Similar to how single people can despise Valentine’s day. On Mother’s day, many can have a hard time celebrating this date because their relationships with their mothers are challenging, bad, or non-existent.
There is an expectation that being a mother is something instinctive and that every woman is capable of developing this role. Furthermore, society expects mothers to be able to sacrifice themselves to benefit their children. Therefore, it’s taboo to question a mother’s capacity to love their child. Nevertheless, just because people don’t like to talk about this, there are many unloving mothers, and this needs to be addressed. Susan Forward (a therapist from the USA) wrote a book dedicated to this topic. In her book “Mothers Who Can’t Love,” Susan talks openly about many people’s struggles when confronted with their unloving mothers. The author identifies 5 types of unloving mothers: the narcissistic mother; the competitive mother, the overly enmeshed mother (constantly intruding in their child’s life and stopping them from becoming independent individuals); the control freak; mothers who need mothering; and mothers who abuse or fail to protect their daughters from abuse. On this Sunday, people who have mothers who are incapable of giving this love, affection, and healthy boundaries to their daughters/sons can have difficulty going through this day. When scrolling through social media…
