When my daughter was born I could feel that the most precious gift came into my life.
I could feel her beauty and I also felt that her being my daughter was and would be an amazing support in my life. Me then, a person with no trust, started to develop trust that there must be something good about me – otherwise she, this beautiful angel, would not have been born as my daughter.
When I held her for the first time, I could feel that she is just her own being. She was and is not mine, not MY daughter in the way I thought it would be. That was a strange and kind of shocking thing to feel. Not what I was used to, and not at all what I had expected – which was to hold a baby I could bond with in and through my emotions, feeling her close in that way.
For the world we had a great relationship, we almost never fought in all the 20+ years. We had fun together. But the mother-daughter relationship I had with my daughter often became about my needs anyway and thus I did everything for her, so she would love me, stay with me and never leave me. So what I did for her was not from true love but from my need that demanded of her to fill the emptiness I was feeling inside.
Her love I used for filling the lack of love in me and I did the same with friends and partners and with everything I did for people…. just to fill my own emptiness.
Letting go of the Cords Between Mother and Daughter
Over time I started to understand that there is another way…. it was not easy, but I began to unlock from my daughter. I realised that our relationship had been largely based on need and control, and that for it to be based on true love, that I had to let her go, I had to break the cord.
I had to find my way to reconnect with my own joy and beauty.
When I was introduced to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I learned the Gentle Breath Meditation: this very simple exercise was a huge tool for me and I did this meditation a few times every day. I started to feel my connection to my body instead of being always in my head. Then I deepened this new experience with Esoteric Yoga, an esoteric healing modality, and became more friends with my own body, the connection within me. I also started to meet great loving people who supported me in this re-discovery of who I am. It was the magnetic pull from deep within me that asked for more truth in my life. Those people inspired me by their reflection of truth and love so that I became more aware of my deeply ingrained patterns which were keeping me away from loving me. This enabled me to let go more and more of the old ways.
And then life made it simple for me when my daughter decided to travel overseas for a year. When she left there was no other choice than to feel more of the hidden patterns that came to the surface. I would walk outside and feel the joy that finally my life was about me again, not about caring for a child. I could also feel that I had been manipulating her with emotions to keep her close, so that she would need me. I did that by ‘taking care of her very well’ – I did everything for her. I took care much better of her than of myself, with clothes, money and everything. Not from love, but because she would then like to be with me and not leave me. I could clearly feel that holding onto her like this was so poisoning for our relationship. Deep painful feelings came to the surface.
Building a Mother-Daughter Relationship – Based on True Love
Since that time we have been building a true relationship of love. We are friends, very good friends; she is my best friend. We share, we cry, we laugh, we are true together. We don’t need each other, but we love being together. Together, we both feel blessed. It is not about my daughter filling my emptiness anymore because I started to be full in my body, feeling my own love.
My daughter and I are now very supportive of each other when confronted with the challenges of life and we keep working on the small things that are left between us, where we keep each other in comfort or dependency patterns. We know now that that is not love and we observe, nominate and let go of these cords as soon as we become aware of them.
We can now sit together and look at each other, and we enjoy so much looking in each other’s eyes, we then feel true intimacy. Sometimes there is a little shyness, but mostly there is a big smile when looking deeply in each other’s eyes, sharing the beauty we are and reflecting that to each other. And I can feel my love now in me and express that deep sweet love to her.
What I Learnt from our Mother-Daughter Relationship
I saw and learned that …
- It is all about how much I TRULY love me and that this level of love will then be there for all others equally
- There is no truth in loving one person more than another in life, so in truth I cannot love my daughter more than anyone else
- It is impossible to say, “I love my daughter” if in the same moment I don’t feel the love for my neighbour, for example
- Love is love, it is how much I let it out
- Love is there for all and it is the same, no conditions, nothing to get back or out of it
- The moment I feel more love towards one person than another, I know now the way to go is to reconnect back to the love within.
And our love is building every day and our mother-daughter relationship is deepening the more I become honest about how I truly feel in my body and take care of me in a way that supports me.
So, for example, when I feel not connected with me in my heart I sometimes go for a walk or clean or organise my house. The movement of my body, my feet and hands are then helping me to feel present again in my body. Then I deepen this feeling by doing everything very gently so that it is confirming me, my beauty within. And the more I take care of myself the more my daughter opens up like a flower, because she feels that all her beauty is welcome too.
And that is what we as parents, mothers and fathers alike, can all do … being truly open to all the beauty and true expression that come from a child when they are being met for who they are. It feels amazing.
My daughter is not a child anymore, she is now a young beautiful woman and she is for me an inspiration to be all of the woman I am.
I am truly blessed to have her so close…. my daughter… but not truly mine.
I would like to express my thanks for the inspiration to turn towards true love, which includes: My daughter, for being amazing; Chris James (Sounds Wonderful) whose heavenly music helped me to learn to surrender to my body; Serge Benhayon for being there and bringing the amazing teachings of true wisdom and the esoteric healing modalities to humanity; The Benhayon family and Universal Medicine for their never ending support to all who are ready to re-discover their own love and beauty; All people for who they are and what they reflect to me to become more aware of me.
By Sylvia Brinkman, Nederlands
Published with permission of my daughter.
Further Reading:
Mothering – The Essence Of True Nurturing
Self-Love & Mothering: Stopping to Take Responsibility
Being a Good Mother
Getting along 24-7 in Relationships
773 Comments
Thanks Sylvia, great to read this again and consider where my own emptiness is playing out in relationship dynamics, and how I can make changes to bring out the essence of my love.
I have a friend whose mother was intensely jealous of her as a child and this has affected her – she is now in her forties still struggling with doubt and self worth issues. It’s incredible how much we actually damage our children by projecting onto them our needs, our own hurts which they absorb and carry them around as excess baggage in their lives. Even worse it colours their perception of life and so the rotten cycle continues. Which is why these blogs are so relevant because it give everyone an opportunity to discuss what’s really going on with an opportunity to change what isn’t working.
Letting go those ingrained cords is not an easy thing to do, but love is unconditionally there to make it happen, allowing ourselves to feel the difference between attachment and connection. Walking the path from one to another evolves us and helps us to truly understand what love is.
It is true Sylvia, when I let go of ‘being a mother’ to our children our relationships became much deeper and true.
Thank you Sylvia, as our inner-understanding of how we re-connect to Love deepens then all our relationships develop a way of letting another learn their own lessons in life and all we have to do is reflect the Love we are and thus inspire.
‘But the mother-daughter relationship I had with my daughter often became about my needs anyway and thus I did everything for her, so she would love me, stay with me and never leave me. So what I did for her was not from true love but from my need that demanded of her to fill the emptiness I was feeling inside.’ This is so beautifully honest. I am not sure how many mothers really admit to their needs around their children or want to know how this caps them and their children.
“We don’t need each other, but we love being together.” Neediness pushes people away and true love pulls us together.
You two look amazing, what a gorgeous inspiration to all you meet, relationships are so much more then our labels – mother/daughter/ father/ Wife – we are multidimensional and when we truly connect with another we get to see this.
We get some great learnings and awarenesses from life if we remain open to receiving them, ‘It is all about how much I TRULY love me and that this level of love will then be there for all others equally’.
What great realisations you came to, only once we are aware of the patterns that run us can we choose to let them go, ‘what I did for her was not from true love but from my need that demanded of her to fill the emptiness I was feeling inside.
Her love I used for filling the lack of love in me and I did the same with friends and partners and with everything I did for people…. just to fill my own emptiness.’
Great to read this blog as I lift the lid on the neediness in my relationships. Each one I uncover I find the answer is the same, to connect to myself deeply first.
‘I took care much better of her than of myself, with clothes, money and everything. Not from love, but because she would then like to be with me and not leave me.’ How often do we do this with the people closest to us, but also with other things that we’ve invested a lot of time and energy in and are wanting something out of, be it money, status, recognition or security. It’s paradoxical, this level of control and holding on, because it gets in the way of what we all want: deeper and more connected relationships.
I think our relationships change the most when we start to understand our mothers/sisters/daughters are not just our family but also people on their own evolutionary path, they have their own things to deal with, to heal, for work on and to learn. It takes away the personal aspect and any sense of ownership or right and allows us to actually support each other rather than foster blame, resentment and frustration at what others may choose.
When a relationship is built on true love rather then need the heavens rejoice.
So true.. when there is need, there is a tightness and control, a holding on. When we let go of that it feels very spacious and light – and those qualities imbue our relationships.
Lately I was letting go more hidden cords. I could feel how I wanted to take care of her so well all my life because she is so beautiful and I feel truly blessed to have her in my life. But in this taking care was a protection. I wanted to protect her against the bad things of life. This is not a healthy thing as we all need to discover our ways.
In a deeper way I was still carrying this with me.
A great learning for next life if I will have children to give them the space to breath and fall sometimes.
This way we get very wise and undependent.
I agree with you Sylvia that we do not want to see our children fall or fail. What I have not understood but am bringing more focus to, is that we have no idea what our children’s past lives were and so what is it in this reincarnation they are here to learn. So many of us just think in terms of your born, get educated to get a good job which provides security, you marry, have kids, grow old and die. But this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what we are all here to do and bring to ourselves and each other. We are here to evolve back to where we come from which is not this plane of life at all.
There is such a joy when we can share ourselves with another with no need between us, simply the love that we are meeting and making another point of light.
Imposing our needs on another which I have done plenty of including with my daughter is challenging to be on the receiving end of as it also doesn’t allow space for the other person to become aware of their own issues so we end up doing the ‘neediness dance’ where both parties are focussed on getting their needs met above what it needed to develop the relationship in a true way.
I love the fact that when your daughter left you were given the opportunity to feel how much you had used her to fill the emptiness in your life. This is such a well trodden path and one we do not discuss because we would then have to address the fact we have never been taught or encouraged to love ourselves, to nurture ourselves in order to love and nurture others.
Yes having children (or pets/projects etc) can be a huge distraction from loving and nurturing ourselves to the max so that we then have more to share with others.
This bundle of love comes into our lives and we remember without a doubt the love we come from. Yet these babies are not there to fill our needs, and replace the love we are not feeling in other areas of our lives.
I love feeling the commitment and dedication you have now established within yourself and you relationship with your daughter. It shows accountability is just as important in relationships as it is accounting 🙂
When we break old dysfunctional patterns within a relationship it is very freeing and joyful.
This is a great share as so many mother daughter relationships are based on a need, super lovely to see it expressed from a place of evolution instead.
It is the equallness of us all that we should embrace. Being a parent, being a child, being an aunt, uncle, sister, brother or a stranger on the street etc.. We have the chance to re-imprint all our relationship in all places where we have allowed any thing less to occur and walked from unequallness.
Beautifully said Danna.
Parenting has been taken to a whole new level thanks to the true-relationship we all have within society. So being part of a true-community, which is what Serge Benhayon has shared, then we are empowering the children and the community.
We’ve been fooled into thinking parenting is something it’s not. You are absolutely right Sylvia, the truth is your daughter was not ‘yours’ at all but just another soul and part of the all. If we step away from ownership and ego we get to see people’s true beauty and relate as human beings not roles.
We are the guardians but are not the holders of another’s WILL. This responsibility lies with each individual and the choice to live the way they choose.
This is a huge ill-consciousness that corrupts the true purpose of our relationship with our children, by thinking we have ownership of our children as such the right to treat them in a certain imposing way, based on what our needs are. Whereas, simply fostering their inner qualities in order for them to learn how to deepen their relationship with their essence so they live this connection naturally with authority, they are empowered to express their wisdom. This is our responsibility, all of which is possible through the quality in which we know and live in connection to our true selves.
I’m pondering on your words Sylvia “Me then, a person with no trust, started to develop trust that there must be something good about me – otherwise she, this beautiful angel, would not have been born as my daughter.” And, to think less of yourself in a particular way, you must know the truth of that way i.e. You deeply trust. How can you arrive at ‘a mark’ without knowing what it is you’re marking?
“The mother-daughter relationship I had with my daughter often became about my needs anyway and thus I did everything for her, so she would love me, stay with me and never leave me. So what I did for her was not from true love but from my need that demanded of her to fill the emptiness I was feeling inside”. I love the honesty and awareness that you are expressing here Sylvia, as this is what motivates many mothers to ‘love’ their children. Love doesn’t need anything or have any fear of it being lost. Being able to love this way is a great gift to our kids, to have the space and gentle holding as they explore being themselves in life.
This is great to share as I think many people can probably relate to aspects of this in their family relationships. It is great to open up the conversation and support others to reflect on this and find a more loving way of being with each other.
I say time for a part 2 of our relation. It clearly shows that relations are ment for a forever evolution to return to who we are. There are so many more layers to uncover. Our relation becomes more clear everyday. And the joy is very much there. It is two women who share the same purpose in life. To make life about service for the all and to let go all what is in between. What a gift.
I love how you share it is a constant unfolding. It is not a tick box exercise in a relationship and loving ourselves can only deepen and build every relationship we have in our lives.
It is refreshingly honest how you describe doing everything for your daughter in the name of love but actually wanting something back in return. I too have at times become aware that so called loving actions of mine had some hidden agenda and therefore are not love at all because of course love has absolutely no need or imposition. It is very exposing to see this but also very healing as it opens the way for us to connect to true love.
Yes, this hidden agenda is poisonous to the relationship, so great to expose it and let it go as you did Sylvia, ‘I could also feel that I had been manipulating her with emotions to keep her close, so that she would need me. I did that by ‘taking care of her very well’ – I did everything for her. I took care much better of her than of myself, with clothes, money and everything. Not from love, but because she would then like to be with me and not leave me.’
Yes and it is especially hard to escape from prison if we don’t realise we are in it in the first place or are under the illusion that it is a palace!