About My Mother, My Mirror
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- Can you sometimes hear your mother's voice telling you how to act, think, or feel, in ways that can be supportive at times, as in "That’s okay, Honey, you'll do better next time" – and restrictive at others, such as in “It’s not ladylike to sit that way."
- When people contradict your statements about your physical flaws or shortcomings in abilities or talents, do you assume they agree with your assessment but are just being polite?
- Do you worry you will pass along limiting thoughts to your own daughter?
Alice had her looking glass, the Evil Queen spoke to the magic mirror on the wall and J.K. Rowling explored the Mirror of Erised in her Harry Potter novels. What did they have in common? All of these mirrors represented distortions of mothers and the offspring who gazed upon them.
But the carnival mirror can be smashed and replaced with a glass that reflects a truer self. Dr. Arens-Fuerstein helps readers to identify the distortions, confront their source, safely feel the emotions they stir, and move beyond them to better understand the mother who generated the image (usually without awareness) helping the daughter to let it go and avoid passing it on.
Examples include such famous mother/daughter pairs as:
- Little Girl Mother and Mini Momma Daughter (Judy Garland)
- Jealous Queen Mother and Snow White Daughter (Jacqueline Onassis)
- Stage Mother and Show Girl Daughter (Natalie Wood)
- Out-at-Sea Mother and Adrift Daughter (Princess Diana)
- Spirit-Dampening Mother and Spirit-Dampened Daughter (Eleanor Roosevelt)
These carnival mirror images often lead to eating disorders, body image and sexual problems, parenting and relationship issues.
The five thought links help readers move past unhealthy inherited self-perceptions.
- Separating mother and daughter self-images.
- Uncovering hidden anger at the childhood mother, often based on viewing her inaccurately.
- Uncovering hidden love for the childhood mother that might be unexpressed due to fear of disappointment.
- Uncovering hidden sadness related to the childhood mother from either physical or emotional absence.
- Blending the earlier thought links to create a truer self-image.
At the end of each chapter, My Mother, My Mirror provides thought-provoking questions for reflection, writing touch tools to record feelings the chapter evokes, and reading touch tools that link the chapter with insightful literature. This perceptive book from a leading expert in women’s issues is making a fundamental difference for generations of women.