Readers' Guide

Daughters and Mothers: Making It Work
By Julie Firman, Dorothy Firman

(Page 2 of 2)

Using This Book Alone

The mother/daughter relationship is one of the most intense relationships a woman ever experiences. It is strong and it is primary. Although your mother may no longer be part of your daily life, you still carry her with you, for better or for worse. This first and essential relationship has a powerful, though often subtle, effect upon your current dealings with your mate, children, friends and yourself for without thinking about it, or even knowing it, we are bound and conditioned by our pasts-and, most deeply, by the mother/daughter relationship.

The purpose of this book is to help you, the reader, sift through old behavior patterns, feelings and thoughts so that you can continue to grow beyond your limitations into a more integrated, freer and more fulfilled person. You will be able to do this not by placing blame but by taking responsibility for your own actions and reactions, and for your own potential. This book is primarily a workbook with practical steps to support you in your process of growing. You need not be a mother or have a daughter. The book is for you because you are your mother's daughter.

As individual psychotherapists and as a mother/daughter team specializing in mother/daughter workshops, we have seen many women take this journey to achieve greater acceptance, love and harmony in their personal relationships. In this book you will hear from and about these women. The stories, letters and comments that we include tell about actual and composite experiences and situations, in forms designed to protect the anonymity of the women involved. Our own stories are told as well, so that we may share a piece of how we worked toward our own growth as individuals and with each other. “Dorothy's Story” will tell of the experience of the daughter in our pair and “Julie's Story” will tell of the mother's experience. The workbook sections will offer you a chance to do this same work. We will ask you to delve into your innermost self to let your angers, resentments, fears, confusions, joys, hopes, needs and values surface. Each can be examined in order to see which ones are unhelpful, childish and restricting, and which ones are beneficial, worth keeping and valued. We want you to recognize the good in you and to heal the hurt, so that you will be your best.

We hope that you will not only read this book, but will do the exercises as well. It is this personal work that will support growth and healing. When we suggest that you write, it will be far more effective to do so than to just think about the answers. We suggest that you acquire a journal that you can devote solely to the exercises in this book and for recording your own thoughts in the process of working on your relationship with your mother/daughter/self.

Using This Book in Groups

Over the years many women's groups have used this book as a group experience. This creates an opportunity to be with other women and to share deeply. If you are part of a book group or women's group, or if you choose to gather a group of women friends together to share the experience of this book, we encourage you to do so. Our best advice is to talk about each chapter after the individuals in the group have read that chapter and done the exercises. This will allow for conversations, not only about the ideas in the book, but about the personal experiences that each of you brings to your adult life.

Suggestions for Using This Book

We would like to offer a few more specific guidelines that may aid you. The first is:

Trust Yourself. This one, above all other guidelines, is the most important. Your own process is unique. If you trust yourself, you will guide yourself in the direction you need to go. In other words, remodel exercises to suit your own style, stay longer with one than another, expand an exercise, and do whatever works for you.

Follow the Order. The exercises are presented chronologically to move you through past issues into present and future potential. The work will be most effective if you do all the exercises in the order given.

Take Time. Some exercises will take only a minute; others may take considerable time. Make sure you have the time to do an exercise in a relaxed, quiet way. You will probably have the greatest success if you read and work when you are alone.

Mother Substitute. Apply the information and exercises in this book to anyone who filled the “mother” role in your life. This may be more than one person.

Be Specific. Whenever possible, keep the content of what you are writing concise and specific. Narrow down broad generalizations into definitive thoughts or responses; i.e., “I was always scared as a kid” is too general to be helpful and too big to be dealt with. “I was scared when Mother yelled at me, because I thought she would leave” gives you a real issue to work on.

Be Honest. The more you let yourself know about yourself, the more you will be able to grow. We have all, unfortunately, learned to hide ourselves, even from ourselves. This journey is an opportunity to let illuminating thoughts and feelings out of hiding.

Allow Feelings. If sadness, anger or fear begin to surface in you, let them surface. Remember to trust your own integrity. We have an uncanny knack for protecting ourselves from anything dangerous. Feelings, generally speaking, are not dangerous and want only to be experienced.

Create Safety. Choose the place where you can read and work on the exercises with privacy and comfort foremost in your mind. Have a friend or relative or professional helper to turn to for support, if it is needed.

Have Fun. Life is a serious proposition-perhaps too serious. Take this personal journey as an opportunity to grow and to have fun. We will ask you to explore your pain and your joy, as well as the adult and the child in you. Take this journey seriously and lightly, with deep caring for yourself and a willingness to grow.

© 2003 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

I have watched my goals and perspectives change dramatically over my 83 years. I was married before graduating from college even though I had gone for all four years. I just decided not to take any final exams because marriage seemed so much more exciting. Then we had three children and I decided I wanted to teach school. I went back to college and I received my degree when I was in my early 40s. I found I was a good teacher and taught school in various places when we moved around. When I was fifty I decided to get a Master's Degree in Counseling and did so. I also trained in Transactional Analysis and became a Clinical member and along the way took some training in Gestalt therapy.

I've been a daughter my whole life, a mother for 31 years and now for the last three years I've been a grandmother. It's not the whole story. I'm a sister, wife, friend, psychotherapist, trainer, writer, beginning potter.... and more. I have a daughter, a daughter-in-law, nieces, a granddaughter, lots of “daughter” age people in my life. The mother/daughter relationship plays out not only with a mother and daughter but with many of the mother-age/daughter-age relationships. It's a great thing, being part of the lineage of women, from the oldest to the youngest.