(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: unfounded lawsuit threats, gaslighting, aggressive behavior, name-calling, verbal attacks, etc. (the phrase "every accusation is a confession." comes to mind).

Just thinking about HOA meetings makes my heart race and I hold my breath. My husband (who volunteers on the HOA board) says he hates how much space this person takes up in his brain.

"Our bodies are working as intended," I told him. "Our bodies need us to pay attention to the perceived threat."

Contrast that with this.

The other day I was having a convo with one of my closest friends and she said, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I like that I don't have to think about you a lot," and I knew exactly what she meant. Because our relationship is easy, we don't have to work at it. We don't have to think about it.

The relationship my husband and I have is also easy (he agrees).

This doesn't mean there's never any friction or disagreements or challenging times. It means that we know we're safe with each other and if one of us feels hurt or offended or some other uncomfortable way (because that's what happens when you're human), we know how to own what's ours and repair the rupture.

The relationship I have with my mother has rarely felt easy to me (now that I have other relationships to compare it to). I feel as if I have to be careful and edit myself around her. I have to be watchful and wary. Any time I interact with her, my thoughts are focused on what she might do or say and how I will (or won't) handle it.

If you're new here, here's some back story: I cut ties with my mother at the end of 2010. She sent me a letter asking what I was going to do to "rectify" the situation (I write about this in detail in You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma and Shame). Around that same time I was training to become a life coach and decided I wanted to "work on" the relationship and put my new-found skills to the test.

I will never forget, right here in this very space, when I wrote about the ins and outs of a visit I had with my mother, and what I was noticing about myself and my reactions and responses to her. Someone responded and asked, "Why bother if it's so hard?" At the time I had decided I didn't want it to be easy.

What is also true is that I didn't see my socialization and what I had internalized (which is the nature of socialization and internalizing stuff...you don't see it): "relationships are supposed to be hard." As if it were a fact.

I watched my mother make pretty much every relationship she's ever had (romantic, platonic, or familial) hard.

Thinking about how my body responds to simply thinking about the HOA meetings reminded me that I had been putting my body through that same stress when I was calling my mother every two weeks (2021-2023...thanks pandemic), which is why I stopped doing that. I haven't heard from her since although I have emailed her several times since then.

"Silence is a full sentence" and I respect her boundary. Besides, I suspect she feels similarly about me.

~~~

I suspect the whole "relationships are supposed to be hard" mentality can be part of what upholds abuse culture.

I've always been struck by this quote from relationship expert Esther Perel:

"What used to be defined by rules and duty and obligation now has to take place in conversation. ... everything is a negotiation. ...relationships are undergoing rapid changes and we have no idea how to handle them. Rules have been replaced by choices. But at the same time we have massive uncertainty and massive self-doubt."

She is speaking about romantic relationships but I see the same dynamic happening inter-generationally.

What used to be considered shameful and taboo to discuss – mothers and daughters who are triggered by each other – outside of lofty clinical pathologies and personality disorders, is now being talked about openly on TikTok.

What was considered normal and okay in past generations (using fear, shame, punishment, “shoulding,” control, binary ways of thinking, and physical violence as parenting tools; not to mention it not being okay to feel and express emotion) is now known to be abusive and traumatic.

This is at the heart of a lot of mother-adult daughter conflict.

All of that to say, It is okay to take the easy (and safe) way out. This is how we stop upholding and perpetuating abuse culture.

Just because something is easy doesn't mean there's no growth or expansion. And something being hard doesn't mean it has more meaning, value, or credibility.

We don't need to glorify "hard."

Let it be easy.

Much, much love,

Karen
​I help adults navigate and heal from complex relationships with their mothers (narcissistic or not).

P.S. It's happening! To celebrate the first birthday of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma and Shame, I am hosting a free event:

Who: YOU!...and me and my friend, colleague, and fellow adult daughter Becky Mashuta

What: a conversation about healing the shame passed to us through our maternal lineages, the impact it has had on us, and how we're changing our relationship to it. I am excited to share a new healing framework that I have created in the past year. There will be time for your questions and stories.

Where: on Zoom (register for free here)

When: on Thursday, June 13 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. Eastern...

Why: because there's nothing more powerful than women who have changed their relationship to the debilitating, dysregulating experience that is shame.