My Mother doesn’t speak to my Grandmother

Tracing the legacy of trauma through generations

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

“It’s so sad”, my grandmother said, “that in a family with so much love and no abuse, we have so many people who refuse to speak to each other”.

I think she’s right about the abuse, at least in liviing memory. But there was abuse. Nearly 100 years ago now, but its legacy is still felt in the mother daughter relationships in my family. And my grandmother is right, it is very sad.

My mother has spent decades of her life not speaking to my grandmother (her mother).

No real reasons have been given for this rift.

My grandmother doesn’t understand what she has done to my mother.

I desperately want to understand. Not to fix the rift between a 60 something woman and her 90 something mother. I think they are old enough to sort their own messes out. But because I so badly want, need, the cycle to stop with me. If my daughters grew up not wanting to speak to me I don’t think I would survive that pain.

But it’s not enough to avoid a rift, I want us to remain close.

My girls don’t need to live in my pockets, I want them to go and have lives, and be themselves, and feel independent of me. But I also want them to think of me often…