“I love all my kids the same.” Most mothers say this and perhaps it’s true from a certain angle. But from other angles it hard to substantiate and in some cases it’s flat out obvious a mother prefers one child over the other.
As for the way I titled this post, I think it is possible for a mother to love a child but just not like them all that much. The reasons for this are endless.
There may be a personality conflict. The kid simply rub the mother the wrong way. The mother may need a scapegoat or someone to carry her shadow. The kid may look (or act) like the father who the mother has come to loathe, etc.
Scenarios like this are not uncommon. It may be uncommon to talk about them but that doesn’t mean anything.
The mother may feel justified in disliking her child or she may feel terribly guilty. She may express her feelings overtly or she may conceal them and be successful at that, particularly if the child doesn’t want to know.
The child may not want to know, or may just be unable to figure it out because he or she has never had it any other way. As an adult, the child may even be relieved with the knowledge when they realize, they don’t much like their mother anyway and so much is explained.
Sometimes the mother is well intentioned but her kid just doesn’t live up to her expectation for him or her which may or may not have been realistic in the first place. Bad news for the child if he or she becomes the receptacle for the parent’s feelings of disappointment in life.
Sometimes the mother and the child both know the feelings are there but they fake it for the rest of the family. I’d like to read what you know about this.
Note – I wrote this in 2010. I’m bringing it up today, because I just consulting with an adoptee. In some cases, adoptive parents bring home the adopted baby and it doesn’t go so well. This scenario is rarely discussed. It’s a taboo topic. Think what denying this might do to the adopted child, who is now an adult. It’s unfathomable, really.
Know a mother who does not like her kid? Did your mother not like you?
Mother studied astrology in the early 40s. She would say she raised us according to our charts. Looking back, I do think she satisfied our moon signs-I feel she did; and can see how she did w/siblings.
My mother supported/supports my father in his disdain for me. She made excuses for his maltreatment all through my childhood. She competed with me openly. At the same time she claimed me as HERS, an extension of her. I never lived up to expectation and she took it personally. We have a strained relationship.
ETA: She will sacrifice me to achieve a high status appearance for herself. One way is to bad mouth me behind my back to whomever will listen, building herself up to look good while making me out to be a mean inconsiderate person. I do not trust her and can’t speak freely around her. It’s aggravating.
I think Mother satisfied our moon signs, but in reality there was favoritism. The Leo moons and the Aries moon definitely got more.
Interesting to see this thread pop back up. I talked to my mother for over an hour last night. To quote myself up thread, I was of tremendous use to her psychologically last night. After the conversation I told my partner ‘I did exactly what my therapist told me to stop doing, listening and engaging as long as I did.’
My mother’s a bit of a snake, but she told me a lot of funny things last night and so I didn’t want to hang up. She gave me more insight into the night I was born, for example. Those kinds of stories, I am willing to put up some BS because I want to know those stories!
I put a lot of work and time into accepting my son as is. His personality is completely different from mine. I did this because I loved him. I still love him, worry about him, wish nothing but the best for him, secretly follow what’s going on with him. But over the years, he has pushed me away at every turn for the crime of trying to parent him. He pushed so hard that a legal restraining order was put in place by a judge when he was 17 (forcing him out of the family home).
As I said, as mom, I worked hard at trying to accept the son I had. He hasn’t put any work into accepting me for the mother (or even person) I am.
My parents didn’t like me; my mother only started trying to have a relationship when she got jealous of other mother-daughter relationships.
I think many people project their own issues onto their kids/expect their kids to live up to the parent’s expectations. It’s also true in the reverse – some parents only seem to like their kids because it’s *their* child/product of the parent.
Soupy old me..can’t understand how a mother could not like her own kid.Maybe you don’t like everything they do or choose, but how can a mother not like/love her own child? I am a Cancerian I guess you know. Sad post.
Madeline, I pulled this up because I read this – Having Kids Worst Mistake..
It is really sad. 🙁
I just read the article from your link. She strikes me as a mother who could literally drive her children crazy… “I take care of you and love you but wish I had never had you”. Her daughter is now living with her, bed-bound with MS. After she reads this article, maybe she’ll kill herself to put her mother out of her misery, because basically that mother said “if you die, I won’t miss you, in fact, you’d be doing me a favor. I have books to read, and you’re taking up my time.” My own mother is a Crappy Moon. Cold and unloving, she used to say all the time “I love you, but I don’t like you.” She was also known to tell me I am “a misery, and have always been one”. And a “parasite”. I have Moon in Scorp square Uranus, this does not surprise me. I will not, NOT FOR A SECOND, miss my mother when she dies; however, I will always mourn the fact that I had a mother who couldn’t spend a minute on self-reflection in an effort to reflect on how damaging her words and behaviors were. I have 2 sisters, and my brother is the youngest, and she excuses her behavior by saying that “this is who I am. I prefer boys. I will always love your brother more, that’s just the way I am.” No effort to hide it, and it’s us to us to come to terms with it. She had my older sister and I when she was 16-17 and she and my father got married and were extremely poor. My 2 other sibs came when they were much more financially comfortable. She is much closer to them. My older sister has *never* gotten over the fact that my mother treats her like dirt… she still lives in the same town as my mother and tries to earn her love every single day. She is half-crazy from it. She just can’t understand why mom won’t love her. I moved away when I was 17, and am much better off for it.
I read that article/link. The woman in the article, sounds awful. I mean it was only her DUTY for her husband. It seems to me that they were incompatible because their values clashed. she only wanted to be with him because she adored him but didn’t adore HIS values of having children. He wanted a stay at home wife with caring for his children. He obviously wanted that type of woman, and she is so clingy and desperate for his love she went through the childbirth for HIM. I notice that they all turned out very well adjusted despite the lack of love and warmth. It sounds a lot like what my Double Virgo father in law has, everyone including him saying his mother is so very cold (mother in law met her in the early days and she agreed) but all his children turned out well adjusted and doing well in life.
basically two values clashes in life. One parent wanted children and the other hated the thought and still hated the thought afterward. *smh* she did it all for him.
although at the end of the article, I just noticed that she would cut off her arm to either child if she needed it. It was as if “time” and raising them, kind of forced her to see how much, how deep her love is. even if she is not demonstrative. it’s such a strange thing.
My mother still loves me though I’m a pain in the arse .She is the archetypical mother a Cancer with a gemini cusp. But she knows when her kids are taking advantage and how to manipulate. I think her favorite is my bro and I could totally see why. I don’t have rivalry with my siblings at all either. We all love each other. I guess my mom raised us better than we give her credit for. She’s not perfect but you just have to accept people w/ their flaws and see the good side.
Wow windsaloft! That is interesting.
Mom was an Aries with cancer rising and moon.
I am a Virgo with an Aqua moon. And Asperger’s, which didn’t get set as a diagnosis until the 90’s. I didn’t figure it out before she died. That’s the ONE thing that bugs me, but I guess she knows, now.
Our relationship when I was young was tough. We figure it out after I moved out, and I can honestly say that if I ever needed a hug, no matter what, she had one for me.
I miss her, a lot. But we didn’t have the mother/daughter relationship that some women do. I know we would have just become better and better friends, over time.
My parents are the same age as the article author and…I will say that the selfishness and “but I am a good person, so I go through the motions” attitude might have been somewhat common.
I would advise people with parent/inheritance concerns not to hold their breath for it.
If they’ve got no carrot to dangle, they can not make you dance.
I know, I know. Smile and take the money. Except that this type of person tends to get the last slap in the face from across the grave, when the will is read.
That is a sad story Elsa. And the very reason I chose not to have children when I was married (although I think I would have been a great mom). It was my ex who was adamant about no children. Had a vasectomy when we were first married to be sure it didn’t happen. I was indifferent being the middle child of a very large family. I always had my nieces and nephews to coddle over if I wanted.
Interestingly enough, I do believe the children I was supposed to have found their way into my life anyway! I have two younger friends (young enough to be my kids) who are the dearest things ever to my heart. I treat them as if they were my kids and they call me “Momma.” So for me all worked out just fine in that department!
How interesting to read this post since yesterday my mother came to my house to make me cry. She came here and started to be really passive agressive with me and then when i talked to her she ignored me on purpose, really sickening. I had to ask her to leave almost violently because my personality and historial with her is on the top of the levels so when she left i was so tense and digusted and with the “unfuckingbelievable” feeling and it made me cry really had. I CONFIRMED that she actually doesnt like me and i was right when i thought she never did though i guess i didnt want to see it or didnt realize cause what world teaches you is the “unbreakable everlasting mother-child bond” that also made me feel abnormal for not loving my mom or for thinking she was mean to me on purspose, and always be the villian whenever i told anyone about it, from “of course your mother loves you youre her daughter you just dont see t you’ll know when you have your children” (to my insides i though “wheni have children i would do that/be that way”..) to “how can you say you dont love your mother youre so mean”.. : ( i hate the generalization of feelings. There is everything in this world………
Thanks, khatr. 🙂
It’s a chilling article, and a reality. A Uranian mother? I was very afraid myself I’d be the same, and didn’t have children. I wanted the crap to end with me. Lots of abandonment issues as a child, which (for me)I know would have made it virtually impossible for me to bring up children well. Now I could; now I have children in my life. My mother – well I’m glad we both made it to adulthood to get to know each other as adults. She did her best and although there were lots of things that were very hard & she projected a lot of stuff onto us, I didn’t know what she was living with, and I do now. No I didn’t think she particularly liked me and she certainly didn’t get me, but she did really love me anyway. Which for a long time felt like a repugnant burden. Now, I wouldn’t change it. She drove me nuts for years but there’s some peace now; I look out for her.
My mother is an aries moon, cancer sun, borderline personality. I am just too different from her. She needs to feel like a hero/victim, and I am usually the one who has to be the bad child, because she needs a child to be bad, or she cannot function with her illness. As a teenager, I once asked, “Do you even like me?” She stated that she loved me, but I kind of already knew the truth, so it was all just words. I tell her things she doesn’t want to hear about herself, and she really, really hates that. I am also a girl, and my mom hates, almost uniformly, all girls. My oldest brother was, and remains, the golden child. The whole thing doesn’t bother me at all; it is just how it is. I cut her out of my heart a very long time ago, so now, for many years, it’s all been “just words.”
Thanks, Victoria. Mum was an interesting woman. She loved astrology and studied all religions, but led her life by reading the Bhagavad Gita everyday– unusual for her time and generation and also a baptized Catholic.
HUGE response to this issue! My mother had five planets in Aquarius and Leo rising. She didn’t like me, was jealous and showed it. However; on her deathbed, we made a nice ending and I sang to her. She said “I don’t deserve you. That was our contract. I don’t like my son most of the time, but I sure do love him and always felt protective and nurturing towards him. I’d give him any organ from my body if he needed it–Venus in Taurus in the fourth. (Conjunct Uranus in the 5th).
Yes,I do know that there are moms like those out there (the article you mention you read..that led to a post about it..) I don’t have my head in the sand,I guess my Moon- child HEART just doesn’t “get” it.. I’ love to believe it can’t happen, but I do know that it does..
You at least have given a forum to many who have experienced this in one way or another..
my mother was a pisces and actually liked me I believe but that could also be because my sister, the first born is gemini and a total nightmare for a pisces parent.
In my family, my father didn’t like me in the beginning – I was darker than the rest of the family not a natural born beauty and his family despised me – they would have preferred if he had had a son or a fair beautiful baby. Besides I looked a lot like my maternal grandparents who they loathed. Even as a child i was very aware of all these dynamics – i took some time to consciously understand it but nevertheless I have always know.
To add to all that my father is a cap and I am aries so it isn’t like he will ever understand me really.
My poor sister came into being absolutely adored and loved and then had to contend with sharing mother’s love. She resented both mother and me from day 1 for that and that became a feedback cycle. She still resents our dead mother.
She always struggled for mother’s unconditional love and in the process took our father’s natural preference for her for granted. I think in my father’s eyes she just basically threw away his regard.
Now my sister has a son with scorpio sun and pisces moon. She’s a gemini sun with a capricorn moon. I feel terrible for the boy but he’s only my nephew and I’m not his mother. She loves him for sure, I’m not sure how long she would like him. I’m not in any position to judge but I fervently hope his father can mitigate the damage.
My mother never liked me, and she’s totally been the kind of passive-aggressive/abusive mother who destroys her child’s self esteem to me. Verbal abuses as well as physical abuses sometimes. I was definitely the one to carry her shadow, and our synastry is filled to the brim with dissonant aspects – or, at least, they are dissonant because one of the two people is the type of destructive and toxic individual from whom one cannot possibly expect to properly harness any kind of energy whatsoever, so our relationship (?) is what it is. She was always very resentful towards my father (a heroin addict who died a few years after I was born), towards her own family for judging her and bashing her, towards herself, and therefore towards me. She did and said things no mother should ever do or say to a child. Before conceiving me, she was pregnant at the age of 16 with a boy but her parents forced her to have an abortion and I know deep down she really actually wanted a boy. She even named one of my younger siblings after the kid she aborted.
My mom is an Aquarius(2/17/1930). She has been progressive and forward-thinking on many matters, but birth control wasn’t one of them. As a “good Catholic” in that area, she ended up having nine kids. I know she doesn’t love us all equally, but she was sure to give all of us the same standard of care in her egalitarian Aquarian way. She was annoyed with me, a serious, worrywart Capricorn, and felt more of a rapport with my Sagittarius sisters. But she has expressed admiration for my self-sufficiency (I never had to move back home, like the Sag sibs did) and I know she is proud of me.
This is the saddest thing. So many people feeling unloved by their Mothers. I guess everyone has experienced pain. I think my mother loved me. But not enough.
I remember the birth of my children being the most important thing that ever happened to me. I am lucky though to have been born at a time when there was birth control. I have always had options and not too many years ago a woman had no choice. If she became pregnant she just had a child whether she was prepared or not. So I am certain there are millions of people that are walking accidents. I am one.
I was born to teenagers. Both of them completely unprepared for me. My glorious beautiful grandmother raised me. She was a stubborn Capricorn and probably one of the best people I have ever known. She never understood my mother and her Cancer stellium or my father and his Pisces stellium. She thought they were both idiots lol ….and wasn’t afraid to say it out loud. My god I loved that woman. I still miss her every day.
My grandmother had 6 children. She lost twins at birth (both girls) and another daughter at 3 months old (SIDS) so when they dropped me in her lap she was over the moon. So…even though my Mother was off being a nut…and even though my father disappeared when I was 8 months old I feel like I got these incredible parents. 4 of them. All grandparents. My mothers mother raised me…but my fathers parents were very involved. They made sure I wanted for nothing…clothing, shoes…whatever i needed they saw to it I had because my grandmother that raised me had little money.
She spent real quality time with me. She taught me to garden, she played with me, she sang to me, she talked to me…she made me feel like I was the most important thing in her world. I am blessed to have had her.
When I get angry about my parents and believe me there is a lot to be angry about, I try to remember that I actually got the good end of the deal. I had my Capricorn grandmother fully focused on me for most of my growning up years. We were close till she passed. I had her for 35 years. She is the best friend I have ever had and typing this makes me remember it all…I can still smell her. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever known.
When she got sick at the end I crawled right into that hospital bed next to her and stayed. She has come back to me twice since she passed. Both times were at times I was in desparate need. As alone as I was when I was born …my precious angel of a grandmother took over and saw to it that I was cared for and loved. My mother knew I loved my grandmother like a mother. She didn’t mind. She has always known why.
She showed me how to love a child. Her and my 5 planets in Scorpio in the 4th house with a Cancer Asc. I was born to be a mom and I was raised by the best. This doesn’t mean that my children haven’t hated me because they have. They hated my guts when they were teenagers.
I talked to my youngest son the Gemini talking machine last night for 2 hours on the phone… every now and again he will call me and remind me that he knows I made every sacrifice to see to it that he was cared for. Last night was one of those nights. Its not easy for a Scorpio stellium to understand a Gemini with a Aqua moon and a Leo asc…. what a trip that kid was to raise … but we are close. And I think we have figured each other out.
My oldest son is a Libra. I never understood how he could be a Libra until I understood that there was more to a birth chart than just the sun. When I finally understood it and looked closer I could see why I saw so much of myself in him…its because he is standing in ~~ water ~~ he is very deep and very dark sometimes. The Gem just flies by the seat of his pants and would talk to a door knob but the Libra wants a small circle and has no desire to be around a lot of people…He has 5 planets in Pisces Scorp and Cancer with a Pisces moon (he has a gem asc and you would never know it because trust me he does not use it ever) My Gem son has a Gem stellium with Scorp and Cappy…
The reason I guess I am going on and on about this is sometimes I think birth charts just clash even if its with your child. I didn’t know this years ago but I am coming into a real understanding with my two grown brats. I can look back now and say…..oh……..that is why he always acted this way or that way. I really love how you are better able to understand people with astrology.
Last..I do love one son as much as the other. Believe it or not I get along best with the Gemini now…but when they were kids my Libra was my best pal….today he is dark and crabby and moody…he drives me up the wall. I don’t want to be around more of ~myself~ and the Gem is funny and sunny and always going 1000 miles an hour…and will see the good side and the best in most every situation. The oldest one acts like Eeyore….and people have to remember that one child may pay more attention to you than the other…you don’t favor them but they are always around more…so it probably does seem that way to the one that would rather brood in a dark room….
Bottom line. Any one touches either one of my kids and I am prepared to die for them at the drop of dime. This is not something I say to be saying it. I mean it. I love them beyond what I am probably supposed to. They can come to me for anything. I will always stop what I am doing…even if I am at work and run in their direction with whatever help I can offer…or my Scorpio boxing gloves on if they need me in that way… they are my babies for all of this lifetime. I don’t care how old they get. I will protect them fiercely.
I can’t imagine one of my kids feeling they have to write some of the painful things I read above. Hugs to every one…(i need one sometimes too) When I was handed those babies I felt like I walked into the color part of the Wizard of Oz…my life began when theirs did. Their life is my life…. and I had my sweet grandmother as my life/love guide. As shitty as things started out…its all ended up exactly as it should be.
((Scorpioandproud)) such a sweet nice story. You are such a good mother. You sons are lucky. Thank for your story…touched me 🙂 God bless you and your sons.
My sassy virgo mother loves me and i love her! :’)
Wow, I read back over something I posted here before my mother died, and the perspective has changed. Families are so weird. In the end, my Pisces mother gave us pictures and said I was the child that tested her marriage, because it was a difficult time getting me into the world. In the end, the relationship completely shifted and she was really happy when I visited, and I decided that whatever the dynamic had been, she was still my mother and I’d try to make her life as comfortable and filled with joy as I could figure out how to do. It was worth it… I looked underneath the surface and found the common ground.. what you think your parent is feeling is very complex and may not be quite on the mark.
@ chrispito … I am a Sun/Saturn, Moon/Pluto too. I was the black sheep and always felt my mother didn’t like me. I felt she favored the other three kids and I was even named after her older sister that she didn’t really like. I have struggled with this my entire life, but I have come to realize that it was in part her, and in part me. Perhaps a bit of karma left over from past lives? I was lucky–we came to be friends towards the end of her life, but I still struggle with the pain and it can spill over into my other relationships.
I too am the 4th daughter & then they gave up on a glorious son. My dad loved me despite an understandable desire for the 4th one to be a boy. Mom on the other hand was looking for a show in us kids. The first 2 were twins. They were her show only they are painfully awkward and backwards socially. The next one was all she wanted out of all of us but for some reason that pissed her off. Everytime the middle one shinned she was made fun of or punished – couldn’t have the twins out shinned. I think Della’s Capricorn moon got her through it all with minimum damage. Me – I was invisable.
I could leave it at that my mom was an Aries and I’m a Cancer. But it’s always more complex than that!
When we were close, nobody was closer nor more affectionate (Her Venus conjunct my Mars/Moon and her Jupiter opposed both) but it was difficult living with her.
And when I look at the other aspects, it’s easy to see why.
Her Sun, on my MC, squares my Mercury and opposed my Pluto (mismatched views, domineering manipulation, unwarranted paranoia about *everything* )
Her Moon/Mars conjunct my moody Sun in Cancer (she was overprotective of me but we also had frequent loud, crying fights between us and power struggles)
Her Saturn is widely opposed my Sun (divorce with my dad and she carried a perpetual and public grudge about it)
And my own Saturn square Moon says much.
She was removed from my childhood for a good chunk of it (not her fault but she didn’t call me for 4 years!!)) and when I saw her again in my adolescence, she wanted her sweet sensitive baby back, not a strong willed teenager who wasn’t as easily manipulated back. She didn’t just dislike me but actually loathed my presence and living together didn’t bode well and she initially kicked me back to my Dad a couple months later (a happy break that was!) but when I had to return to her less than a year later, life became a veritable hell and nightmare, and I had to run away home on numerous (long-standing) occasions to survive and the moment I graduated, I was gone from that place I can’t ever call “home”.
I *do* I love her and I have forgiven her entirely bc she has so many redeeming qualities to her but she’s not acting any of them out and is so very lost in many ways and is unwilling to take any responsibility as an adult for it, shoving it all on me, her only child, and anybody who has dealt with it knows how it is painstaking it is to watch somebody you love passively self-destruct before your eyes. This became evident when I tried to reconcile our relationship in our adult years and I took her under my wing and cared for her for a few years ago and took over her affairs and settled much in her life but those damn power struggles reemerged with a vengeance and it ended very badly and caused a temporary rift in my marriage bc of it. She had to leave and with it, the black cloud of her aura. ?
I haven’t seen her nor talked much to her since. It’s been at least 4, maybe 5 years. I’m very hesitant to allow her back in my life after the last havoc-wreaking episode. Perhaps this is Pluto in Cap’s influence in this regard. Both of my parents are a sore subject for me but my mom is the one that hurts the most. ?
It has always been obvious that my mother does not like me. From the way that she treated me as a child, to the way that she has treated me as an adult. I know that she loves me, in someway. However, my mother is a textbook narcissist, and as for carrying her shadow? I’ve done it all my life. I’m always the pariah. The good news is that I cut her out of my life a while ago. I don’t have time for her bullshit. And I’m much happier this way.
As for me, I do not love my children the same. I do, however, appreciate their differences and love them for them. I feel that I am close with both of my children. And I LIKE them a lot, for they have awesome personalities, quirks, & foibles. You cannot love two individuals “the same” because it just doesn’t work that way. We all have different personalities. But, I can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, I do love both of my children very very much! I’d give my life for them. ❤️
Yeah, I was told by my mother my eyes could kill. I’m a 6x Scorpio with the same colour eyes as my wild dad. Brother Gemini, Sister, mother and father Sag. Is it likely I was an ideal scapegoat?
Elsa, what you describe with your mother sounds very much like my dads family. He was the golden child – the fourth after three girls, and his dad died young. So you can imagine his mom loved him a lot. I’ve occasionally heard my aunts complain about it.
My mother left me when I was 6 ..I raised my brother..cooked cleaned made sure he got up for school dressed and ate…my father wasn’t home much working or dating….
Today I see the same image in my daughter as my mother…left me with a beautiful grandson..which I raise as my own…I guess this is my blessing in all of this..and a good one at that…he is my whole heart ❤️
Funny to see this pop back up again 3 years after I commented the first time. Boy, how things can change….I refer to having children as the great rollercoaster of life. They love you, they fuck up, they hate you, they blame you for every thing that goes wrong because it must be connected so some horrible fault in their childhood, then they love you again because you were so supportive of them…then the other shoe drops and you are an asshole again.
I dearly love both of my boys. And their are times I have no idea where they are coming from. But this I do know….adults are responsible for their own actions. I can no more blame my mother for a speeding ticket or go further …should I decide to do some unspeakable act… than the man in the moon. In fact, most times she taught me what *not* to do.
I think its RARE that a mother either dislikes or doesn’t love her child. I don’t think this is the norm. I understand there are all kinds of people but I would say for the most part, mothers LOVE their children.
You may not understand your mother, or you may disagree with the way you were raised or the type of lifestyle your parents had, but I would say mothers mostly love their kids.
I say this but still understand people do have parents that have abused them, abandoned them, sexually molested them…I get all that. I just don’t think this is the every day norm. And I had some wild (and I mean wild) parents. The older my adult kids get – the more I understand my mother and how painful it has been for her to listen to the rash of shit my sisters and I have handed her.
This I can promise you. Your own children are going to grow up and hold court! You can think you are doing everything in your power to avoid being like your own parents and love unconditionally. Still, it wont be enough for you to avoid the judge and jury trial your child is going to hold when they become an adult. Hell, they make a thousand movies about his…’Home for the Holidays’ hahaha… siblings squaring off….he was the fav…she was the fav… mom is crazy and so is dad…I don’t want to spend Christmas with them….
It all comes full circle…yes in deedy it sure does!!!!
whoooosh.
My Mom once told me that she preferred working rather than taking care of my brother and I. The thing is, she worked at a factory and was constantly changing shifts. Every week she would switch between first, second and third shift. One day should would work 8am to 4pm and then go back in at midnight and work until 8am and then go back in at 4pm. In her eyes, that was the bigger freedom.
She was miserable with my Dad and constantly talked badly about him to me for my entire life. It was his sisters fault they were even together. She’s got her story she tells herself. I’ve been working on rebuilding my relationship with him and trying to form my own view point but its heavily influenced by hers.
I remember after she got divorced, I was about 15 years old. She came home from work one day and said that so and so told her that kids often needed to go to therapy after divorce. She looked at me and said something like, “Well, you don’t need that, do you?” I was so eager to please, I didn’t want her to feel guilty, I went along with her… no, no, no…
Later on in life, she tried to blame me for not finding anyone again, because I couldn’t be trusted to stay home alone as a teenager. That was true but the thing is, somewhere long ago in her life she built walls around her so far and so high, she’ll never really let anyone in besides her sisters. She’ll always blame someone along the way for the life she lives. I see that inside myself sometimes too and I’m working to change it. It’s easier isn’t it? It’s easier to inactively blame someone rather then go inside, feel, transmute and actively change the things we don’t like? I imagine it all comes passed down from the generations before like a tragic and twisted river. Yet, isn’t that raging river something beautiful in it’s truth, in the stories she caries…
Generations move so fast, from one to the next and we’re left, lost in translation, all of us…
I think watching Full House was more poisonous than a distant mother. This fake ideal lingered in my childhood, leaving me wondering why my parents didn’t come up to my room when I cried, to talk it over. It left me yearning for something that didn’t exist, not really.
Where are these perfect families? If I REALLY stop to think about it… about all the friends I’ve ever met and their families… was there really one with no secrets? One void of some sort of dysfunction? I can’t think of one. I can think of the ones pretending better than the others…..
Humans, all of us, are dark and light in varying shades at different times in our lives.
…and we always commend and praise those who are expecting, maybe we should hold off on the congratulations till they actually raise them.
Bottom line, most humans are not fit to parent only to procreate.
My mom and I had a complicated and difficult but loving relationship. My mom had a loving but difficult relationship with her mother. I have a very close and loving but challenging relationship with my own children. It’s a cycle.
Mothering, as wonderful as it can be, also comes with a whole bag of shit and we don’t talk about it enough. There’s the pregnancy, labor, recovering physically and emotionally and mentally from all the insane hormones while a tiny adorable but also tyrannically demanding being suckles on your teats from sun up to sun down, leaving you depleted and without a social life. Then there’s the loss of sex life, financial concerns from childcare to college, constant worry over the tiny growing people for which you’re responsible, from trying to turn them into decent people while coping with ALL your own personal flaws and hurts, biases, and learned parenting skills, for better or worse. Then there’s ALL the social pressure to parent a certain way, and the stigma and judgment that follows if you don’t. God forbid if it’s on social media…
We need to expose this shadow of perfect parenting and show everybody how hard parenting is. We don’t always like our kids but we try our best to love them and care for them even when we’re having bad days. We’re only people. Broken, fallible people who have bad days.
I have very strong yet unhealthy relationship with my mother. I often envy people who do not know their parents. They are unaware of how little psychic baggage they carry. I often wish I was raised in orphanage because the perceived abandonment seems less of a nuanced psychological clusterfuck I found myself in. I’ve never heard her say “I’m sorry” in my entire life even though she uses language as a weapon almost exclusively and implies other people, including her kids, are responsible for her own choices, even if they weren’t conceived and born at that time yet.
The synastry chart reflects that toxic relationship pretty well. Her Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Leo opposes my Aqua Sun, my Venus-Mars conjunction in Pisces opposes her Sun, all within 3 degrees. Her Venus in Scorpio conjuncts my Pluto too, actually it’s the same degree!
I wish I could easily disentangle myself from her web, without guilt or remorse. I’ll give her that, she’s very good at keeping up appearances and convincing other people to yield to her. I don’t think she herself realizes how skillfully she manipulates others. I guess that’s her Libra Moon, Jupiter and Neptune.
“I don’t think she herself realizes how skillfully she manipulates others.”
Manipulators know very well what they’re doing.
The reverse is also true. A daughter is not necessarily fond of her mother. I think it is a mirror. In most cases, if a mother does not like her daughter, then vice versa as well.
Daughters can definitely not like their mother, but I don’t agree, it’s a mirror. The daughter is an independent entity. She may be at peace in ways her mother could never understand.
Yes as you say, she (the daughter) may be at peace in ways her mother could never understand. However, she has manifested her own projection in her mother, that is what I was talking about.
And surely a daughter is an independent entity, so as ‘a mother’, or anyone else.
It is very common that women of any age say ‘My mother did not like me’ ‘She abused me’ ‘I was treated badly by her’ etc etc, and I have been one of this kind of daughters for many years. However, we need to realise that this is mainly a story told by ‘a daughter’. And you know what, can you imagine how this kind of narrative is serving her? It is always easy to be at the side of victim (she was disliked for whatever the reason), because she can justify herself, so that she is, and has been always ‘right’ (and her mother was wrong.) This is a form of rejection of ‘growing up’ of the daughters’ side.
My mother loved me best of all her five children. And I think each of my siblings would say the same thing. She was tough, she was funny, she set a high bar of ethics and forgave me when (on many occasions) I failed to meet it.
She taught me how to mother and I love each of my three children best of all.
I read in my Buddhist books somewhere that in some cases, when a soul wants to incarnate they just look around for any way into incarnation. The mother may just be an incidental vehicle to get another lifetime going. No particular karma attached to the relationship…
My mother and I had a stormy time of it early on but she divorced my father very early and died very young so I was out on my own very early. My chart is full of independence and autonomy so it seems like ours was a simple contract, fulfilled early.
to me it’s rare that a mother dislikes their children. but there are “strains” and discomforts. I notice with my Taurus rising/Libra sun/Cap moon mother, she loved her nieces the most, who were Pisces suns. She said she had the hardest time with us, who were more fiery and earthy. The most difficult one she had the hardest time is with an Aries sun/Taurus moon, and weirdly the Aries sun/Taurus moon married a libra sun. *smh* we LOL at it after the fact (my mother only knows sun sign astrology. And my husband’s grandmother who is Pisces sun/Cancer moon loved all her children, Fire suns, water suns, and earth suns. who did she connect most to? hard to say. she doesn’t like to choose sides. I don’t know really, I don’t understand it all. But I do notice that Capricorn mothers really respect and admire daughters and daughter in laws who are responsible and works hard. I see this too with my Capricorn moon mother. She will put down someone who is lazy, and retires early and then chalk it up to all sun signs then later, I will remind her, ‘but what about this__ who worked his ass off helping you with the house maintenance and he is amibitious. he is this sun sign” she was shocked and I think stunned for a bit. lol she has this strange ability to keep everyone in one box once she makes a quick survey decision of the lazy butts, even if they are a few of them in that sun sign. then someone comes along and shows her something else. I try to keep telling her don’t put people in boxes.
1H Pisces Moon opposite 7H Virgo Pluto/asteroid Pallas Athene all squaring 4H Gemini Mars. I definitely had severe issues with my mother. She was hardly a cuddly type with her 9H Gemini Sun/7H Aries Moon (Moon/Mars/Uranus in Aries stellium)/Virgo ASC. Very passive aggressive. The sudden death of my father left her holding the bag. I was an easy target for emotional scapegoating since I looked and acted like him. I was lucky enough to be “adopted” by two maternal-type women in my forties. They taught me the meaning of a mother’s unconditional love.
Elsa, this was such a timely article to post. I’ve had Pluto passing through my 12th house and this is one of the personal issues that has been “exposed” during the transit and which I’ve had to deal with! No, my mother did not like me, though I am told she loved me. Most times it was difficult to feel love, especially as I got older. She was rarely there in my life when I needed her the most. She’s been deceased nearly 10 years now and it took almost 7 of those years for me to get over being angry with her…and I didn’t even realize how angry I truly was – because she left me, and dying wasn’t the first time, it was just the final time. Until this past year, I never really understood how much of a negative influence my father had been on my mother during their 40+ year relationship and the damage he had caused. He was actually the one who did not like me, because being the first-born child of a narcissist, I took my mother’s undivided attention away from him, and so I became his competition (in his sick mind) from that day of my life forward. He was a Scorpio moon, and my father never forgot or forgave either of us. He abused us in awful ways, made me his scapegoat, and felt that ostracizing his wife and children was perfectly acceptable, although little children don’t understand any of these adult games, or what “emotional abandonment” means. My mother simply followed my father’s lead (orders) whenever he wanted something because he was “the head of the house.” I was just the rebel because I didn’t believe in that father knows best BS and certainly didn’t respect a close-minded man who had no respect for my mother or my family, particularly women, in general. It wasn’t until recently that I had an experience that taught me my mother was simply acting out of self-preservation to try to “please” her husband…as strange as that sounds. She abandoned her own flesh and blood to make her spouse happy and to prevent him from hurting her or us. I’m not saying this in anger anymore. It’s just the cold hard fact which I now understand from the perspective of an abused woman. I don’t have children of my own, but I learned what a cruel husband can really do to your mind and I now have a sense of what it must have been like for my mom, because I did walk a mile I her shoes for a time, and I wouldn’t want to have done it with children. You do and say what he wants to try and keep his temper under control. Reading the comments of others here who do have children, hearing how much they love them no matter what, has given me an additional sense of peace, because although I have come to terms with my relationship with my own mother already, it just helped me feel that much better. Thank you so much for sharing this.
You’re welcome! 🙂
Wow – such an awkward topic for a most often common problem.
I grew up knowing how much my mother disliked me to the point she actually hated me & wanted me dead. Her mantra from as early as I can remember was, “If it wasn’t for you, I would never have married your father”! She always projected her anger onto me. If anything ever went wrong, I got it. Verbally, emotionally & physically (she was not adverse to using a leather strap!) To this day (she is now 91 yrs), she has never, not once, even taken responsibility for her own actions.
When my ex walked out the first time in 1990, she phoned me telling me, “I never deserved him. He was too good for me. I was a bad mother. yada yada . . .” (She lived on the other side of Australia & had only met my ex twice; at my wedding & for a week after our child was born with a physical disability when she decided to come for a visit.) Fortunately for me, I had a sister-in-law who would not let me hang up her call just after mother-dearest had rung & got my mother-in-law to come around to my house. This was my own mother trying to push my buttons to end my life.
Second time he walked out some 23 years later, my own mother did exactly the same thing again. As did he. Project their anger onto me rather than take responsibility for their own actions.
What astrology has taught me regarding her: mother-dearest natal Mars is 15* Cancer conjunct my natal Sun. My natal Mars is in house 10 conjunct Pluto & MC. I have learnt she tried twice to abort me before I was born. If she could kill me, she would have & would still try to if she could.
Since her phone call to me in April 2010 which my kids clearly overheard, to this day, I have pulled the plug on that relationship. I do not need such toxicity in my life.
As to my own kids? They are my friends. We talk, share, love, laugh & live a meaningful life.
Gee whiz – I wrote that comment 3 yrs before she died & it is still valid.
Immediately after my ex-husband walked out abruptly for the second time, I got myself in front of a clinical psychologist as I knew I needed help. I had 3 kids going into young adulthood & I needed to be a parent first. I spent the next 8 yrs unpacking the damage from my ex-husband, my mother & my brother – so much betrayal & projected mis-directed hate/anger. I started off with visits 3x per week, twice per week, then weekly, fortnightly & monthly for the entire 8 yrs. The clinical psych told me in the October that I had all the ‘tools’ I needed to cope & did not need to see her anymore, then 2 weeks later, mother died. Yes, I did cope very well thanks to that wonderful person.
After being told on the phone of mother’s death, my brother then took great delight telling me that I “was not to be told” & he was getting everything from her will! (Did I want anything? Nope.) Needless to say, I have closed that door firmly now. It will not be reopened.
My narcissistic mother emotionally/financially abused me non-stop all my life (and she’s still trying but I’ve cut her off). One of my sisters was the “golden child”, but when she found out that our mother had committed fraud against her too (and not admitting it or showing any regret!), she cut her off too.
I have many friends with abusive parents. One of them told me that many people say to her the cliche: “I’m sure your parents loved you in their own way”. She has found an excellent reply: “There is only ONE way”.
I agree with that. Of course the manifestations of love can differ greatly. However, when someone loves you, you just know. Equally when someone doesn’t.
Pretty strange, I was thinking about this subject just a few days ago…
My mother didn’t actively dislike me, but I think she just didn’t know how to be “motherly”. Her own mother was very hard. She preferred her eldest child (a son), was hard with the second (my aunt) and I’m afraid that my mother was an unwanted child because she arrived late in her life.
I also think both my brother and I were unwanted! Conctraception wasn’t very good in those days (yes, I know, abstinence exists, but accidents happen).
Anyway, it seems the problem was not disliking me, specifically (although she did prefer my brother), just disliking being a mother. All in all our relationship just feels lile a missed meeting, a near-miss or something like that. I wasn’t comfortable with her and I think she was comfortable with me. I think I was afraid of her, and slightly fascinated – who was this strange and unpredicatble person???
I realize things now that I couldn’t integrate when I was younger. She was very difficult with everyone, so this did not help with trying to understand her – mostly I tried to avoid her.
I have Saturn, Sun and Pluto opposite my Moon. She had a Pluto-Moon opposition too. Astrology has helped to try to understand some things about her.
She is no longer alive, but I think of her very often. Now it mainly makes me sad that the whole thing between us was so botchzd up. Can’t be fixed. But she did have kind and thoughtful intentions sometimes. This especially makes me sad. She was trying to be kind, but didn’t always know how to do it.
My very driven, hard-charging Capricorn sun Scorpio rising mother had no use for me, her Sagittarius sun Scorpio moon daughter. I did not serve her purposes and she resented being a mother unless I was momentarily useful.
This is chilling… my narcissistic mother is also Capricorn with Scorpio asc (and Mars in her first house). I wonder if it’s a form of ‘good’ luck that you didn’t serve her purposes. Better to have such people’s attention away from you.
Well, my lack of ability to consistently meet her needs led to her focusing a great deal of disgusted attention on me. But at least I didn’t waste too much energy trying to please her. The problem was that I existed at all.
My mother made mira hindley seem sober. She put the mental in fundermental. She was the most angry person you could meet pretty much from the start. Not that she met many people – just me. Highlights are, stubbing a cigarette out on my arm, holding me down on the floor while she whacked my head with a shoe with a heal using the heal part of course, sticking my head through a window, trying to suffocate me twice, slapping me almost all the time, constantly shouting at me or just constantly shouting. She thew a knife at me once, it missed but left a hole in the wall, which puzzled the landlord. Her excuse for it all on those rare occasions when the authorities turned up was that either I was a naughty boy, or I had something wrong with me, or both. She was good with authority figures – she could convince them of anything. Play on their naivety. She had a social worker convinced that I was making more of it than what it was. In the end of course as time went on, she became worse and found it more difficult to conceal. So I was placed in childrens homes until I was 17. But I did meet her again by accident. She took me around to her place. She lived in one room. She had stripped the walls of the wallpaper, and pulled the carpet up. It was strange because apart from that I still felt completely cramped by her. Some months later we met again. This time she ran behind a truck to dodge me. From these meetings I found that my view of her as a child was perhaps completely unjustified. I did not see how gone she was when I was a child. She died one month after I left that town.
You can make of what you will of this next part. About a year ago I was waking in the morning. But I was awaking to the sound of a woman sobbing and trying to talk at the same time, at the side of my bed. Not a word could be understood. Too much information perhaps.
@procreator, that’s awful what happened to you. sorry to hear that. I didn’t even know who Mira Hindley was so I also looked her up.
I was just thinking about the children and their mothers especially daughters/mothers, and was watching Queen Elizabeth’s story on Netflix, “Crown”, and when the queen said to her husband about little Charles, “we have a son and heir” …it occurred to me that she hadn’t known then that Prince Charles would also disappoint her. We just don’t always do the “right” thing for what they would like. Even if it’s in a family with no abuse at all. But about how proper and how you should grow up. And falling in love with wrong people are what is wrong. But the heart only wants what the heart wants.
What I did not include was the otherside that was just as bad. I had to go to school. And for someone who is always the new kid and who looks different anyway… I was glad that school ended. Basically I went home and got battered then went to school and got battered. The only escape was in the evenings in the summer, and school holidays, that I would spend out of the home, in the park or amusement arcades. I swapped school 22 times, and lived in many places in this country.
ERRATUM (or Freudian slip?)
I wrote “I wasn’t comfortable with her and I think she was comfortable with me.”
I meant to write : I wasn’t comfortable with her and I think she WASN’T comfortable with me.
Yes, clearly a very uncomfortable relationship, on both sides.
Sorry, had to correct this to be clear.
I know with my mom, I never questioned her love, though at times she was vicious and narcissitic towards me. I know this sounds a bit crazy. But I also know that she lost her mother at a young age in a circumstance that left her feeling quilty, and as I grew up realized she was projecting self-hatred onto me sometimes. I had compassion for her. We also had wonderful times together and she really did try hard to make me happy! So though I felt like she did not like me at times, I didn’t take it personally as I grew up. Astrologically, she had a Scorpio Moon in the 12th house (and it was in MY 12th as well).