You Don't Really Know Me by Terri Apter

Author:Terri Apter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

It’s surprising how many daughters did not know that their mother had been divorced, or had had an abortion, or dropped out of college at one time, or had been sexually assaulted, or charged with shoplifting or drug possession. When we do not reveal these things, we seldom feel we are deliberately hiding something; in our view, we are simply not telling a daughter something that is, perhaps, none of her business, or that might upset her. But not telling creates a distance. Opening up exposes us, but it also brings us closer.

Teens work hard to shape a parent’s view of them, to change a relationship that matters to them. Only in desperation, when the pain of maintaining the relationship outweighs their need for it, do they make a decision not to expose themselves to a mother. But even then, separation is never final. Girls never really give up on repairing a relationship with their mother; for a broken mother/daughter bond is a lifetime wound.

But girls do battle with an internal ideal of what they should be for their mother. If, for whatever reason, a mother finds conflict with a daughter intolerable, then a daughter, too, might decide to avoid conflict with a mother. In so doing, she loses out in one of the most important lessons of life: how to love and disagree; how to speak out without fear of damaging a relationship; how to insist that someone who loves you should really know you.

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