How Mothers Can Damage Their Daughters: Could This Be You?

things every daughter requires from her mother. If these needs aren't met, the effects can be devastating. I used to hold a lot of shame in thinking that I was too emotional. When I was going through my second divorce. I went to my mother and how was her response to you? I started drinking when I was fourteen, Tanico, Were you ever told I love you? My thing was just not having protection. That's my biggest wound that comes

out in all my relationships. Those women that you see and you think are so strong, there's this terrified little girl underneath and that's me. Oh mother, Well, this is a nice mother daughter, field coordinated, and you are as bright as the sun. I'm a walking or go maker. I thought I would bring this flower as just continuously remembering how beautiful we all are on our journey of healing. A friend gave me this book and it has been eye opening. We all have mother wounds. We all do.

After years of working with patients, trauma psychotherapist Kelly McDaniel witnessed a frequent pattern of harmful behaviors and women, which he traced back to mother hunger. I just want to take the time and just say thank you. You're welcome. So, Kelly, you say that there are three critical pillars of mother hunger. Yes, nurture, into protection, and then guidance. Okay. Nurturance is everything that involves eye contact. Little girls are little communication machines. Baby

girls are worn starving for their mother's eyes. Wow. So that's part of nurturing. Touch, holding, cradling. The more we hold our babies, it literally grows their brain. I was obsessed with cuddling ass and unfortunately many times babies are left too long, often in a stroller, when all they

want is the constant touch and holding. So touch deprivation that comes from forcing independence, which really started back in the nineteen twenties with a behaviorist who thought we could train train babies like we trained dogs right in leading behaviorists, Dr John B. Watson conducted one of the most controversial experiments ever to prove that babies could be trained like animals. He used a series of highly unethical tests on a baby nickname Little Albert. This baby, known as Little Albert,

initially found delight in touching a rabbit. Yet as Watson began to claim and steel rod and claw hammer behind the child's head whenever he touched the creature, the reaction became not one of delight, the terror. Watson then created what he claimed was the full proof parenting method. The basics. Never hug your child, never let them sit in your lap,

shake hands to greet in the morning. A pat on the head is allowed if they've done an extraordinarily good job, and to get them to sleep, baby should be left alone to cry it out. At that time, Watson was extremely popular. He was the president of the American Psychological Association and wrote a best selling parenting book that continues to influence generations of parents and pediatricians whoa that doesn't

really work. I mean it works because babies will adapt, but they will be starving and deprived underneath for touch, and that deprivation is easily transferred into kneeding and wanting more sex, because that's one way we get touched, needs met. Right, that makes so much sense. The next one is protection.

We're hunters and gatherers, so in the days of living on the land, if you left a baby alone unattended, that's going to be a dead baby, right, I mean if they cry and alert an animal or a predator. So mothers didn't let their babies cry. They kept them in a sling near the breast where they could always feed and always be safe. So babies really aren't designed to think, no matter how cute that nursery is, I'm supposed to be in a crib. That's scary. Yeah. Babies,

unfortunately get labeled. Oh she was a difficult baby. Well what made her difficult? Well she cried a lot. Oh so she wanted you, and so anythink we really have to turn around what this good baby thing is? All babies are born good. Yeah. And you can't spoil a baby. No, no, And I love that you brought that up, because the definition of spoil is to leave something on a shelf to rock. So we spoil our babies when we leave them alone too long. What we know now is if

you leave your infants alone too long, you're creating neediness. Exactly. I never had them in a crib in a room by themselves. They slept with We were obsessed. I love that co sleeping is what we are wired for. We come into the world expecting to stay close during sleep, and when we separate mom and baby for long hours during the night, we're really looking at creating a separation anxiety.

That's where mother hunger begins. So anyway, the nurturing protection are the two most primitive parts baby girls, baby boys. Everyone needs that. Where things change a bit is as we move into adolescence. Little girls are still looking to their mother's for guidance, which is the third pillar. Little boys, on the other hand, may then at that point, yeah,

look to the world of men. Not that boys don't want to be proud of their mother, I don't want to minimize that at all, but girls really are still going to stay connected. When Willow was becoming a young woman, I was like, oh, no, I want her to know I'm her person to guide her through her emotional development,

her physical sexual development, her everything sexual. In the physical development, I always felt so like open and and accepted because you never made me feel like you hadn't been through something. And I feel like a lot of moms want to keep this kind of like picture perfect look of themselves, even to their own daughter. Well, sometimes I think some women have a lot of shame from around. There was so much taboo around back there. But I understand too

for me what my mother's experienced where us. So she was just trying to keep me from making the mistakes that she were trying to keep me from making mistakes that you made. And I decided to bring you close to show you that you didn't have to deal with our misguidance and over protection. I love that you mentioned over protection though, because as women, we all know what it's like to walk down the street and have our car key ready out right. We're wired to know we

could be in danger. We're going to overprotect our daughters. You don't want to send your daughter out there unprepared. So the pillars, my thing was just not having protection. That's my biggest wound that comes out in all my relationships. And I've looked for craziest kinds of protection, and I don't have a really good sense of like what's safe and what's not. I'm either extremely protective or extremely defensive. And I tell you why, the environment. It was my addiction.

She found her security through my mother, right, But mommy died when Jada was thirteen. When mommy died, that's when my addiction really took off. That's a really important time to feel secure and safe. That's when your womanhood starts. Yeah, and that's when she lost her security. Yeah. You know, my mother was her backbone and her house was safe, right, And so once she was gone, there was no safety. So then I went into the world and created my

own safety. And that was crazy. So I had to deal with a lot of stressful adult things at a young age. I didn't have the ability to deal with the emotions that were coming with it. I just had to buck up. And so those women that you see and you think are so strong, there's this terrified little girl underneath, Yeah, that's me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean this is why we do the word part of the journey. You know, Willow, do you have any understanding of your

mother hunger yet? Obviously I was so supported throughout my entire childhood, but there were definitely times where you had trouble looking at your anxiety and your hurt, and so when I was trying to be open about mine, there was no room for that at the time, like a lack of emotional support exactly. That's kind of how I was raised, and that's how I raised her. It was like toughen up up. Yeah, I used to hold a lot of shame in thinking that something was wrong with

me or I was too emotional, I had problem. But then when I asked you, like, I want to know you as Jada, Like I don't want to just know you as my mom, And we started opening up that conversation, and I had learned more about her childhood and the kind of environment that you grew up, and I was like, obviously, me being a bleeding heart at every turn is gonna look extremely dangerous. Of course, like that makes all the

sense to me. Well it's just foreign totally. But now I'm an adult and I still come to you all the beautiful But even my girlfriends, like I know some of their mothers have this idea of like you turned eighteen and yeah, I don't need to deal anymore, and they're like, but but this is the moment when I actually need like your real wisdom. I love that you're saying that because it speaks to what I've noticed in

the years of working with women. We never outgrow our desire for our mother, especially when we go through developmental milestones. I remember when I was going through my second divorce because the first one didn't really count divorce. I went to my mother and how was her response to you, m She kind of wanted to know what I did exactly, What did you do wrong? What did I do? Yeah? And that was that generation, wasn't it that if there's a divorce, that had have been something you did wrong,

thing that I did. I'm sorry. Yeah. So for me the pillars, it wasn't protection. It was a bit of nurturing. And then I was the youngest of four. I needed more touch and cuddling and that didn't happen. And then there was the over protection with the guidance of just having in her mind how she wanted things to be yea and her expectations, and when it came to sex, trying to scare you out all yeah, you know, and everything is dirty. She guided me. Her mother taught me

everything about sex in a way that was helpful. Yes, you were okay with your mother helping Jada with her with sexual guidance. I didn't know that's how it goes. I would have been okay with it had I know, just the fact that she didn't feel the need to inform me another of but that was also probably her ownership of you, like Adrian, her mother, but she's my responsibility, you know. It was funny. Gam did show up at

some really pivotal moments. The day to day guidance was really not great, but when they came to some real life changing experiences, whether I'm going to stay in college or go to law school, she was like, Oh, no, you meant to We're going to Hollywood girl. You know what mother tells that. Yeah. I was gorgeous guidance because

I felt all the confidence in the world. Because if she had said to me everything else that other people were telling me, like that's a waste of time, you need to stay in school, my mother was like, Oh no, we're gonna go to California and we're gonna figure this out. Okay, didn't you feel like you can do anything? Exactly? So it was moments like that got into some real difficulty. In Baltimore. She got me got and she was like, pack your right now, get in this car. And so

that put me on the trajectory that I needed. I feel like you saw her in a way that no parent just says that to a child if they don't see something special in them that they're like, Okay, there's a spark there that I don't feel like it's gonna get ignited in a courtroom. Yeah. Well, you know what. There was another time to gam when I was in Italy by myself, and I called you because remember when the valet said to me, I have a boat. I'm going to take you out today, and I'm thinking in Italy,

I'm Twinny exactly. So I called my Mother's like, Mom, the valet wants to take me on this boat. She said, well, first ball, if he has a boat, what's he doing parking cars? And second of all, you are not getting on no boat with nobody. If something happens to you, nobody's gonna hear you. You're gonna be in the middle of nowhere, do not Jada. And I said, oh snap, mom, you're right so good. And let me tell you, because I was about to get on that boat, how old

were you? I was twenty? Say, still need a mom that's beautiful and speaks to the bond, even though the bond had been through periods of times that were had broken points. A daughter always wants her mother, yes, and if a mother is ready to receive and be there, then there's always time for repairing. Because for all why now, I could have been traffic, you could have been straight

up because they knew I was alone. Oh my god, I think to that day, I'm like, she saved my life again because both of the pivotal the pivotal moments with you guys. Another moment for me was when you asked me to go to Australia with you. Oh yeah, when I got the matrix and I literally just had Willow. We were going to be in Australia for like a year and a half and I called my mom and I was like, I need some help. And I did not hesitate, I did not have a conversation with my

husband at the time. She asked me, and I immediately said absolutely because I knew that it was an opportunity for us to heal. There was this healing and watching her gift to them what we didn't have, but we were having it through them. What a beautiful way to step in and read Mother Jada as you helped. Yeah,

and Jaden, she had them both. The book was really helpful in me seeing how I was able to change for you, because one of the things that was so missing, and my relationship with my mother and with Jada was just touched very rarely. And I even touch, yeah, hug, and if we do, it's awkward. It's because we didn't hug in our family. We knew we were loved, but

it just wasn't that kind of nurturing touch. And you remember how you always wanted to cuddle and sleep with us and you let me sleep with you, but that was different for her. She and it felt so good. Yeah, it felt so good to be able to have that and I never had it when I had it with you. Then I missed it with Jada. I realized how much I missed with her. But then here's the thing, here's the beauty of it, how it was able to change.

And that's the thing. That's what this is all about, is trying to break the pattern and the totally so entertainment reporter Tunika Ray says the concept of mother hunger socked her to her soul. Nika hosted extra for seven years. She says, growing up in the affluent suburb of Brentwood, California didn't exempt her from having severe mother hunger. The way I was mothered was unsatisfactory. My mother and I just don't speak the same language. We don't agree on

the sky color. We don't agree on anything. Her thing is, We'll forget it. I just won't ever give you advice again. It's like, okay, mom, whatever. My cries for help were ignored, criticized, and others. When you have an emotional child that needs to be heard, it's dangerous. I learned at such a young age not to depend on her. But when I had a child, that's when this like ghost voice comes out of nowhere. No, just stop, Oh God, why am I using that voice? That aggressive voice that that then

made me coward? My daughter said to me at age six, Mommy, why don't you and Grammy hug? Broke my heart? A Appearances are really important to my family, but there was no intimacy or love in the house. And I always call myself a survivor because I was. And I don't want to cry, but I was so depressed. I started drinking when I was fourteen. In it. So I want to make sure that I don't have that my daughter trying to escape me going forward, and that she knows

that I'm a safe space. Wow. Thank you, thank you for your testimony, thank you for having me. I'm so grateful for this book. I've been really proficient at putting all these feelings away, but I guess God felt like this was the time for me to finally face this crap. I have been a fountain, a waterfall of tears, and so I'm going to try to keep it together. But what I realized, thinking I had eating disorders, that I have a problem with love and receiving it, that I

had all these things that I needed therapy for. The nugget at the center is this mother hunger, because our first experience of love comes from her touch and how she feeds us. So food is our first experience of love. When I work with women with mother hunger, there are food troubles. What we start with is just whichever hurts the most. Tanika, your acknowledgement that you your parents were very giving as far as material things, that doesn't soothe

our need for love. Material things doesn't do it. I've had so much shame in my life because why do I have any space to talk about my issues. I grew up with things and to have the life experiences that I have. How dare I have even a moment of complaint about not receiving love? So that has kept me quiet and really just kept the pain cycling and just getting darker and uglier. Right, I really really just

relate to what you just said. I feel like, let the tears come because that internal we've just been holding so hard for so frozen. That really hit me when you called it that, Like I'm thawing out, yeah, because I'm always crying to Tana defrost de frost. What's interesting though, mother hunger weights, and it waits, and it is frozen grief until there's enough support that it can thaw. Our body knows what we can handle in what we can't, and if our life is too difficult, this won't come up.

But I think that's part of the reason why, you know, a little bit of that emotional nurturance wasn't there with us and my child, absolutely because you didn't feel safe enough to thaw. At that time. I was looking at you like, how dare you wrong? It's wrong? You've got everything not knowing that the very essential things she needed was frozen in you. It was frozen and in me, Tanico, Were you ever told I love you? Never? It's one

percent so painful to think about. Considering that I have my own daughter, that's a whole other type of pain. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, died unexpectedly when my mother was two months away from delivering me. So there's grief as well as trauma. I was born into grief and sadness. I tried to talk to my mom about these things and I said, you must have been really sad when I was born. No, I was fine. Yeah, she can't access it. That's so core to mother hunger

that you brought up shame. Here's how our brains work as little girls. If our mother is somehow compromised, she's traumatized, and therefore she can't care for us. The message we get isn't something wrong with mom. The message we get is something's wrong with me that she can't love me. We don't never stop loving her, we just don't learn to love us. And that is the shame that's core and mother hunger. Yeah, is there any benefit to Tanika sitting down with her mom? It's pretty rare to have

a group like this of mothers and daughters. They could actually sit and have this conversation. I don't generally encourage going to her mother because sometimes that leads to another disappointment, maybe a fresh rejection, and it's very, very risky, which is why I think it's important that we come up with who our celestial mother is. The mother we create, is the mother that adores us, wanted us, who we admire.

And you may actually think of a woman that you know, you're like, oh, yeah, I wish my mom were like that. You create that mother, and that's who you cry to, that's who you talk to, that's who you pray to, that's who you curl up with at night and say thanks for keeping me alive today. Right. I think when you realize what was lost. Did I miss out on nurturing, did I miss out on protection? Or maybe it was guidance, we go replace those things ourselves. We are the mother now. Yeah,

you have two girls. You've got your daughter, and you have your little girl inside of you that so needs you too. So if you can extend the same yummy nous, the nurturing, the safety and the guidance, for you that you're giving her. That's going to help a lot heal what you didn't have. When you don't have the mother that you wished you had the only thing you have left to do is to mother yourself. That's right, You're

already a cycle breaker because you are aware. And I can say this that every bit of you that you heal your daughter inherits. You don't have to say a word. I know you got this beautiful, shining heart of yours every day. Yeah, thank you, thank you for sharing. Yeah, the no, Tanka's mother's going to see this, and I want to Nika and her mother to know that we have compassion for whatever she hadn't been given because she has a story. Every mother is first a daughter, Yes,

every mother is first. A daughter is deep. I've always wanted to have a table and find information where people could have a guidance towards healing. And your book is that for the mother daughter relationship. But I also think for sons. You know, when I was reading this, I thought about Trey and Jaden, you know, and I thought about you know, their mother hunger was and I was like, oh, snap, yeah that's also real too. Thanks for bringing that up.

All right, we have twenty five year old Katrice. She has a deep case of mother hunger. Katri says she's feeling hopeless and has struggled with low self esteem most of her life. Growing up, she didn't know her biological father and her mother was battling with a crack addiction. My mom she depended on my stepdad for financial reasons, and when he passed bay it was really really hard and like we couldn't afford to really live where we live.

I kind of held that against her, and I felt like, well, maybe she should have, you know, gotten her life together. Katri says her life has been racked with instability. When I was in college, I actually had to go to therapy because I had like crippling anxiety about leaving college because it was such a safety net for me. I was like, Okay, I have an apartment and I have food here. When I graduate, I'm scared that I'm just gonna go home and I'm gonna have to take care

of people and not live my life. She says she's learning to heal from the resentment she feels toward her mother. I'm realizing like she overcame an addiction. She might just need a hug and for someone to tell her like they're proud of her. Wow. Yeah, welcome to the table. Thank you guys for opening up this space to just be vulnerable and talk about these hard things because it's new for me. Yeah, something that so deeply touched me

when you said sometimes she just needs to hug. What about you who gives you a hug and says I'm so proud of you. Look at you. You're in your mid twenties and you're doing all this. Yeah, I learned like over the years too kind of give that to myself. I was oftentimes just trying to satisfy my mom growing up and doing things that would stand out to make

her proud. And me and my mom kind of butted heads growing up a lot in terms of that because I needed that and she was this strong woman who dealt with her issues just by like keeping it moving, and I was more of a person who wanted to, like cry it out. I wanted to and she was using, you know, deal with like she was like and got things to do. We don't have time for all life.

Let's go. Yeah, we come from that too, so but now, yeah, my mom have to work on our relationship, you know, because I've been kind of facing issues with wanting to have my own children somethday and it's like, I don't want to be in a cycle of causing trauma to my future kids. So I've had a lot of anxiety around wanting to become a mother myself because of trauma wounds that I haven't healed from. Yeah. Well, the good thing is you don't have to have any kids anytime soon.

But I'm doing I'm glad you're not before becoming a mother, right, And is this a journey that you really want to take, because I think people still are having kids and not giving much thought into what that really means, and that saddens me. It is it's tragic actually, So I kind of think you're already being a really good mother because you're asking yourself these questions, So whether you have children or not, or when you're already loving your unborn children

by becoming aware. Yeah, well, thank you, Katrice, thank you. So we have Rochelle, a mother of two daughters, and she shared how a lack of nurturing played out in her life. My mom died when I was two and my dad remarried, and she died when I was six. There was never that person at home, UM who had me in the way that a mom would have their daughter. I had bought my own myself. I went through puberty myself,

I figured things out. I knew when I became a mom, I had to do everything I could to ensure that my kids would never feel the pain or suffer without a mall Ruschelle says she refuses to be away from her kids for more than a few hours, turning down invites to girls trips and going to dinner only if she knows she'll be home for bedtime. Her social life

is basically non existent. My daughters are fourteen and eight, and neither child goes to bed without mama, and I want them to know that I'm there at the end of every day and at the beginning of every day, and that they will never be without me. Ever, it brings me a lot of healing, um, but it's always

conflicted healing. I look at both of them and I admire them so deeply because they're strong and yes, I'm sorry, they are just um, such beautiful young women, and I feel proud of them like I so wish my mom would have told of me, but I didn't help that. Hello, Hi, Yeah, those tears make so much sense, so much sense. You lost so much as a very little girl, and it

goes right to the heart of deprivation. Just have to say, I love that you're there at the start of every day and the end of every day, because what we know, those are the most important times for bonding with our children, and your daughters are so lucky. You're doing such an excellent job giving those girls what they need, which means pretty soon it's going to be your turn to find comfort, probably from women who can hold you, guide you, and help you defrost this grief that is in your body

waiting its turn. The little two year old that lost a mother, the six year old that lost a mother, they still so desperately want one, they do. Yeah, I find myself just always longing for my person. It's like that long for what for me isn't ultimately insatiable at this point, but it's so real. But it seems like once your girls are able to branch out a little bit, you'll have a little bit more time to have some

relationships of your own outside of your girls. Yeah, you do, and I think sometimes it can be really difficult to find friends that you trust to come in to support you, because if you've never learned to rely on your mother, relying on your girlfriends is really tricky. And this is where sometimes I courage people to go ahead and find a coach or a professional who can be that surrogate

mother for a while. Sometimes that's a safer way to go because this person is designed to be here for you, to hold your secrets, hold you in a gaze one on one, which sometimes your girlfriends aren't there to do. Yeah, sometimes the story is too heavy for a lot of people, and perhaps there's a neediness from that emanates from me. So I think that gets heavy for people sometimes. Yeah, Rochelle is understanding mother hunger, giving you hope. Oh absolutely.

I searched, and I searched as a motherless mother and a motherless daughter for what was wrong, and then you find a resource that gives you words to explain what you feel on a daily pieceis I do think that once there's logic attached and there's a reason I feel this way, then put the pieces of me back together. I can't do it alone, Like, there's no way, as much as we'd like to do it ourselves and go it alone. We've been doing that too long. We know how to do that, we know how to be tough,

we know how to be lonely. It's time to really let ourselves be helped. Yeah, and vulnerable, right, and and vulnerable and stating that we need to help. Yeah, thank you, Rochelle, I'm giving you the biggest virtue all Thanks for being here. Yeah, absolutely, thank you for having me. Kelly. Your work is just so important, so yeah, thank you for all you do. Thank you what a treasure. Yeah, sweet soul, I just want to say it's never too late to heal yourself

or to try to heal with your children. And my acknowledgement of my frailties and my failures have just been way for me to heal and heal with Jada. I mean, it's just acknowledging. It's beautiful. Our life was not perfect, and that is a living apology, and you get to be a new mommy exactly. I just want to say I'm grateful for all three of you just wanting to be better women and therefore be better mothers. Let's hold her hand. Let's hold hands. This was really great. Thank

you so much. I feels so odd to sit here with you and you're finding this book. It's going to help so many women. This book needed you, Thank you, and we needed it. And an elephant herds girls elephants and mothers and grandmothers never leave each other ever. The matriarch, the grandmother, she is always in charge of her. And the little girls never leave their mothers. The goals. When they get a certain age, they will go on, Yeah,

that's beautiful. To join the Red Table Talk family and become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast, produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.