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Karen C.L. Anderson

Mentor to women who wish to take the lead in the relationship they have with their mothers.

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Featured Post

a posture of kindness

Nothing feels safer than when we are in the presence of another who is attuned to the dark, shameful places inside of us and yet has a posture of kindness rather than contempt. ~ Adam Young Counseling I believe humanity is moving out of a biological, evolutionary "need" for shame. We've got a ways to go. In the meantime, we still experience it and it can be debilitating and dysregulating (ask me how I know), especially when we're not aware when it's running the show. We need to know: #1 how...

10 days ago • 1 min read

...your mother treats you the way she does? "My therapist once told me: Imagine being bitten by a snake and instead of trying to help yourself heal and recover from the poison, you are trying to catch the snake to find out the reason it bit you and prove to it that you didn't deserve that." ~ Safe.Journal on Threads That's good advice, but...if you've spent years (or decades even) trying to figure out why your mother is the way she is, and why she treated the way she did, it might feel a bit...

19 days ago • 1 min read

(this one rambles...TL;DR it's okay to decide you want your relationships to be easy AND I am hosting a free event next month) I live in a small (six-year-old) neighborhood with 14 homes and a Homeowner's Association (HOA), which is required because there are seven acres of common area that need to be maintained according to the town's ordinances. Everyone who lives here was the first to occupy these homes. From the get-go there's been ONE neighbor who seems hellbent on making trouble:...

26 days ago • 4 min read

Earlier this week there was an article in my local newspaper about a mother who paid ten kids $50 to "beat and humiliate" her 13-year-old daughter. After sitting with my thoughts and feelings about it, I shared this on Facebook: These words will probably never reach the 13-year-old girl who's mother paid ten kids to "beat and humiliate" her, but I am going to say them anyway: May you know that even if you were disrespectful to your mother, this shouldn't have happened. I am so sorry that it...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read

Question from an adult daughter: My mother wasn't a nasty, abusive mother, but she didn't protect me or my brother from my father who (due to C-PTSD/personality disorder) was intolerant and verbally abusive. As well, she was "politely" neglectful. From age five it was up to me to get myself to school on a public bus. I went to five schools before I was 12, and when I had an eating disorder age 16, I went to the hospital alone. She was too busy to collect me after a day of grueling...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read

Question from a reader: I’m in an endless battle with a narcissistic mother. Despite almost three years of therapy and years of inner work, the psychological damage that I have continues to fester, and I feel I am losing control of a life I never even figured out how to live. I’m also a writer, although my work lives in the notes app on my iPad. How do I stop letting this thought – I’ll only have peace when she’s dead – paralyze me? It can’t be true. Dear Adult Daughter... You're right, it's...

2 months ago • 2 min read

Your mother probably taught you that lying is wrong... ...so why is it so hard to have a honest connection with her? Why can you just tell her the truth about what's okay and what's not okay? What you are willing and not willing to do in the relationship? Rather than people-pleasing her? If you currently people-please her, it's not because you're weak and pathetic. It's not a "you" problem. It's because you were taught, like most of us, that being pleasing is safer than being honest. Her...

2 months ago • 3 min read

Some thoughts about Jesus and healing (from a heathen a couple of days after Easter)... I had an appointment yesterday morning with a "helping professional" whom I found through a website/app that connects clients to professionals in a particular field. I had a specific reason for seeking out this help and on the intake form I was very clear about the kind of help I was looking for and what I wanted to know, as well as about what I already know and have experienced in regards to this issue....

2 months ago • 2 min read

Years ago – more than 15 – I was visiting my mother. She was in her kitchen and I was outside on the deck. I saw her looking out the window so I grinned at her. She looked at me with a sneer on her face, lifted her hand, and raised her middle finger. I don't remember what happened next because – although I didn't know it at the time – I froze. High alert. What I DO remember is that later I was both furious and devastated, a familiar set of emotions when it came to my mother. I told anyone who...

3 months ago • 2 min read

Two weeks from today! Please join me and my dear friend and fellow author Susan Ito here in Connecticut for a special event at Bank Square Books in Mystic on Sunday, April 7 at 5 p.m. Susan's memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, is a 2023 finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award and our discussion will center on mother-daughter generational rupture and repair, as well as how adoption plays a role in mother-daughter relationships, both on the biological side and the adoptive parent...

3 months ago • 1 min read
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