Mothers Who Can't Love

In more than thirty-five years as a therapist working in a variety of settings, Susan Forward has seen large numbers of women who struggle to escape the damaging emotional orbit of the women who brought them up. They come in with anxiety and depression, relationship problems, lack of confidence, and exhibit concerns about their ability to stand up for themselves, or even to love. All too often, they're confused. Many of their mothers appeared to be loving at times, giving birthday parties, coming to school events, being friendly with their classmates. But those intermittent flashes always yielded to a difficult truth outsiders rarely saw: criticism, competition, pain, fear, and turmoil. The effects of these childhood wounds can be painful, even crippling. Girls define their emerging womanhood by identifying and bonding with their moms. But when they can't, they're left to struggle alone toward a solid sense of themselves and their place in the world. In their own eyes, they are never good enough, never lovable enough, never smart or pretty or acceptable enough to deserve success and happiness. Mothers Who Can't Love will help these women finally find the help and validation they've been seeking to heal the mother wound. Accepting the realities of their childhood will allow these women to finally act in their own best interests, even when it means disconnecting from their unloving mothers. Readers will come to know the workings of: The Narcissistic Mother, The Competitive Mother, The Overly Enmeshed Mother, The Ice Queen, The Control Freak, Mothers Who Need Mothering, and A Mother in Name Only. Forward argues that the members of a daughter's real family are those who love and want the best for her, whether or not they're connected by blood or marriage. In a warm, accessible voice, Forward encourages women to, step by step, rebuild their sense of confidence, self-worth, and self-respect, offering wounded daughters healing, affirming tools. They can find in themselves-and in this book-the wisdom and warmth they've searched for for so long.