Starting Over Talk - Peer Coaching Support Site

Watching Jessica's grief on the show and now having read the piece ("a bit about Jessica&quot posted here by Starrygirl, I've been pondering my take-away from it all. And that is, affording children the privilege of growing up in real-life home environments, instead of in bubbles. Not letting our love so mesh out of control that we love our children to 'death'. Death to their initiative, death to their independence, and death to their resilience. I heard it said to parents, "if you are not raising your children to leave home, then you have an unhealthy emotional relationship with them". Jessica, to me, is an example of what happens when we blur the boundaries between loving our children for them and loving them to feed an emotional need in us. Lord knows I struggle to find the balance.

and, perhaps therin lies the angst and duality of motherhood...We know we must prepare them for the real world...Yet we fear losing them to it..

Hi Jackee,

I think you hit the nail on the head. Every mother struggles with this balance to some extent, but after watching the play Jessica put on today for the houseguests about her relationship with her mother I see that hers is not a normal relationship. Her mother was quite a martyr and took it as a personal insult when Jessica wouldn't accept her help or money. It was clear that her mother was very good at putting guilt trips on her and I think maybe that is what she can't let go of; the guilt that really belongs on her mother which she internalized. Her mother wouldn't allow her to grow up and be an adult because she was too afraid of abandonment by her daughter. There was alot of obligation tied to the things her mother did for her. She is still trying not to let her down by moving on (which in fact would be the healthier thing for Jessica to do).

I dont see her Mother as any of those things you assume she is...You got a lot out of a few lines in a play...a martyr?, and personally insulted?...By her daughter?..wow I dont see it that way at all..The lady was sending her daughter to college...Jessica was (in her young adult way) cutting yet another apron string...Thats always hard for both parties..They didnt scream and yell and fight for any length of time on this..The Mom didnt give any indication (nor did Jessica) that the mom was gonna put her on another guilt trip...I've never heard Jessica say anything like that about her and her Moms relationship..I believe this was a wonderfully loving and strong, normal relationship.

You know Giftbearer, that's exactly what leaped out at me when I was watching the skit (Mark you, Jessica is who wrote what came out of Allison's mouth). The skit was wrought with the reason why Jessica is having such a tough time with her mom's death. She was made to feel responsible for her mother's emotions. That her mother would be wounded if Jessica didn't let her do everything for her. What I saw acted out in that skit was an all-consuming mother. Jessica had no voice. Every feeling she tried to communicate was invalidated and superimposed with her mother's opinion about it.

Today, I thought it said it all when Jessica mentioned that she would have been on that plane with her mother had she not decided against going, at the last minute. Now, instead of Jessica seeing just how fortunate she is that she was spared death, a tragic one for that matter, she is left feeling guilty for not having died with her mother. She also said, her mother would not wait one more week for her father to go on the trip with her. ...