They may not want to see you suffer, so they try to fix it. They don’t understand that if you don’t face this sadness, it will remain part of you forever.

As Pressman and Pressman say in their book, The Narcissistic Family, “The roots of workaholism are truly sown in narcissistic homes; ‘I do, therefore I am’ could be the motto of many adult children from these homes.”2

• Accept your mother’s limitations and grieve that you did not have the mother you wanted • Separate psychologically from your mother, and reframe the negative messages that you absorbed from her into positive ones • Develop and accept your own identity, feelings, and desires • Deal with your mother in a different, healthy manner • Work to

Most damaging is that a narcissistic mother never approves of her daughter simply for being herself, which the daughter desperately needs in order to grow into a confident woman.

I believe that you begin to heal when you accept the fact that your mother was narcissistic and that she hurt you. Then you grieve for the life and love you do not have. I will teach you how to allow yourself the gift of acceptance and how to use the precious time for grieving.

Remember that you cannot change others. You can change only yourself. How you view things and how you deal with your perceptions is within your control. Changing your mother is not.

I believe almost all mothers harbor good intentions toward their daughters. Unfortunately, some are incapable of translating those intentions into the kind of sensitive support that daughters need to help them through life.

Remind yourself that you do not create feelings in other people. Each person is responsible for his or her own feelings and reactions and therefore must also be accountable for them.

I’m not saying that you become permanently sad about this, but that you recognize it, face it, and allow yourself to feel sad about the pain this has caused you. We will move beyond this stage of grief. This is not where you will live the rest of your life.