Despite our hopes and dreams, the mother-daughter relationship isn’t always easy or free of troubles. In fact, if you are a daughter–or have one–it’s likely that you’ve had your share of challenges along the way. Yet, by breaking intergenerational patterns that hold us back from the type of connection we yearn for, we can pave the way toward healthier, more attuned relationships with those you love. If you’re seeking more emotional safety, repair, and reconnection, you’ll enjoy this heartfelt conversation with a top therapist, Hilary Mae, who focuses on boosting healthy love. With thoughtful tips that apply to mother-daughter, mother-son, parent-child, and family relationships in general, this episode has the power to foster healthy connections in every area of your life.

Topics discussed include communication, mother, daughter, mother-daughter relationship, mother-son relationship, parenting, adult children, family, healthy communication strategies, intergenerational patterns, accountability, love, listening, empathy, attunement, attachment, connection, repair, understanding, emotional safety, abuse, boundaries, healthy dynamics, unhealthy dynamics, and self-growth.

Sensitive Episode:

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Details: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). As applicable, additional resources may be provided in the show notes.

Non-Emergency Online Mental Health Information: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

and https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Hilary:

Website: https://www.hilarymae.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motherdaughtertherapist

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hilarymaeco

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Healing the Parent-Child Relationship with Grace

Keys to Healing the Mother-Daughter (Parent-Child) Relationship

Despite our hopes and dreams, the mother-daughter relationship isn’t always an easy one or free of troubles. In fact, if you are a daughter or have one, it’s likely that you’ve had your share of challenges along the way. Yet, by breaking intergenerational patterns that hold us back from the type of connection that we yearn for. We can pave the way toward healthier, more attuned relationships with the women in our lives. If you’re seeking more emotional safety, repair and reconnection, you’ll love this heartfelt conversation with a top therapist who focuses on boosting healthy love.

We’ll focus on this audience member’s real-life concern. “My daughter and I have always had a challenging relationship. Even when she was a kid, she kept me at arm’s length. I don’t know if it was me or something in her. Now that she’s away at college, things are better between us. Less friction, and worse, even less connection. Is it too late to create a better relationship with her? I don’t even know where to start.” That issue is the focus of this episode.

I am joined by a wonderful special guest, Hilary Mae. Hilary is a therapist and mother-daughter relationship specialist. She brings gentle guidance to women of all ages through her workshops and coaching. Welcome to the show, Hilary. It’s such a delight to have you with us.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to have this conversation with you.

It is such a joy to have you with us and dive into this important topic. As kids, young women, we might have difficult relationships with a mom. We may repair them. We may have a good relationship. It might fall apart in later years. This is an important topic that is near and dear to me. Before we talk about this particular concern and get a little more general about it, could you tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

It comes through in my work, my passion for helping people. I didn’t realize it as a kid, but I just had this empathy for other people and their hurts. I hear it in my son when he talks about how sad he feels when he looks at people who maybe have a harder life. I’ve created a life where I’ve been able to use that to my benefit. I do that in my work, help people, and create awareness around what us as women can have in life and in our relationships and what we deserve.

Two questions. You can say, “I don’t want to answer either one.” It’s fine. A) Do you have a daughter? B) What was your relationship like with your mom?

I do have a daughter. My first child is a girl. I also have two sisters. There’s three daughters in my family. It’s part of the reason why the mother-daughter relationship is so special to me. I got into the work when I was focusing on adolescent girls in my therapy practice. I was working with girls ages 12 to 25. That’s where I started to see there’s a real issue between moms and daughters.

Typically, the moms would bring the girls to therapy. As a trained family therapist, I like to include parents in the work. What I noticed was girls did not want their moms in the room. I felt like it was beyond them being a teenager, which is how we write it off like, “She’s a teen. It’s going to be hard. She’s going to push you away.” I felt like, “Why is this so difficult?”

The girls who were a little bit older, maybe in their twenties were having difficult relationships with their moms and pushing them away. I struggled with my mom as a teen girl as well. As I got older, I thought, “There’s nothing that my mom did wrong. Why was I so hard on her? Why did I push her away? Why was it so difficult for us?”

I also noticed that I carried a lot of pain from those years into my adult years. When I had my daughter and I had my practice, it all started to come together. This can’t continue. We need to understand what’s happening between mothers and daughters. Why we can’t get along and why we accept that as the norm.

I read every book I could find on the mother-daughter relationship. I started focusing on just seeing mothers and daughters or individually, if they couldn’t be in the same room or come together. I repaired my relationship with my mom. I made an effort to be different with my daughter and do the things that I needed. I make sure that she feels heard and understood and loved by me.

I appreciate your vulnerability and sharing with us. Thank you so much because it’s a lovely way to start. You have that lived experience of pushing mom away. That lived experience of saying, “She didn’t do anything wrong.” You didn’t demonize her as many people do. You were able to enjoy the work and the beauty of the repair. That’s phenomenal. There’s nothing like lived experience to afform us as clinicians. That’s beautiful.

I appreciate how you’re saying, “I’m carrying this forward with my daughter.” That’s the beauty of this world in past generations. We’re learning at warp speed. We have resources that didn’t exist and the ability to access information that didn’t exist in many years ago. It wasn’t as easy to access nor so prolific. I appreciate that you’re bringing that to us.

A question before we get moving into the Question of the Day. For those who have sons, how much do you believe that what you’re about to share with us as we go on this sacred journey? The parent-child relationship to me is just one of the most beautiful and challenging relationships in life. I’m wondering, from your perspective as clinician. How you see that is applicable to mother-son, and even father-son? Some of what you talk about.

I would say probably 95% of what I talk about could benefit a mother and a son. If she’s looking for the answer, she’ll find some. My clients find me because they have daughters. Most of them will say, “This is helping me with my son, too.” What they’re learning how to do is communicate, create an emotional safety, and repair anything that doesn’t feel good in the relationship.

That can be applied across all relationships. However, when I talk about mother-daughter relationship dynamics and what affects us specifically. It doesn’t cross as much as with son. There are some specifics about it, but most of it can be used. You can benefit from it no matter what kind of relationship you have.

That comports with my work and understanding. I wanted your perspective because you work solely with this group. That’s a very select population. Thank you. I agree with you, too. Thinking of my fourth book, The Joy of Imperfect Love, it’s exactly what you’re talking about. When we do the communication and create healthy communication, we create emotional safety, and we do the repair work.

A Parent’s Struggle During A Child’s Adolescence Years

It affects our relationship with the self. It affects relationship with partner, ideally with kiddos, friends, family, beyond and beyond. Thank you and thank you for the work that you do. Let’s dive in. I’m excited about this. When we look at the audience’s question of the day, what part do you want to dive into first?

I’d like to start with her stage of life because it overlaps a little bit with my therapy practice and what I was saying before. There are different stages in the mother-daughter relationship. They tend to be one where we struggle with each other. The first one where we struggle is the adolescent years. Which became very clear to me and why I had a whole practice built on teen girls and then eventually their moms.

We start to struggle at that stage because our daughter’s changing. Things are becoming different. She’s becoming more independent. She’s wanting to separate. She’s maybe expressing herself in a new way. She’s having ideas and dreams about her future. It’s important as a mother that we adjust with that. We also shift our expectations and the way that we’re parenting, the way that we meet her emotionally.

Sometimes, during the teen years, there’s a lot of emotions. There’s outbursts and silence. It’s handled in different ways. Something that is important for moms to do is to not take that personally. Often, we get caught up in a slammed door or an “I hate you.” I like to invite looking past that and thinking about what’s going on. What’s causing this? What is she feeling? I’m getting curious about what’s happening.

I do this. She definitely has emotions. I do this with her. I catch myself feeling like I need to react or I need to protect myself or defend myself. I slow down and think about what’s going on with her. Typically, she’s had a bad day. Something happened that she didn’t share yet and needs to get out. That’s then I’m able to invite her to talk about how she feels.

There are different shifts that moms can make in this new stage of their relationship that maybe they didn’t have to do when they were four. Their daughter was maybe an open book, talked about everything, and would tell her when she was sad or angry. As she becomes a teen, it’s not as obvious. There’s a lot of layers that come along with that.

This relationship in particular, the daughter is in college. She’s even moved out of the house, which is another stage of, “Our relationship is going to shift because we’re not living together anymore.” This mom is sharing that with us, “It’s a little bit better because we have that physical distance of not seeing each other every day.” It sounds like there’s emotional distance too, which we need to address.

Backing up a little bit. When you’re talking about the piece of curiosity,that’s so important. Often, as human beings, this is where I see the intergenerational piece come in. I’d like your thoughts on this. We get into that place of being defensive, of shutting down, and of becoming hyper vigilant. Whatever our wounds are, we often come from that wounded place. One of the cures that I found, it sounds like you found the same thing, is slowing it down, taking a step back.

Sometimes, it’s just a figurative step back. Sometimes, it’s literally a couple steps back going into a different room. Slowing down to become emotionally regulated and then coming from that place when possible, about curiosity. “What’s going on with me? What’s going on with my daughter? What’s going on with this other person?” We can’t show up for the people in our life, daughters, sons, whomever, if we are dysregulated. We’re coming from our own trauma. Does that comport with what you were saying?

It’s a huge part of what I teach moms when I work with them alone without their daughters in the room. How to become aware of what their nervous system is trying to tell them. What they are feeling? What do they need to do about it? Do they need to address it themselves first? Do they need to set a boundary? Do they need to ask her what they need? This is a huge part of the process. It’s understanding how they feel and what they’re going to do about it. That’s not the daughter’s responsibility. That initial reaction, that feeling that’s coming up, the physical feeling, and the emotion.

I agree with you so many times. It’s easy to slip into that. My daughter caused me to feel this way. Sometimes, they do have a big reaction that is a trigger. Where we have a big reaction because they have a big statement. They’re trying to push us. Our kiddos often know our triggers very well on an unconscious level. They know how to trigger a parent because they’ve studied us for so long. They don’t mean to study us, but we’re their superheroes. At least for the first few years of life. They’re watching us.

Building Emotional Intimacy Between Parent And Child

When you think about this question, we pivot to that part where we can go a little earlier in life. Where this mom is saying, “I always felt distant from her.” As if she almost sensed that she feels. Often, kids don’t feel wanted. In this case, it almost sounds like the mother was not feeling not necessarily wanted. As though there was an invisible wall between them. How would you address that and make sense of that with this mom?

I would be curious to know more about what that felt like. I’m guessing that there was emotional distance. There didn’t feel like there could be closeness between the two of them emotionally. Maybe that meant they didn’t enjoy the same things. They couldn’t spend time together doing many things that were fun, which I see often. We both don’t like the same movies. She’s athletic and I read books. That can certainly make the relationship more difficult. I’m assuming what she means is maybe her daughter didn’t turn to her for support or didn’t share her feelings.

When we’re talking about emotional closeness, that’s what we’re craving. It’s that intimacy in the relationship. That’s my guess of what was happening. Whether the daughter didn’t know how to express her feelings. It was more private. She kept things inside more than the mom wanted. What’s jumping out at me is maybe this mom was also the same way. Between the two of them, it was hard to get close if nobody’s talking about how they feel. Nobody is opening up to each other. There’s a block on both sides.

It makes me curious about, not that we have the information, but the mother-daughter relationship that the mother had with her own mother. We’re back to the intergenerational patterns. If the mom of this college age girl did not have a mom that was able to tune into her. What we know about attachment and all of the important aspects of being able to attune to one’s child. The research has been going on for decades and decades. It wasn’t in public awareness as the way it is now until many years ago, more or less.

We have this new information about how to create a secure attachment with a child and what we can do to maximize that. Sometimes, you have a child who is slow to warm. No matter how much you’re trying to attune, they are maybe more on that introverted side. It sounds like this mom might be very curious but also wondering, “What was it? Was it me? Was it the daughter? How can I shift that so that I can do better now?” That’s my take. What do you think?

I agree. This mom could only give what she knew, what was familiar. My guess would be if it was hard to build that emotional intimacy with her daughter or that closeness, as she said. She likely didn’t have that with her mom because otherwise she would have a model for that. She would just intuitively know how to do that, how to build that and create that with her daughter in some way that felt good for both of them.

My intuition is that she also did not have that closeness with her mom, which is very common. Especially going back generations. We have to always think, when was that mom born? What was the time she was growing up? What was her relationship with her mom? I do that with all of my clients. I go through the history of all the mother-daughter relationships. What was passed down? What’s changed? What stayed the same? What do we need to change? That’s going to improve the relationship. It has such a huge part. I see that it helps women to release the guilt and shame that they carry about, “Was it me? What did I do?”

Thank you for saying that because it’s so common, that guilt and shame. I’m a very strong believer that guilt and shame are not helpful. Introspection, changing what we can in the here and now. Whether we’re guilting and shaming ourselves, or an adult child guilting and shaming us. Except in cases of overt abuse. Sometimes, there are these intergenerational patterns that we don’t even know are there as human beings.

It’s only until we start shining a light on them and working with a qualified therapist. Sometimes, it’s not just therapy. Sometimes, friends, mentors, self-help books can be a big help in illuminating these areas for us. Many people, as you’re saying, get stuck in shame, blame, guilt. Again, there’s no upside to that. There’s only an upside to learning and moving forward slowly but surely in a healthier way. Is that your approach as well?

Absolutely. Something I would want to reassure your readers about is finding someone to support you where you can be your vulnerable self. Talk about these feelings or what you wish you had done or the guilt or shame that you carry so that it can be released. One of the programs I have is a group for mothers of adult daughters.

As soon as they hear someone else’s story and hear, “You feel that too? Do you feel like you’re a bad mom because of where you are in your relationship? I just thought it was me.” We quickly acknowledge that there are no bad moms. Everybody is doing the best they could with what they had. We’re learning. You’re here because you want to learn more. You want to change the direction of the relationship. We do focus on all of that. What’s within your control, what is not, and how we’re moving forward to change the reality of this.

Thank you. I appreciate your concept of there being no bad moms, that people always do their best. I tend to not disagree with my experts. I used to work on juvenile probation. I’m not calling anybody a bad person. There were some people who were given information and they chose to disregard it. Bad parenting took place, even though there was information.

I want to call that out so that anybody who’s reading who’s saying, “You don’t know. My parent was given information.” Whether it’s by a doctor or psychotherapist, they had the information. They reverted to these old unhealthy times again and again. We can look at that more as whether it’s physical abuse or emotional abuse. That’s different from what you’re talking about.

This is about distance in the relationship. This is not about abuse. in general, I have a little bit of a problem with labeling moms as good or bad. as moms, we tend to get pulled into that. Feel like, “I was a good mom today and I’m a bad mom yesterday.” None of that is helpful. When I say, “You’re not a bad mom.”

It’s because they’re doing that to themselves. They’re saying that to themselves coming into this work, feeling like, “I’ve got to change my whole identity because I’m a bad mom.” I have an issue with calling moms, good or bad. The stigma and pressure around moms needing to be perfect because we’re not. We’re humans.

Thank you for staying with me as we clarified that. I agree that when we get into a dichotomy of good or bad, we might be parenting poorly on a given day if we’re stressed. We simply don’t have the wisdom or the awareness. Again, the gold mine is in being able to go into reflection later on. It’s saying, “I screamed at my child and that didn’t feel good to me. I saw the look on my kiddo’s face. What could I have done differently? I’m going to try that tomorrow. I’m going to take a beat, take a minute, go into the bathroom, count to 100.”Whatever you need to do.

Who Directs In A Parent-Child Relationship

In that way, we slowly break those patterns that we absorbed from whether it’s society or from our own parents. Sometimes, it’s from a partner. I love that we’re drilling down into some of the meat of this that can be a little difficult to think about. It can bring up a lot. Thank you. What else did you notice about this question that you’d like to focus on, Hilary?

She asked the question, “Is it her or is it me?” I would say it might be both. It might be the combination. The dynamic of how the daughter’s reacting to the mom and how the mom’s reacting to the daughter. Sometimes, one person in the relationship decides, “It’s all her. She’s the one.” Maybe she has outbursts or a lot of feelings that she’s carrying around. She needs to change. She needs to do the work.

In a relationship, there’s two people. I wouldn’t say it’s 50/50 in a parent-child relationship ever. There is probably a dynamic happening where it’s both. I don’t know what those things are with this couple but likely, it’s both things. I always say that the parent is the leader in the relationship. I say that because of the power dynamics of the parent-child relationship. Also, in my experience, it’s moms who want to change the direction of the relationship. They’re noticing the distance and that’s not what they wanted for the relationship.

When I say that the mom is the leader of the relationship and can lead to change and shift the dynamic. It’s to give them their power back. To let them know that you have the ability to make shifts here. It’s understanding what’s happened. It’s learning how to make those changes and how to communicate about that. I see this as starting with her. Especially her asking the question, being the one reaching out and saying, “What can I do at this point? Is it too late?” It’s not too late. You can start to look at the relationship in a new way to understand what’s needed and how you make those shifts to a new dynamic.

Thank you, Hilary. This brings up a question. I love how you’re talking about the parent being the leader in the relationship. I believe that that’s certainly true, especially from birth to 18 years old or birth to 21 years old. Once they’re out of the home and on their own, particularly as they hit their late 20s and 30s. Does your paradigm still see the parent as the leader?

Yes. When I say leader, I don’t mean someone directing the relationship and saying, “Here’s where we’re going to see each other. This is going to work.” I’m saying leader as the emotional leader in the relationship towards repair. These are my clients who struggle with distance in their relationship. I’m an adult daughter myself.

What I see is that the kids don’t want to always be responsible for upcoming and let’s talk. “Can we talk about this because this didn’t feel good?” Checking in all the time about how everybody is. They want that in return, especially when we talk about repair. It’s important that parents know how to do that. Also, to initiate repair and to show up and hang into that conversation through the repair. That’s where I see the emotional leadership.

Let’s imagine with this audience member who wrote that she becomes the leader in the relationship. As far as being the one to lead emotionally and setting the stage for communication and repair and being curious, all of trying to attune. As I’m imagining, what if this is the daughter’s style? Despite the mom’s efforts, the daughter continues to put up a red stop sign like, “I don’t want this relationship. I never have.” Let’s imagine. What would you counsel then?

I would want to know why. What happened? For a child to say, “I never wanted this relationship and I still don’t want it.” Something has happened. It doesn’t mean it was one isolated incident. There’s something. It could be pain from the past in different situations that have happened that were never resolved, never talked through, or never fully understood. It could be the dynamic of the relationship that there’s pain in the communication. Maybe the daughter feels guilt.

The daughter feels like she has to take care of her mom’s emotions. She has to be there for her. That there’s expectations. That her mom speaks to her in a way that she feels like, “You don’t respect my decisions in life and the things that I want to do. You want me to be someone else.” There are certain things that daughters need from their moms in order to want to be in the relationship. If she would say, “I never wanted this and I still don’t want this.” Even though you’re doing things differently, there’s pain to be addressed. We have to understand where that is and what happened.

How Social Media Affects A Parent-Child Relationship

Thank you. I’m to take a slight branch off of this, which is related to something I’m seeing in my practice. The audience member didn’t bring this up. I’m wondering if you see an influence from social media. I have many clients who say, “I look at TikTok and I look at this. I see where kids are being encouraged to distance themselves very easily and quickly from their parents.” Both mom and dad. Do you see that showing up in your practice as something that’s being influenced by social media or society? What do you see?

Are you asking from the adult child’s perspective? Do I see them or hear them speaking that way?

Either. If you hear moms talking about it or youngsters talking about it. If you see it three ways. If you see it as a societal influence, a trend, so to speak.

I do see it with moms. I hear it from them all the time about how they feel like social media is influencing their adult child to distance themselves. Honestly, I see it mostly from parents who feel like they have no control or no power in the situation. Sometimes, they aren’t interested in making any changes themselves in order to understand what’s happening and what could be different.

My perspective with adult children is that they’re more aware as a different generation. Unhealthy relationships are not something we have to stay in. A lot of social media posts are telling them that. I do think there’s a big piece missing. If we understand that the relationship isn’t healthy or isn’t on our terms or not something that is feeling good for us. It’s our responsibility to communicate that.

To either set a boundary so that we can feel safer in the relationship or ask for what we need to change or have a conversation about what’s happening and how we feel. I don’t know that that’s always part of the conversation, especially on social media. Before you do this or have this conversation, you say, “Here’s how we can talk about this.”

I appreciate you breaking it down that way because I agree. Before a child or an adult, the parent writes off the relationship or fully distances, have those conversations. It’s one of the things I appreciate about the work you do. Having a space where both can come and have somebody objective, listen, and give the relationship a chance.

Both people have to want to do the work. The mom has to want to do the work. The child has to want to do the work. If you have only one person trying to make it better, whether it’s the adult child or younger child or the parent. As you said at the beginning, you need both people. There are two people in the relationship.

That is one of the key elements that’s often missed on social media. As you said, “Have you tried these steps? Have you voiced what you need? Have you attended therapy with your parent? Have you tried to let them know? Sometimes, if either the adult doesn’t know what they want or the child doesn’t know what they want, instead of the old thing that didn’t feel good. How do you pave a way forward?”

That conversation is so important. We have to show up, as I said, curious like, “I want to understand her perspective.” sometimes we get caught in the right and wrong and defending ourselves. As I said before, that can throw off the conversation and make it feel like this is impossible. We could never communicate about what’s happening. I can never share what I need because she’s not listening. That is where I come in. I teach them how to do that. I’m listening to them. I’m understanding where each of them is coming from and then bringing them back together to understand each other. To be able to listen and then continue communicating in that way without me.

Again, beautifully said because often one party only wants to speak and be heard. That’s absolutely wonderful, to want to speak and be heard. That’s critical. Both people in the relationship, whoever it is, mom, daughter, any relationship it applies to. They both ideally get a chance to speak and be heard.

Have that person mirror back. It doesn’t mean you agree. It may not be your experience. Your experience may be entirely different. For the other person, to be gracious enough to listen to your perspective. Again, it doesn’t need to be agreed to. Hearing that perspective, having it heard, having it held, and then finding ways to move forward in healthier ways of being and communicating. That’s the art, isn’t it? That’s the tough part.

It is. We talk about mothers and daughters and how it’s normal that we fight, it’s complicated or, “My mom doesn’t listen.” It’s what we’re missing. It’s the details about how to communicate and how to work through conflict. The way that we work through conflict isn’t someone saying how they feel and then the other person explaining why they shouldn’t feel that way. We have to be able to hang in and listen and understand without taking it personally. That’s a big missing piece of something that we don’t always learn if we didn’t typically learn that from our parents, how to work through that conflict.

Most people don’t learn that. They don’t learn it from their parents. They often don’t learn it in the next place, which is school. They often don’t learn it in the workplace. They expect to know it in relationships. The breakdown of it is simply what we were talking about earlier, learning to listen without interrupting. You don’t have to agree. You do what’s called mirroring or reflective listening.

You listen. You reflect back what you heard as closely as possible to what was said. It’s almost like gentle ping pong, and then the other person. It’s not about agreeing. It is about truly and deeply listening. Moving on from there because doing the right, wrong, good, or bad like, “It’s my stage. I want to be the only one that talks.” That’s not going to get the relationship in there. As you said, conflict is a part of every relationship. It’s how we choose to engage in conflict.

Do we get mean and nasty and blaming? Do we look at the difference? Do we blame and shame and guilt trip? That’s not healthy conflict. Also, the repair. The result of the conflict is often that opportunity for repair. Where apologies, if they’re appropriate, are said and patterns for the future are set forth. In that way, we can begin to break those old cycles. Thus, this conflict between mom and child or husband, wife, partner, or whatever. They can become fuel for self-growth and relationship growth. It sounds like that’s generally how you work.

I wanted to say before when you were saying the person who wants to be heard like, “You’re just going to listen to me.” That’s a person who doesn’t feel heard and does need to be listened to. It doesn’t mean they get all of the energy in the room and they’re the only person that talks. That’s often a huge breakdown between mothers and daughters. As women, we need to feel understood. If both people are feeling like that and feeling no one’s listening or understanding. It’s impossible to work through that conflict.

It’s so important that again, as mothers, as the emotional leader in teaching this, modeling it and being the one who shows up and starts to have this conversation. Listening to your daughter with the goal of understanding her will change everything. Even if you haven’t learned how to create, you do the full repair process. Listen with the goal of understanding what she’s saying. It links in with the curiosity we were talking about too, because that is what daughters want. They want to feel understood. They want to feel accepted for who they are.

Thank you. Those pieces are so key. We all want to be understood. We all want to be listened to. When we remember that as mothers, as daughters, as fathers, as sons, as husbands and wives, we can take this information that you so beautifully set forth. Look at creating more of this space for allowing another person to be understood and hope that they meet us and want to understand us. That’s the magic. It’s listening with that intention of truly deeply understanding. Not just hearing, not interrupting and preparing your response. Truly being that vessel of being able.

I do have a caveat here. This doesn’t mean that you allow someone to talk to you in abusive ways. It doesn’t mean no timeout. We need to continue this conversation at a later date in a kinder and more respectful way. That’s a critical call out. That the conversation if it’s heading toward abuse, name-calling, threatening, or critical. That’s not going to go anywhere either. Do you agree with that?

There has to be. We’re not listening to someone call us names or put us down or control everything. You have to stand up for yourself and have boundaries.

Get In Touch With Hilary

Hilary, thank you so much for all of this wisdom and thoughtfulness. Where can our audience find you?

I am on Instagram @MotherDaughterTherapist and my website is HilaryMae.com.

With a click of your finger, you can find Hilary and the incredible work she does. I did visit your website, Hilary. It’s beautiful. It’s welcoming and affirming. You also have seminars and workshops. You do one-on-one and also family coaching.

I started branching out and working with full families after working with mothers and daughters. There’s other people in the family who need that support. I’m working with my first son.

Timely episode. Thank you so much again for joining us. It has been a privilege and a pleasure. As a daughter, as a mom, it was like tugging on my heartstrings too. Thinking about this mom who wrote in and that pain. It sounds like so much pain and yearning there. Thank you for shedding light on this important universally sacred topic.

Thank you.

To our readers, I thank you for sharing yet another journey with us. It is always my pleasure and my privilege and my joy. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Hilary Mae
• Hilary Mae on Instagram
• Hilary Mae on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok
• The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
• NAMI HelpLine

About Hilary Mae

Hilary Mae – Licensed therapist, Coach, Mother-Daughter Relationship Expert, and Mental Health Professional.

As rates of parent-child estrangement quietly rise, over 1 in 4 Americans are now cut off from a family member. For mothers, it’s devastating — often met with silence, confusion and deep shame.

Hilary Mae is a globally recognized mother-daughter relationship expert with 16 years of experience as a licensed therapist who now coaches women through emotional repair–even when their daughter isn’t ready to engage.

Her practical, effective tools and heartfelt teachings have helped thousands of women from around the world rebuild connection with their daughters–from Australia to Dubai to New York. She has built a loyal following of over 90,000 across Instagram and Facebook by teaching women how to take the lead without guilt, pressure, or perfectionism.