paying the bills. And Mom had to learn how to not infantilize her daughter, not take her daughter back to being a teenager where she was fully in charge. And so they had a lot of struggles between the two of them about fighting that role because they both wanted to collapse back into what was typical and standard. And so it took a lot of communication, a lot of tears, a lot of crying, a lot of upset, a lot of attacking for a little while, which wasn't helpful but necessary to some degree. And they kind of unleashed and they unraveled and they shared it all, and they were all the better for it. And there was a lot of hugs and a lot of love. And as far as I know, the daughter's moved on. I think she might be engaged now. I don't want to say too much at that you know, but just some, some, some lovely things have occurred and their relationship is way more solid now than it ever had been.

Wow. Well, I mean, that's, that's a wonderful story and I'm so happy for them that they had you to help through those challenges and I could totally see how that could happen. I mean, that makes total sense. You just fall back into old patterns and old roles.

Yeah. Our brains are wired that way, right? We like to keep things the same to some degree because that's what's familiar and understandable. And when we shift out too much, it's uncomfortable. Who likes— who like— I don't know too many people who wake up and go, I'm going to change my— I'm going to change my ways today and do it. No, we go back to what we know is the norm, what's familiar.

So true. So true. So you wrote this fabulous book. What are you hoping that your readers take away from it?

Well, thanks that you think it's a fabulous book. I think it's a fabulous book. I, I, um, I want people to know that my heart and soul is in this book, and I shed many of tears writing it myself because I do share, uh, some pretty, pretty, pretty specific details about my own childhood and what that was like. And but they were good tears. They were tears of love and joy and healing. So, so that was beautiful. So I, I hope that readers will learn from it, take good lessons from it, share it with other people, chuckle. I want people to chuckle now and again. I have what I call the sugar and spice exercise. So pretty much in every chapter, there's a sugar and spice exercise that somebody can do. So it's, it's practical at the same time that it's mending and healing and emotional, but I want it to also be something that feels like a journey. It's a healing tree, really creating healing tree for people that you can take this. And with the understanding that there are times when it's just not going to be the right time, if you will. There are times when maybe there's just too much that has gone on with, with a child that's now grown. And I do have one story in there that's very specific about a woman who, whose daughter took the path of drugs and alcohol and crime and ended up basically killing herself. And it was tragic for her. And she, she was there the whole time wanting to be a part of it, wanting to do the healing. But at some point, she had to learn that she had to let go. So there's, there's every depth of story in there about people who, you know, like, it's a pretty easy fix versus those who were— this may take a lifetime, if ever. But that's still then the, the growth in the book that I hope shines through is that there's so much we can do with our own selves because that's where we have control. That's where we have some power— is power, I don't like that word so much, but that's where we have, um, our responsibility. Our self-regulation is to be able to settle in with what we can do and what we can't do and be at peace with that. So when we can make peace with that and do all that we can— I'm not, I'm not ever describing like laziness in this department. No, our, our daughters mean a lot to us. and nobody wants to just let that relationship go. So if it's, if it's in shambles and it needs repair, you, there's a lot of things you can do.

Well, and I'm sitting here thinking about the mothers and daughters who aren't speaking right now. Mm-hmm. And as Mother's, Mother's Day just came and went and, you know, I became aware this, this particular Mother's Day that there were lots of sad people who, who had lost their mother and there were lots of sad people who weren't talking to their mother. And, and mothers who weren't talking to their daughters. I heard those stories too. It was an interesting Mother's Day hearing some stories this year. So for someone who wants to reach out to the— to a mom who wants to reach out to her daughter, or a daughter who wants to reach out to their mom and they're not speaking, any advice for them?

Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is— let's go with moms first. Mom calls daughter. Hey, sweetie, I know you haven't wanted to talk to me. I miss you. I love you. I really want to heal. Let's figure that out.

You're making me want to cry. It was so simple and perfect.

Well, but it's where the heart is, right? So you go with the heart. And I would say probably now, if I think about it, the same for the daughter. Mom, I miss you. We haven't gotten along. Let's try to heal. Let's figure this out.

So my takeaway from today, I mean, this was lovely and so informative. Is that healing ourselves as mothers and our stuff is what makes us better mothers.

Yes. Yes, ma'am. Agreed.

Oh my God. Well, you're wonderful. You are so smart. And I just, like, love all the advice you gave us today. Tell everybody where to find you and your books.

But before I do that, I wanna say your energy is so beautiful. So thank so much for having me on your podcast. It's just, just made me feel so comfortable and so alive, and I love your energy. So your listeners are so blessed to have you in their lives. I, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Oh, thank you so much. That's so sweet.

Yes. And, and if you do want to look me up, it's probably best to go to my website, drdebraonline.com. D-R-D-E-B-R-A online.com. And all my social media and stuff is there. And the book is available, um, on all the booksellers, Amazon.com. It's called Sassy and Rude: Her New Attitude. And I, I love when people also give me feedback. So if you find the book, you read it, you find some useful stories, or you have a story you want to share with me, I am, I'm open ears, and I would love that.

Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much. I can't thank you enough for your time and expertise today.

Thank you.

This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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