Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (30 page)

It’s important to look at money and sex as energy forces: Money represents power and security while sex represents the creative life force that balances receiving and giving. You’ve probably heard the myth that if a woman makes more than her husband does, their sex life will suffer. This doesn’t have to be the case, but a man needs to be honored for his role, whether he’s a breadwinner or a mate and father serving his family. Forty percent of families with dependent children are supported by a female, not male, breadwinner. If we don’t let go of the myth that men need to make more money to feel virile, women will feel ambivalent about their financial power and start to feel that they’ll be too strong for men to handle. A strong, healthy man is attracted to a woman who has power and uses it confidently.

It’s the fear and shame we feel when we defy the old ideas about how men and women are “supposed” to act that age us. Creating relationships based on what fills our hearts and the hearts of our partners is far better for our health and well-being than trying to conform to old notions about gender roles. Men need to learn how to get their sense of power and success from living wholeheartedly, not just from their second chakra where they experience sexual and financial power (or powerlessness!). And women need to learn to be soft and receptive without giving up their own sexual and financial power. Achieving balance is much easier when both partners give up their fear of not having enough power and resist having a “ledger” relationship in which they keep track of what each other has contributed.

My daughter Kate was 16 when her father and I divorced. After that, I experienced the biggest financial success of my life. Seeing this, Kate developed a fearful belief that she could either have money or love but not both. She worked through that during her 20s and is now married to a wonderful guy with whom she shares both a life and a business. Her book,
Money: A Love Story
(Hay House, 2013), chronicles her healing of money and love issues and provides a blueprint for others to do the same. To get to a place of balance and healing, she had to recognize how her mother’s experiences had colored her beliefs about power,
sex, and money. You, too, may be holding on to beliefs about your own limitations. If you’re having physical issues that correlate with your second chakra, such as fibroids, uterine cancer, abnormal Pap smears, ovarian cysts, or other pelvic health problems, you need to start looking at those beliefs and the fear that’s wrapped up with them. (I had a fibroid the size of a soccer ball that developed several years before my divorce. It was all about funneling my creative energy into a dead-end relationship—but being afraid to strike out on my own.)

Work through your fears, and your issues about men, sex, power, and money will start to resolve. This is a process, not an event. And it can take a while. But you don’t have to pass on those issues to your daughters and sons. In fact, the work you do to resolve these issues will change your entire family legacy. Kate’s wedding to the man of her dreams marked this transformation for both of us. After the ceremony she gave me a card with the following message: “I also want to acknowledge you for all the work you’ve done around your own heart to allow you to be present during this time. To be able to enjoy this time free of worry about any tension between you and Dad or around the blending of families is the biggest gift. THANK YOU!!”

MOTHER-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS

Let’s talk about a different type of relationship that’s affected by your beliefs regarding growing older, shared power, and emotional security: mother-daughter relationships. It’s sad that women often have toxic relationships with their mothers or their daughters. If you haven’t come to acceptance of your own mother and her limitations, you probably haven’t come to peace with your daughters. Your ageless years are the time to work on healing these relationships at last if you haven’t already.

We each have to own our part in the toxicity. Now is the time to release all the old anger, resentment, grief, and guilt and remake these relationships. And if your mother is no longer living, you may still have work to do—reread
Chapter 5
and start releasing those stale feelings you have been holding on to in your energy field and your body.

I have a friend who decided one day that she was done with the dysfunctional relationship she had with her mother. She called up her sister and discovered that her sister, too, was more than ready to stop the pattern of their mother being “the ultimate squelcher of joy.” Don’t we all know someone like that? Mom was constantly saying to her daughters, “Who do you think you are to try that?” or “You’re never going to make that happen!” Whatever the parade, Mom was there to rain on it.

My friend called me for advice, knowing I had done mother-daughter healing myself. I told her that the reason it’s so very uncomfortable to have a conflict with our mothers is that our bodies were created in their bodies. When we were in the womb and our organs were forming, our mothers’ moods and behaviors directly and powerfully affected the amount of blood and nourishment our bodies experienced. If Mother was upset or depressed, just as if she smoked a cigarette, the blood supply through the umbilical cord decreased, and we felt it. There was no escape from her happiness or grief, and that biological imprint remains with us throughout our lives until we bring it to consciousness and transform it. We’ve all heard the saying “When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” As young children, most of us do what is necessary to keep Mama happy. But when you’re an adult with a mother who hasn’t figured out how to make herself happy, it’s counterproductive to allow yourself to get drained by her and keep her happy at your own expense. The same goes for a daughter who isn’t happy by the time she reaches adulthood. It’s not a mother’s job to sacrifice herself for the good of her children, either.

The fact is that in freeing themselves from the weight of their mother’s negativity, guilt mongering, and control, my friend and her sister were freeing their mother too. There’s no reason for everyone to suffer because of a pattern set years ago. Even so, a complaining adult mother may be extremely resistant to changing a pattern that has allowed her to get her needs met (although in an unhealthy way) for years. The trick is to invite your mother—or your daughters—into turning the relationship around. But be prepared for the fact that the “problem” person who is sucking energy will resist this. Do it anyway. Notice the weight
of the guilt. Celebrate yourself for noticing. This alone begins to change the pattern because you are honoring yourself.

Mothers can become very controlling and martyr-like if they haven’t had the opportunity to express themselves and explore their passions. This often happens when they feel that to be good mothers and wives, they have to constantly sacrifice to serve their families. There’s a great depiction of this phenomenon in the movie
Moonstruck
with Cher. Her character’s fiancé, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), can’t get married because his mother back in Italy is dying and won’t approve. He can’t live without Mama’s love, so his entire life is on hold until the old broad kicks off, which she’s been on the verge of doing for years. Because most men access feminine life force through women, and because their bodies were literally created in their mothers’ bodies, some men never become untangled from Mom—and some mothers aid and abet them in this behavior. A son can become so enmeshed with Mom that she rules over him for life, casting a spell over him that isn’t lifted until she dies. There’s an old saying that a man is twice born: once from his mother’s womb and once again when his mother dies. A daughter may end up in the same position if she doesn’t learn how to tap into Source energy for herself and stop looking to Mom to be her Source.

Is your aging mother becoming even more dictatorial because of dementia? I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason so many old women get really cranky when they develop dementia is because of all the unspoken resentment and self-sacrifice they succumbed to in their early years. The first part of the brain to go in dementia is what’s known as the “frontal lobe inhibitory circuits,” the area of the brain that, when healthy, inhibits you from saying what you really feel. These circuits are important if you want to fit into the group because they allow you to conform to others’ expectations and avoid conflicts. When this area of the brain starts to go, hang on to your hat. You’re going to hear what your mother (or whoever) really thinks now that the inhibitory circuits aren’t working as they had for so many years. It’s payback time. She is going to demand her due, and often in the most unpleasant way. What an awful way to get all the attention and devotion that the person has denied herself for years
because she was afraid of being seen as selfish. Dealing with a mother who has dementia is very, very difficult, and it brings up everything—generally a potent mixture of shame, guilt, anger, and exhaustion, but mostly guilt. Know this: there is no way that you, as a daughter, can possibly be responsible for your mother’s happiness or expect yourself to be the medicine she needs to heal the pain of her own lifetime. Daughters and mothers have been lugging around a chain of pain for too long. It’s time to break it—starting with yourself.

If you’re dealing with a mother or mother-in-law who seems determined to suck the life out of you, there’s a way to pull the plug and give her a chance to breathe on her own. You do it by no longer participating in the power struggle. (Believe me, if it’s a power struggle, she’s going to win, because for her it’s a life-or-death struggle.) If you can, get your siblings involved. Mothers will often pit one sibling against the other to retain their power. You start to break the spell by getting your sisters and brothers on board with your plan to reconnect Mom to her own life force.

Most women think they have to confront their mother directly about her behavior. That rarely works with a controlling mother. Instead, you just change your reaction to her. When you do that, the game is over.

Carol noticed that her very able-bodied mother had started to be overly dependent on her—always calling when she was taking her kids to school or in the middle of dinner. Carol’s siblings noticed that their mother was starting to act feeble and a bit confused and helpless, especially around their oldest brother, though less so around her daughters. She had depended upon her husband for support and cheerleading for years. But he had died ten years before, leaving her widowed at the age of 60. When Carol noticed her mother’s increased dependence on her and her brother, she gathered her siblings around and told them what she had observed. Because every child has a unique relationship with a parent, Carol knew that her other siblings might be surprised to hear about what was going on between her and her mother. She told them all the ways in which their mother was driving her nuts so they could see what she was seeing. And she warned her oldest brother that if he continued to coddle their mother
either physically or emotionally, he would actually be contributing to her decline. After she broke the silence about what was going on with Mom, the first thing they did as a family was to create a game plan to deal with their mother before she developed health or other problems as a result of her clinging behavior. Forearmed with information, they all agreed to stop enabling her by dropping everything to solve her minor problems whenever she called them or visited them to complain about some aspect of her life. Their mother resisted the changes at first, but soon learned to get her needs met in a different, healthier way.

You have to be willing to endure the discomfort of setting a limit with a controlling mother or father. Dr. Mario Martinez calls this becoming a “guardian of your heart.” Notice that visits with your mother may follow a pattern of starting out well and then deteriorating into negativity. She may have that “upper limit” problem and be able to stand only so much joy and fun before taking the visit south into complaining and fault finding. Instead of enduring the negativity, simply guard your own heart, and when the dynamic between you and your mother begins to sour, know that it’s okay to take your leave. End the visit. Say, “Thanks, Mom. Nice to talk. Gotta go,” and hang up the phone. If she’s angry at your withdrawal, you have to take on the challenge of not being upset by this. Your inner child will be scared, but be gentle with yourself. Stifling your need to escape, only to lose your temper with your mother, isn’t the way to go.

At first, like a baby in the womb who is not getting enough oxygen, you may find that establishing a boundary with your mother feels awful, as if you’ll lose her forever and be disconnected from her love. This won’t happen. A mother’s love is too strong for that—at least, in most cases. If she’s one of the 20 percent or so of women who have a personality disorder, you’ve got to make the break with her for your own mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health because she won’t be able to change without self-awareness and a lot of therapy.

One of my friends got caller ID just so that she could identify her mother’s calls beforehand and not get sucked into an overly
long conversation—a “donating bone marrow” call—with her mother. She had trouble getting her mother off the phone, and eventually learned when to call and when to hang up: while it was still enjoyable for both of them. Another friend, who had been in the habit of calling her mother every morning after her father’s death, began to string out the calls to every other day, then every third day, and finally, once per week. Her mother was healthy and independent, but simply not interested in living life fully or joyfully despite many opportunities to do so.

What a gift it would be if her daughter freed her from her cultural beliefs about growing older and becoming irrelevant to the people she loves. Too often, the overbearing or needy mother is an unwitting victim of ageist cultural messages. By helping her to see that she doesn’t need her daughter rescuing her from this problem or that one, a daughter can free up her mother to become an ageless goddess.

AGELESS GODDESSES AREN’T HELICOPTER PARENTS