Article August 17, 1998 Issue

Can mothers always love their children?

"I found new flexibility, more willingness to try different approaches, and a renewed desire genuinely to listen and try to understand her."

By Joan Sieber Ware

I hadn't had a cold for so long that I couldn't even remember the last time. But there I was, feeling horrible with all the symptoms of a heavy cold. I had also been feeling quite troubled by mother-daughter relationship problems.

Accustomed to turning to God for healing, I prayed. While praying, I read from the Bible, as well as Science and Health, where I found this passage about motherhood: "A mother's affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. Therefore maternal affection lives on under whatever difficulties" (p. 60). Wean is defined as "detach ... accustom to deprivation ... reconcile to the loss of ... alienate." With these ideas I began to see my roles as mother and daughter in a new light.

My older daughter was in college and was rarely home anymore. I had been feeling very detached and separated, sometimes even alienated, from her. This statement made me realize that I had begun to believe that my affections had to be weaned—that I somehow had to get accustomed to deprivation, to the loss of our close relationship.

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