Introduction to "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?"

Dr. McBride states that "our relationship with Mother is birthed simultaneously with our entry into the world." In my case this is not quite right, as I was adopted by my narcissistic Mother, she didn't give birth to me. I had been told I was adopted along with the 3 Little Pigs, so this wasn't a sudden revelation or anything. The first story about my life told by my mother was the day I was adopted. She had her family for company as my cousin was performing with the National Ballet at the CNE in Toronto. Apparently the Children's Aid just called her up and asked her if she wanted another child (they had adopted my non-biological brother a few years earlier). That would have been late August and I had been born in January, so I was already 7 months old, having been in a foster home until that time. At that time the Children's Aid Society would hold onto children for at least several months to make sure they weren't mentally deficient or unhealthy.

The whole family was there so she kind of had to say yes, but she didn't change her plans and went to the ballet as planned, leaving me with my grandmother (her mother) that day. I had apparently not been treated particularly well in the foster home, which was taking care of many other babies besides, so at 7 months of age I couldn't even sit up. I was used to lying on my back and being tossed a bottle a few times a day, with a diaper changed less than that. My rear was apparently like raw hamburger, yet my new mother felt no instinct to say with me that first day.

I can empathise with Dr. McBride's comment of having unexpected tears streaming down her face at reading about the mother-daughter bond, as I could also not "recall attachment, closeness,...the solace of her rocking, holding and comforting,....".

I also knew this was not natural, but had no idea why. Our family dynamic was more a pretense. We actually didn't have much to do with friends or neighbours, perhaps because it was too hard to keep up appearances. I spent most of my childhood playing by myself in an imaginary world.

Dr. McBride discusses her feelings of thinking perhaps she was crazy or delusional, or just having a poor memory. She couldn't find a book that explained this phenomenon of feeling unmothered or that some mothers were not maternal. Nor could she find any books on the conflicting feelings...good girls aren't supposed to hate their mothers. "Motherhood is a sacred institution in most cultures and therefore is generally not discussed in a negative light".

I only began to speak truthfully about my own mother after realizing what she was (a narcissist) and that pretending to my children that "grandma is just like that", was hurtful to them. She would, and did, damage their self-esteems as well my own. Grandma has a major problem. It was extremely hard to pick out a birthday or Christmas card for her, and Mothers Day was almost impossible. All the mushy, lovey cards not only didn't apply to her, she would have criticized and mocked them even if we had given them to her pretending they did.

Dr. McBride explains reading books that discuss the mother-daughter relationship, it's complexity, how it is rife with conflict and ambivalence, but like her, I felt "a void, a lack of empathy and interest, and a lack of feeling loved". I felt I was taking up space, making a mess, wanting things, and I deserved none of it. Writing the book was a culmination of years of research as well as a soul journey going back to her childhood when, as a little girl, she knew that something was wrong. She felt the lack of nurturing was not normal, but didn't know why. She goes on to explain that the book is not written as a way to blame your mother. It is not supposed to be a journey of projected anger, resentment, or rage, but one of understanding.

When I read this I had a very hard time with it, as I didn't have much but resentment or rage for my mother. She talks about healing ourselves with love and forgiveness for ourselves and our mothers. We are accountable for our own lives and feelings and we have to understand what we experienced as the daughters of narcissistic mothers, and then we have to move forward. "Without understanding our mothers and what their narcissism did to us, it is impossible to recover. We have been taught to repress and deny, but we have to face the truth of our experiences - that our longing for a maternal warmth and mothering is not going to be fulfilled and our wishing and hoping that things will be different are not going to change things."

This was probably the hardest thing for me to accept as an adult. My mother was never going to change and never be the mother I wanted her to be. If I pushed her to try to get her to act motherly, to act lovingly, she would let me down every time.

We will continue with the Introduction to the book in the next post.

Moose Hunting Resolutions

1) Write Stuff

2) Lose Weight

3) Eat Better

4) Tone Up (more exercise)

5) Quit Procrastinating

I'll have to expand on and figure out exactly how I'm going to do those things, but at least I have a place to start. Moose hunting is a great place to make resolutions as you have lots of time to sit and think as you remain perfectly still, waiting for a moose to appear. There is actually nothing else "to" do but think. Much better than those resolutions made in a tipsy state New Years' Eve, which don't tend to last until dawn.

To hunt pretty much anything, you go out in the wilderness, either well before it gets light and wait for the sun to come up, or in the afternoon, and wait for the sun to go down.

There is an eerie quality about those times, when everything looks like a moose or a bear in the semi-darkness. There are lots of weird noises at those times: Hoots, screeches, scratchy noises, yips, leaves rustling or crunching, branches cracking. Keeps your blood flowing. There are lots of recognisable noises as well: planes, trucks, logging machines, 4 wheelers, chain saws, shots in the distance, shots much closer. The forest can be a very noisy place.

I didn't have to write down quitting smoking, as we quit smoking (again), September 3 of this year. Myself and smoking (cigarettes & otherwise) has a rather long history, going to back to the first cigarette my Mother stuck in my mouth at age 13. I'll go into that later, as we go through the book together, which it is getting time to do.

I thought that I would share a bit of who I am with you before we got going and will continue to do so as we go along.

This week, my 20 year old son is home from college for reading week. He's not doing much reading. I have hardly seen him as he is just waking up when I am finishing my grooming schedule and crawling in the tub at about 4. He doesn't go to bed until 3:30 am so I guess it makes sense. When he does get up, he eats dinner and then plays "rock band" with his 27 year old brother, who just moved back home 6 weeks ago after a 5 month wayward affair with a 40 year old in Toronto. They think I'm weird to be in bed by 9:00 pm, but I'm up at 5:30 am, so we are just on different shifts apparently.

The next post will be a review of the Introduction of the book "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?".

No Moose, No Foul

Well, we didn't get a moose. We didn't even see a moose except on the way up (10 hour drive north), but we did see a lynx, lots of bear poop, various kinds of squirrels, a more-or-less tame fox, 2 varieties of grouse, blue jays, whiskey jacks (like a grey jay), a golden eagle, martins, raccoons, ravens the size of turkeys, an owl, and I'm sure a few other creatures I'm not remembering right now.

I have attached a photo of one of the areas we go to hunt moose, just to give you an idea. These are logging areas and look somewhat like a nuclear bomb has completely devastated the area, leaving only a few scraggly trees. This is a first year "cut". They come in with humungeous machines, kind of like a huge bulldozer with gigantic teeth, that clips off trees at the base, picking them up like twigs, stripping them of all the branches, then cutting them in 12 or 16 foot lengths, depositing this rough lumber in large piles, which are later picked up by big logging trucks. Surprisingly, the moose just love these areas and will follow these big machines around, waiting for the free lunch. Moose eat leaves, not grass like a deer or a cow. For them, the freshly cut trees are a delicious buffet and it is not uncommon to see moose tracks all around these huge machines, where they are parked for the night. We saw lots of moose tracks, laid down by the moose wandering around at night, but unfortunately for us, but fortunately for them, we were tracking very smart moose, who seemed to know to stay in the woods during the day. You are not allowed to hunt at night, only in the daylight. While the "cut" looks rather ugly and horrible after it is cut the first year, the second year the small poplars and other trees try to regrow along with an abundance of blueberry plants, making another bounty for the moose and bear. Somewhere in the 3rd to 5th year, all the dead wood and scraps are piled up and burned and the next year, the area is replanted with new trees to be harvested 40 years in the future and the whole process starts over. They do leave the odd rare protected species of tree and we saw huge gnarled looking pines standing like windblown guardians in these otherwise stripped areas. They also don't take the trees from around the lakes and ponds, to leave a natural habitat and hiding place for the wildlife.

While commercials will tell you to recycle paper to save the caribou, moose, bears, etc., they actually thrive in these areas where commercial logging takes place. I was shocked the first time I saw one of these "cuts", but as I saw the various years of progress, up to the areas replanted 20 years ago, it seemed a pretty responsible way to harvest this natural resource as ugly as it may look for a few years.

We were 25 km on a logging road, or about 15 miles from the nearest highway, which is 2 hours from the nearest grocery store or coffee shop on a 2 lane highway. I don't know how people can live here, and very few people do. There are no stores, no bowling alleys, no bingo's, no anything for miles and miles but trees. We had everything from heavy frost to26 degrees Celsius (that would be about 80 F) in the one week.

If you go to an area like this, not that far north of civilization, you realize just how empty this country really is and how much of it is owned by the "crown", or the government. The land is rented to the lumber companies for logging rights, but otherwise anyone can camp, hunt, or do whatever else they might like to do. No private property signs, no fences, and more 4 wheeler trails than roads. A land where a can of spagettio's will cost you $4.59, if you can find one.

Self-sufficiency

I can frequently out-shoot at least the young hunters, which gives me some internal praise. As daughters of narcissists, we need to learn to get validation from sources other than people. We need internal validation. We need to do things we can feel proud of even if other people tell us we're crazy for trying to do it.

I have no idea why, when I was raised in suburbia, I would have the urge to move to the country and raise my own food. It is a matter of self-sufficiency I suppose, seeing as I figured out pretty early that I couldn't depend on anyone else to take care of me. I didn't want to have to rely on anyone else to take care of me, they always let me down, so I learned to change electrical outlets, grow and freeze vegetables and make jam and pickles. I actually can't stand to have anything from the garden go to waste. I don't have a lot of time to do this Suzie homemaker stuff, so I have learned how much to plant and what I can actually use.

I had thought I wanted to have a hobby farm and raise my own meat, but reality and time constraints brought me to my senses. I only have an acre and a half of land, which really isn't enough to grow an animal. I tried rabbits, but spent more time chasing them around when they got out of their pen. I knew that large animals probably weren't a good idea when I bought a pony for the kids when they were young. Electrical fencing was the only thing I could afford, and the pony, being lonely, would close it's eyes, brace itself and race the fence. I would get a call from someone miles away asking me if I'd lost a pony. Poor Misty would be off somewhere visiting another horse. I felt sorry for her so I sold her to someone who raised POA ponies and would give her the time, space and equine company she seemed to crave. The kids didn't seem to care less. I learned to run a Skil saw, hammer a nail, put down flooring, hang drywall, and the largest project we completed was putting in a new septic system. My older son Chris and I did that. The toilets were backing up into the lawn so I made some calls and got some prices. There was no way I could afford $14,000 to replace the septic system. I started out from the house with a trowel, where I saw where the plumbing pipes left the house in the basement. I found the septic tank, and then kept digging. Beyond the septic tank, which is pretty much just a large cement holding tank, I dug with my trowel looking for the septic system. I found a few broken tiles, but there was really nothing else there. I had hoped for a plugged pipe somewhere, but there were no pipes. Either there had never been a tile bed, or it had disintegrated away in the 100 some-odd years the house has been standing here. The shovel seemed like a good idea at that point, but it was too strenuous and time consuming, so we rented a mini-hoe from the local Rent-All. Surprisingly, they will allow anyone to have one of those for the weekend. They don't seem to think they need to tell you how to use it, they just drop it off and away you go. My son Chris was about 13 at the time, so he was able to manage it quite nicely after playing with it for a few minutes. Like wanting the window seat in an airplane, we took turns running the mini hoe and dug up the front lawn. It was fun! I had read a few articles on how to put in a tile bed and it didn't seem too difficult, certainly not $14,000 worth of work or materials. We dug trenches, put down straw, newspaper and gravel, then the actual tiles, which are just plastic pipes with holes in them, then more stuff on top. It cost us $1300 all together, including all the materials, including a dump truck full of soil to go back on the top of the lawn. My son is now 27 and the septic system has never given us a bit of trouble in all that time, not even needing the septic tank pumped out.

We were pretty handy at running the little back hoe by that time, so we took out a bunch of stumps while we were at it. There were a few tricky moments when a stump and the mini-hoe were about equal in weight and it looked like the stump might win, but we managed to keep the mini-hoe out of the hole under the huge roots and eventually won the battle.

I am back from my trip on October 17, hopefully with some meat for the freezer. It will all be packaged in little brown paper and labelled as to the cut, so it becomes much more civilized once it has been to the butcher. I will start going through the book then, the one this blog is about. I don't think it is such a bad idea in the meantime for you to get an idea of who I am, or perhaps I should say, who I have become.

Shining Tree

By the time this post is published, I will be in Shining Tree, Ontario, which is about half way between Sudbury & Timmins. What am I doing way up there?....Moose hunting. It may seem strange for a female to want to hunt, but it was something I became interested in over 10 years ago. Before that, I had tried keeping rabbits, but I had to have someone else butcher them for me. Don't get me wrong, I consider myself a very feminine female, not masculine in the least.

Now, I like to hunt for deer, moose, geese, ducks, wild turkey and yes, I eat every morsel. I had always like to fish. It was a way as a kid I could get away from the house and be off doing something constructive that wouldn't draw attention. Like reading, fishing was an activity that got me away from the criticism and having to listen to my mother complaining about her life or her health. When I brought home fish, which I would also have to clean myself, my Mother would be quite happy to cook them and declare how delicious they were, always an added bonus to the daughter of a narcissist. Pats on the back don't come along very often.

I have no idea why I had the urge to hunt, why it doesn't bother me to kill something for food. Perhaps my realism in living in the country and knowing how animals are raised and how their quick demise in their natural habitat is so much more humane and logical than the fate suffered by beef steers. Their fate is to be chased, herded and prodded into trucks for a trip of hours or days to the stockyard, where they might sit for more hours or days smelling death and fear until their turn to be herded and prodded into the killing room. Sounds horrible I know. It is. Also quite real. It is how we eat meat. I won't even go into chickens and how we get the milk we put in our coffee or on our cereal. The most humane thing to do would be to shoot an unsuspecting steer as it happily munches on flowers in its field, but this is not cost effective so it's not done.

I am getting off topic. I decided I would like to hunt so I took a course and got my license to be able to hunt. Anyone can take the course and as long as you don't have a criminal record, you can get a license to carry a gun and purchase the various "tags" required to hunt deer, geese, moose, etc. I got the highest mark in my class! Depending on where you live you contact the Ministry of Natural Resources or Fish and Wildlife. Was I accepted by other hunters as a someone serious about what I was doing? No, not initially. This didn't bother me, as I was used to being pushed out of my comfort zone as a kid. Whether it was selling light-bulbs or chocolate bars door to door to raise money for my brothers hockey team, or making phone calls for my father pretending to be his secretary when he was secretly working from home, I was made to do a lot of things that I didn't want to do, and saying "no" was absolutely never an option. I don't mind public speaking or things like that and the adrenaline rush of pushing past the fear of doing the unknown is rather thrilling.

What would you do if you weren't terrified of doing it?

Feminine Spirit

As daughters of narcissistic Mothers, we were never encouraged to be friends with other woman. We may have actually been discouraged from forming close friendships with other woman, or we may have shied away from being true authentic friends with *anyone* because of our dysfunctional homes. We had to keep our hatred for our Mothers secret and frequently many other things about our home-life as well. My Mother always told me she didn't want to be friends with other woman. She didn't trust them. In truth, they didn't want to be friends with her. She flirted with their husbands, she had to be better than them in everything, she put them down, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. She always had a fascinating story to tell which was so much more exciting than their stories about their mundane housewife lives, even though that is exactly what she was. I didn't know for years that most of her fascinating stores were lies, or stories about things that had actually happened to someone else. I

t has only been in the last couple of years that I could entertain the idea of being friends, true friends, with woman. It took me probably a year to open up to them and to take the risk of telling them my story. When I did, I was embraced with love, compassion, and care, which was actually very surprising to me. It is a completely different kind of relationship then I ever had with a man. Men and woman think so differently about things that telling a man, even one who loves you, about the way you *feel*, especially about your relationship with your Mother, just isn't the same. They don't understand.

I am not big on those email "pass this along" messages, but I like this one and thought I'd share.

Time passes,
Life happens,
Distance separates,
Children grow up,
Jobs come and go,
Love waxes and wanes,
Men don't do what they're supposed to,
Hearts break,
Parents die,
Colleagues forget favours,
Careers end,
But.....
Sisters are there
no matter how much time and
how many miles are between you.
A girl friend is never farther away
than needing her can reach.
When you have to walk that lonely valley and you
have to walk it yourself, the woman in your life
will be on the valley's rim, cheering you on,
pulling for you, intervening on
your behalf and waiting with open arms at the
valley's end.
Sometimes, they will even break the rules and walk
beside you. Or come in and carry you out.
Girlfriends, daughters, granddaughters,
daughters-in-law, sisters, sisters-in-law,
Grandmothers, aunts, nieces, cousins, and extended
families all bless our lives.
This world wouldn't be the same without woman, and
at this point in my life, neither would I.
When we began this adventure called
womanhood, we had no idea of the incredible joys or
sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we
would need each other.
Every day, we need each other still.

Author unknown.

So Now What Do I Do?

You checked off the list of narcissistic traits and you realize that your mother *is* one. A lot of the problems you have had in your life, your confusion, self-confidence problems, lack of self-esteem, the times you so wanted to speak up for yourself but just couldn't, the times that people said to you "you are so lucky to have such an outgoing and fun Mother", and you wanted to scream "where the hell is she at HOME?!!", they suddenly all make sense.

A lurking lion, just like the one pictured, is in your mind. It is that feeling of self-doubt, the "Will I Ever Be Good Enough?" message, that is always with you. You may just be realizing it, or you may have known there had to be something, but had not quite put your finger on why it was there. Suddenly the crazy failed relationships with the losers make sense. When you look back on your life and think "why did I let people treat me like that?", they make sense too.

It's time to get rid of the lurking lion in the back of your mind, and go back to the lovely flowers and emerging life of monarchs, in the previous posts.

If you don't have the book, I really suggest you get it. There are other books listed that explain narcissism from different perspectives, but Dr. McBride's book is the only one that specializes in the mother/daughter relationship. I understand it is also the first to do so, but I somehow don't think it will be the last. This is much more common than you may have realized. Suddenly people you know with overly critical Mothers or in-laws...."ah hah", you say. The more you know about the subject, the better armed you will be and the better you can fight the internal messages driven into you. This is a lion, after all,... a mousetrap is not going to do the trick. If you can't get any of the books, please look around on the internet at the websites with loads of information on the subject, then come back as we go through the book chapter by chapter.

And please don't go off and try to talk to your mother about this. There is not going to be any eureka moment where she cries and apologizes for all the hurts and wrongs she caused you. If you try to talk to her about it now, you are just setting yourself up for an emotional crash. She's much better than you at this. This will be all your fault and you will be "so ungrateful" for all her sacrifices.....yada yada. You also may allow all the anger and emotion that you have been stuffing down inside to belch forth all in one go, and then no one will be happy. You may say things you always wanted to say, but you will feel badly about it later. You've put up with it this long, another few weeks is not going to make that big of a difference.

You might also want to hold off on telling everyone else you know about either. Speaking badly about your mother is just a little taboo and people who were raised by caring and loving parents *really* won't understand where you are coming from. If you really have to talk to someone, I suggest looking into a therapist. If you can't afford one, you can get one free through public health or local community resources. Or call a help-line if you are not able to get out of the house.

Chances are, your spouse or partner may have narcissistic traits as well, which is why you picked them in the first place. They may also see a threat to their usual behavior and the status quo of their relationship with you, so don't sabotage this before you even get started. Think of it like Christmas....it's coming. Until then, just keep it to yourself, or only share it with someone professional who can understand.

Is My Mother a Narcissist?

Narcissism is a spectrum disorder with the most severe end of the spectrum considered a narcissistic personality disorder. People can have several narcissistic traits (and most people do) but not be narcissists, or they can have very few narcissistic traits and yet adversely affect those around them.

The following is a checklist to determine if you Mother is a narcissist. This checklist is printed in Dr. McBride's book, and I have also seen it on various other narcissistic resources websites. The more of these traits she has, the more likely she is affecting you with her narcissistic personality, and the more help you need to free yourself from the damaging affects of this relationship.

___1. When you discuss your life issues with your mother, does she or did she divert the discussion to talk about herself?

___2. When you discuss your feelings with your mother, does she or did she try to top the feeling with her own?

___3. Does or did your mother act jealous of you?

___4. Does or did your mother lack empathy for your feelings?

___5. Does or did your mother only support those things you do that reflect on her as a “good mother”?

___6. Have you consistently felt a lack of emotional closeness with your mother?

___7. Have you consistently questioned whether or not your mother likes you or loves you?

___8. Does or did your mother only do things for you when others can see?

___9. When something happens in your life (accident, illness, divorce), does or did your mother react with how it will affect her rather than how you feel?

___10. Is or was your mother overly conscious of what others think (neighbors, friends, family, co-workers)?

___11. Does or did your mother deny her own feelings?

___12. Does or did your mother blame things on you or others rather than own responsibility for her own feelings or actions?

___13. Is or was your mother hurt easily and then carries a grudge for a long time without resolving the problem?

___14. Did or do you feel you were a slave to your mother?

___15. Did or do you feel you were responsible for your mother’s ailments or sickness (headaches, stress, illness)?

___16. Did you have to take care of your mother’s physical needs as a child?

___17. Did or do you feel unaccepted by your mother?

___18. Did or do you feel your mother was critical of you?

___19. Did or do you feel helpless in the presence of your mother?

___20. Were or are you shamed often by your mother?

___21. Did or do you feel your mother knows the real you?

___22. Did or does your mother act like the world should revolve around her?

___23. Do you find it difficult to be a separate person from your mother?

___24. Did or does your mother appear phony to you?

___25. Did or does your mother want to control your choices?

___26. Did or does your mother swing from egotistical to depressed mood?

___27. Did or do you feel you had to take care of your mother’s emotional needs as a child?

___28. Did or do you feel manipulated in the presence of your mother?

___29. Did or do you feel valued, by mother, for what you do rather than who you are?

___30. Was or is your mother controlling, acting like a victim or martyr?

___31. Does or did your mother make you act different from how you really feel?

___32. Does your mother compete with you?

___33. Does or did your mother always have to have things her way?

Scary, isn't it? I first read this list on-line somewhere I think I broke into a sweat as I realized that I wasn't crazy, my mother was.