The Secret To Forgiving and Loving Your Mother

Hi, dear friends! Welcome to another heart-to-heart episode of our podcast. Today, we dive into a topic that's not just close to my heart, but also deeply relevant to many of us – the complex relationship with our mothers. Whether it's filled with love, pain, or a mix of both, this episode is a journey towards understanding, forgiveness, and healing.

Episode Highlights:

1. Childhood Memories: A Dual Perspective: I begin by sharing two vivid childhood memories with my mother – one filled with warmth and laughter, and another that left a sting of hurt. These contrasting memories lay the foundation for today’s discussion.
2. The Story of My Mother's Past: Understanding my mother’s difficult upbringing, witnessing abuse, and being thrust into adult responsibilities at a young age, helps us grasp the challenges she faced and how they shaped her way of loving.
3. Our Complex Relationship: I delve into the nuances of my relationship with my mom – a mixture of love and unspoken hurt. This segment explores how our interactions were shaped by her past and my longing for her affection.
4. The Turning Point of Understanding: A profound realization about my mother's inability to express love in a traditional way becomes a pivotal moment in our relationship. This section is about empathy and seeing our parents as people with their own pain.
5. Forgiving and Loving Beyond Hurt: Here, I discuss the power of forgiveness and the decision to love my mother despite the past, setting healthy boundaries along the way.
6. The Sudden Loss and Unread Love: The unexpected loss of my mother and

discovering her journal, which revealed her intentions to heal our relationship and her love for our family, brings a poignant aspect to our story.

1. Celebrating the Good Times: I share the joyful moments with my mother – our Sunday rituals, her generosity, and her impeccable sense of style, highlighting the brighter side of our relationship.
2. A Message of Hope and Healing: This segment is an encouraging message to anyone struggling with parental relationships, emphasizing the importance of understanding, compassion, and the pursuit of happiness.

Special Announcement:

• The Happy By Design Journal Release: Exciting news! "The Happy By Design Journal" will be released on February 15th! This journal, inspired by the 5 habits of Happy By Design, is a tool for navigating through life’s challenging seasons, helping you to find happiness and love yourself more.
  • 7-Day Sample Available: A 7-day sample of the journal is available in PDF format. Visit happybydesign.co/pages/journalsample to sign up and receive your sample.

Reminder:

• Revisit episode 2 for a refresher on the 5 Habits of Happy By Design.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Remember, happiness is not a matter of chance, but a choice we can design. Whether it's moving on or moving forward, there's always a way to find peace and joy in your life. See you in the next episode, dear friend!

Links:

• Download Sample Journal Here
• Episode 2
• Follow Me on Instagram

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, my name is Liz Romney and I'm obsessed with understanding what true happiness really means, while still embracing life's ups and downs, especially during the downs. I'm a Mama 3 and a cancer fighter, making sure that my sweet family still enjoys life. Happiness was never meant to be only felt when things go right. Happiness is so much more than that. Through heartfelt conversations, you'll discover how to commit to intentional joy, no matter what's going on in your life. So make sure you have your favorite drink, because we don't shy away from any topic. Welcome to Happy by Design. Happiness among the chaos. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're here with me today. Today's episode will probably be one of the most important episodes I will ever make. This conversation that we are about to have hopefully will be healing for you and for me. If you have ever said my relationship with my mom is complicated, then this episode is for you. Your relationship with your mother might be somewhat like mine or completely different, but I think the heart of this episode might help you find some peace in this essential relationship.

Speaker 1: 1:13

I don't have many memories of my shahu, but there are two memories that are so clear and so deep inside of me, and they are both related to my mom In one of them. I'm 6 years old and my mom is tucking me in bed and she's making the sheet so tight like a burrito. I remember I couldn't move and I laughed and my mom laughed and she gave me a kiss on my forehead and said goodnight, then turned off the lights and I went to sleep with a smile on my face. The second memory I have I was 8 or 9 years old. I was on the floor next to my mom's bed. She was reading a magazine. The cover of the magazine had a princess, a real European princess. I think it was Princess Victoria of Sweden. I stood up to talk to her. I asked her a question and she looked at me and said I always thought I was going to have a beautiful daughter like her, and she pointed the cover. But I got you and then she went back reading her magazine. These two memories explain very good how I always thought my mother felt about me. I always said my mom loves me and hates me at the same time. I can't tell you how many times I have said that and I truly, truly believe that my mom loved me and hate me at the same time. Before I continue. I want you to know that this episode is about how to forgive and love your mother. I'm going to share very sad things about my mother, but I want you to know that this episode is to honor her, and you will be able to see that by the end of this episode.

Speaker 1: 2:51

My mother was the oldest of four. When she was 10, her father came to her and told her that she was no longer a kid and she needed to learn how to work. So her father will wake her up at 5 in the morning and make her work at the small farm they had and go to the market to sell cheese. The standard that my grandfather had for my mother was really hard. She couldn't get dirty or play with other kids because she was the oldest and she was a lady and she needed to know how to work hard. Also, her father was an abusive husband. My mother witnessed many times her father hitting my grandmother Because of this type of abuse. My grandmother had around 10 miscarriages and my mother witnessed many of these. When my mother was 15 years old, her father abandoned them and he took everything. When my mother was 16 years old, my grandmother left too. She left to the US to work. My mother lives in Honduras, so my grandmother left her four kids and my mother took upon herself the responsibility of taking care of her younger siblings.

Speaker 1: 3:57

When she was a young woman, my mother married. My father Eliemi said that my father, who I love very much, wasn't a good husband to her. He cheated on her constantly throughout her marriage, said mean things about her like you're fat, you're ugly, you're boring, you're a loser, and many, many things Just evil, cruel things like that. Now let me explain a little bit of the relationship between my mother and I. Like I said, my mother loved me, but she never told me that. She barely hugged me or kissed me, and I was very aware of that as a child. My mother would share with me as a child the many mean things that my dad would do to her. She complained about her siblings and her mother to me, a child Also.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Her mother came back from the US when I was a kid. She will always be on top of my weight and when I gain weight, she will always let me know as a teenager and as an adult, and she will say things like if I don't lose my weight, my husband was going to leave me. My mother also did things with money that were not honest, and she involved me in those things too. When my father will ask about those things, I will always lie for her because I wanted my mother to love me and I wanted to protect her from my father. And I did all these things even though it was against all my principles. If I didn't do what she asked me to do, I was a disappointment.

Speaker 1: 5:20

My mom also was always sick. She suffered from migraines and in the year before her death she was very sick and she started abusing her medication to the point where she was high on them. It gets so bad that my brother and I decided that it was enough and we demanded to my father to get her clean or we would take legal actions. I also demanded that my mom needed psychiatric help, because she was obviously depressed and needed help. So my dad did what he needed to be done to help my mom get clean.

Speaker 1: 5:54

As she was getting clean, she called me and told me that I betrayed her, that she wasn't getting high. She was just combing her migraine and as a doctor in chemistry she knew what she was doing and I betrayed her that I was trying to put her in a psychiatric ward. I was trying to get rid of her, I was trying for her to be gone. She said you were like my crystal swan and now you're broken to me and I will never forgive you for calling me a drug addict which of course I never called her that but I did ask for help for her, as you can imagine, for someone who has been trying her whole life to please her mother. This broke my heart and for a few weeks the mean messages and phone calls didn't stop. My husband had to intervene and said to me you need to cut all communication with your mother. This is hurting you and hurting our family. So I did. I was so depressed that I stopped the small business I had during that time and I was in bed a lot. It just broke my heart. I think this went on for around 6 months, with very few communication between us. I will only text her with updates about the kids, but never a phone call. Then, after those 6 months, we started communicating again, not much but somewhat. The conversations were short, but they were getting better and I had very strong boundaries and topics we could talk about.

Speaker 1: 7:23

One day I was driving and I remember exactly where I was driving. I was thinking about her and my relationship with her and how much I wished things were different. And then this thought came to me. She doesn't know how to love in a safe way because no one has ever loved her that way. And I started thinking about her past. Of course, my mother didn't know how to love Her father and her mother left her, and when they were there, all she witnessed was abused. And then she married my father, who treated her badly. How could my mother love if she didn't know how to? When I thought about that, all the anger and resentment lifted. My poor mother deserved better and I was determined to show her that she could be loved, truly loved. I really wanted to show her that she deserved to be loved the way love is meant to be felt, but I didn't know how I was going to do it. But I was going to do it. Now I'm going to take a pause here. You must be thinking, but that doesn't justify the mean things she did and said to me, and that's true. But what this did for me was the acknowledgement. This acknowledgement gave me the ability to give her compassion. It also helped me see that this was not something that I caused, because I wonder so many times why doesn't my mother love me?

Speaker 1: 8:52

What I'm trying to say to you is that the people around us that might be hurting us unintentionally because I know my mother didn't do these things with the purpose of hurting me. I know it was not intentional, it was just the way she was. So what I'm trying to say is that if we really want to understand and have compassion for the people who are intentionally hurting us, we need to see them as people. I started looking at my mother as a person and not as my mother. As children, we expect our parents to be flawless superheroes, and I realized that was not fair for her. She had a past that truly traumatized her and I really believe that her way of loving was to protect herself. Every person she has ever loved hurt her.

Speaker 1: 9:41

So look at your mother or your father or your siblings or whoever it is that you struggle with, and look at their pain and see how their pain directs so much of who they are. I promise you that they don't want to cause the pain. They're causing it, but they don't do it because they want to. They're not intentionally trying to cause you pain, but they do it because they have their own pain, and it is when we realize, but truly realize, that they are in pain too, we can start healing ours. So when I realized the things that I realized, I made the goal that I was going to truly love my mother. Of course they were going to be bandwrecks because her behavior was still her behavior, but I wanted to love her the way she deserved to be loved.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Unfortunately, my mother passed away less than a week after this realization and even though it hurts that I couldn't give her this gift, I could give her the gift of forgiveness. So, my dear friend, if you have your mother, sit down and try to understand her pain and give her the compassion she deserves. It doesn't mean that you're saying that it's okay for the things that she has done, but it will give you the strength to forgive and forgiveness will heal you. When my mother died, we found a journal that she started writing weeks before her death, and in her journal she wrote how much she wanted to fix and heal our relationship, that she loved me and my brother and our spouses, and that she wanted to make it an effort to have a beautiful relationship with us. I can honestly say that your mother loves you and she wants a good relationship with you, but maybe she doesn't know how to. She has her baggage and I know it's not your job to fix it. But what you can do is to forgive her and love her by understanding her, by putting yourself in her pain and feel it with her. Now I share a lot about the ugly parts of our relationship, but I want to end this episode by also sharing the wonderful things my mother did, because not everything was bad.

Speaker 1: 11:55

My mother and I, every Sunday, we will wake up early to go to the salon and do our hair and nails, and then we will go have breakfast and then go shopping and then lunch and then more shopping. I loved Sundays when my mom was a teenager. It was fun. Also, my mother always made sure that my friends were having fun in my house. She would buy pizza, drinks, rent us movies. My friends loved being at my house. It was the fun house. Also, my mother when Greg and I got married and we had no money, my mother would give us $2,000 per month for a year to help us out. She also bought us our furniture and helped us buy our first house. She also loved my kids very much. She was a great-grandmother. I also remember her always being in fashion, always in high heels, with her hair well done and makeup. She always dressed with the nicest clothes and I remember thinking when I was a kid I'm going to dress like my mom, always chic and elegant.

Speaker 1: 12:55

My dear friend, I hope this episode can bring you some peace and some ideas on how to have a better and more loving relationship with your mother, because both of you deserve happiness and you are the only one that can make it happen. That's really why you live happiness to chance when you can design it yourself. Before I leave you, I just wanted to remind you that the Happy Piesin Journal will come out February 15th. This journal has been an amazing tool that has helped me really see the corners of my life where I have been sabotaging my happiness, but it has also taught me how to love myself even more. So February 15th, mark your calendar. But if you don't want to wait, you can always get the 7 day journal sample of the Happy Piesin Journal. Just go to happypiesinco. Forward slash pages. Forward slash journal sample. I will include the link in the show notes to make it easier for you. Thank you for being here and I'll see you in the next episode.