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21 " Healthy self-care means finding fulfillment so that you have energy, love, and empathy for others. Finding the middle ground means realizing that it is not an either-or situation—you are neither full of self nor drained of self. "
― , Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
22 " Self-trust, self-love, and self-knowledge can be taught to a daughter only by a mother who possesses those qualities herself. "
23 " As children, we had to deny that our mothers were incapable of love and empathy so we could survive. A child yearns for love above all else, and we needed the denial to keep growing and surviving. "
24 " It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. "
25 " Are there some things we need to discuss or work on together?" "Do you have pain from your childhood?" "Is there anything we can do about it now?" "Can we heal together? "
26 " A daughter who doesn’t receive validation from her earliest relationship with her mother learns that she has no significance in the world and her efforts have no effect. She tries her hardest to make a genuine connection with Mom, but fails, and thinks that the problem of rarely being able to please her mother lies within herself. This teaches the daughter that she is unworthy of love. The daughter’s notion of mother-daughter love is warped; she feels she must “earn” a close connection by seeing to Mom’s needs and constantly doing what it takes to please her. Clearly, this isn’t the same as feeling loved. Daughters of narcissistic mothers sense that their picture of love is distorted, but they don’t know what the real picture would look like. "
27 " Boys seem to have a different kind of relationship with Mother. Just about every daughter of a narcissistic mother has reported to me that her brother or brothers were better liked and more favored than she or her sisters were. Daughters consistently report how hurtful this has been. Typically, the mother appears not to notice the imbalance, or if confronted, denies it, but it does make some sense. Her sons are not threatening to her in relation to the father as another girl or woman is, because the boys are not as much an extension of her as is a daughter. "
28 " When wealth occupies a higher position than wisdom, when notoriety is admired more than dignity, when success is more important than self-respect, the culture itself overvalues "image" and must be regarded as narcissistic. "
29 " The engulfing mother tries to dominate and control every aspect of her daughter’s life. "
30 " Since the court system operates on the basis of adversarial "