DAUGHTER DETOX
RECOVERING FROM
AN UNLOVING MOTHER
AND
RECLAIMING YOUR LIFE
Peg Streep
New York, New York
Copyright 2017 Peg Streep. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is designed to provide information and motivation to readers; the author is neither a therapist nor a psychologist. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged to render any type of psychological or any other kind of professional advice. You should rely on the advice of your therapist or medical professional for decisions about your health, care, choices, and decisions; do not do any of the exercises in this book without consulting with him or her first. We strongly recommend that you follow the advice of your therapist or other professional when considering suggestions contained in the book. The author and publisher disclaim any liability for the use of this book. All of the names and identifying characteristics of the people interviewed for this book have been changed and any similarity to any person is coincidental.
ISBN-13: 978-0692973974 (Custom Universal)
ISBN-10: 0692973974
This book was designed by Claudia Karabaic Sargent, and is typeset in the Bodoni URW font family, available through Adobe Typekit .
For my readers and daughters everywhere who seek validation of their experiences and need the support they so sorely lacked in childhood .
A special thank-you to my own daughter, once again .
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION
E very week I get messages from womenleft as comments on my blog posts, on my Facebook page, and in emailthat say the same thing: I always thought I was the only one with a mother who didnt love her. I feel better knowing that Im not alone. They usually add, Im so relieved to discover that Im not crazy or imagining that this happened. You have no idea how long Ive worried.
Actually, I do. I was an unloved daughter myself.
These women are all agesfrom early thirties to mid eightiesand from all walks of life. They are stay-at-home moms, cashiers, doctors, hairdressers, lawyers, professors, secretaries, salespeople, and even therapists. In almost every case, their outward achievements belie how they really feel about themselves; they are still made unhappy by their childhoods, despite the work they do and the families theyve raised. They are women who have become devoted mothers but who are still hobbled and hurt. They are women who recognize that theyve never reached their full potential, who have hurtled from one relationship disaster to another, unable to get off the merry-go-round. Some have had children while others deliberately chose not to, afraid of repeating history. Some have battled depression, disordered eating, or addictive behaviors and are only now beginning to see how their behaviors connect to their childhoods. They are women who still want their mothers love and struggle with setting boundaries, wanting to attend family celebrations but still needing to protect themselves. They are women who have chosen to divorce their mothers, opting for peace along with self-orphaning over the status quo.
If you are reading these words, you are most likely one of these daughtersand, no, you are not alone. In fact, you have more company than either you or I would ever have imagined. You believed and perhaps still believe, as did my younger self, that you were to blame for your mommys not loving you. You were afraidjust as I was for many yearsto tell anyone because you wanted to be like all the other daughters, the ones who were hugged by their mothers and whose moms smiled when they came into the room. You discovered, when you did confide, that people thought you were being dramatic, because your mom seemed perfectly nice to them, and you were fed and clothed, werent you? You were probably hopefuland you might even be nowthat somehow, youd still get your mother to love you. Somehow, maybe tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
Ours is a story no one wants to hear. Everyone wants desperately to believe that, in a world where love is so hard to find and even harder to hang on to, one kind of love is inviolablea mothers love.
The truth of the unloving mother who actively wounds, dismisses, or disparages her child in words and actions is a cultural secret no one wants to acknowledge. We suffer alone and in silence in a sea of pastel-tinted sentiments plastered on T-shirts and mugs that say, Home Is Where Mom Is and Worlds Best Mom. Over the last few years, Ive come to see that the sense of isolationof being singled out in this way, of being labeled as damaged or less than, of being afraid that there is something terribly wrong with youis just as wounding as the lack of mother love itself. The hole left in our hearts fills with shame, self-doubt, and sometimes, self-loathing. But the discovery that there are others like usthat this is actually a shared experience for countless numbers of girls and womenis liberating. Daughter Detox offers a route to the way out.
Thats why I wrote this book. Its filled with stories told to me over the years by daughters whose experiences, while they differ in the details, hurt and changed them just as ours did. But even more important, Daughter Detox lays out strategies drawn from science to get out from under the influence of the past so that you can finally become you , not just your mothers daughter.
Ive written it so that you can come to recognize and understand your childhood experiences, see how they have shaped the person you are in the moment, and take action to help yourself heal and grow into the very best version of you. Its the book I wish Id had when my mothers voice still played on an endless tape loop in my head.
Im sure you, too, have struggled with that tapethe one that says youre inadequate, unlovable, stupid, difficult, worthless, fat, or any other variation on the theme. The pages of this book will help you understand the process that internalized that voice and help you locate an off button once and for all and, more important, find another tape, one composed by you, to play.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Each chapter of Daughter Detox focuses on a step-by-step process to guide you through the seven stages of reclaiming your life and recovering from childhood. The process includes expanding your understanding of the circumstances of your life, reading stories shared by other daughters, and then using strategies and techniques that are meant to help you move forward. You are working on undoing damage done over the course of many years so you may find yourself needing to go back to a previous chapter even if youve already read it. Thats to be expected: Recovery isnt a linear process .
Because Im neither a therapist nor a psychologist, Ive drawn on strategies suggested by psychological and other research and, in some cases, steps that have worked for me as an unloved daughter who had to reclaim herself. This book isnt a substitute for therapy, of course, since nothing works quite as well or effectively as one-on-one work with a gifted counselor.
