read this if you're making your mother's mistakes

the daughter as a mirror and repeated history

May 12, 2025

The Daughter as a Mirror.

Girls don’t age, they rot. And you are the autopsy of your mother’s youth. You are a return to the scene of the crime. The open-wound body. The rotting-in-the-heat-of-living specimen. But most of all, you’re a new chance at life.

When she was your age, she could not go out without her finger finding a way into her nose. Then she married your father, and he was a loser.

Now you pick at your face, and that must be corrected. Now you want to marry the first idiot who tells you I love you, and that must be corrected, too. It doesn’t matter who you are, it only matters what you see when you look through the mirror. Your mother winks, and your left eye blinks.

The Daughter as Choiceless

In every bat, there is a daughter that must be spat out. They say my grandmother spat my mother up. My mother helps her mother up the stairs. They have the same wrinkled frown on their faces. My grandma frowns because my mother could never be good enough. And my mother frowns as she wonders why she could never be good enough. And I frown as I wonder why, and if I’ll ever be good enough. My hands are open for my mother to hold. And my wrinkle hasn’t set in yet, but my lips cork the way her does. I am no longer as shiny as when she first spat me up.

The daughter as repeated history

The worst thing a girl can be is cold. oh, wait, the worst thing a girl can be is passive. Fuck, that’s wrong. The worst thing a girl can do is make her mother’s mistakes.

Mothers… you never know what you’re gonna get. A bad mom, an absent mom, an overbearing mom, a hypercritical mom, a boy mom, a mom that wishes she were you, a grandiose narcissist mom, an overt narcissist mom, a mom that thinks you stole her youth, a mom that lives vicariously through you.

But they all have one thing in common: we vow never to become them.

If your mom was passive, you vow to speak up for the shit you believe in. and if your mom worked the same 9 to 5 for thirty years, you vow to travel the world and never be tied down to anyone or anything… much less a job.

We strive to be better versions of the previous prototype – cleaner, shinier, upgraded.

But Science and Jungian psychology will tell you this: anything taken to its extreme becomes the opposite of what it was intended to be. The Queen becomes a Tyrant, the Sage becomes a witch, the magician becomes a manipulator.

The abused becomes the abuser

So, if your mom was cold and frigid and didn’t give a fuck about you, judging by her mistakes, you lean the other way. You tuck your kids in at night, you stay home from work when they’re sick, and you tell them how beautiful and smart, and funny they are. But then, you take it a step further and become the kind of mom who follows your daughter to prom.

You become overbearing, doing almost as much (if not more) damage to your kids.

I mean, sure, your child might not have the same issues you have, but issues are issues at the end of the day. And while you might have protected them from something, you’re dooming them to a new set of traumas. One that you cannot even fathom.

Why?

Because you’ve done nothing but love your child the way your mother never loved you.

A classic example of this is in the movie Pearl (2022). Pearl (the titular character) strives to live a different life from her mother. Her rigid, judgmental, resentful mother.

Her 'Life’s not about what you want, it’s about making the best of what you have' mother.

And Pearl, rebellious and spiteful, wants to go off as a showgirl, dancing from stage to stage and exploring the world.

She goes off on a killing spree, taking out anyone who stands in her way. As the movie crescendos, Pearl auditions for a show. But when she doesn’t get the part, she resorts to the familiar all-or-nothing patterns of her mother. She stays on the farm and lives the life she was so desperate to escape.

But here’s the kicker. Pearl isn’t only reminiscent of her mother when she decides to stay on the farm. She’s been like her mother from the beginning. They both have an incessant need for control. While Ruth (the mother) attempts to control her daughter’s life, Pearl seeks to control people and bend them to her will (i.e, the cinema guy, Mitzie, etc).

They both hold a deep resentment for the life they’ve lived, and they both have a moral rigidity about them. While Ruth lives with strict principles and punishes Pearl for any deviation, Pearl takes out her own anger on alligator eggs, helpless geese, and the occasional blonde.

This goes to show that by striving to be complete opposites of our mothers, we repeat the loop. And we continue to eat our own tails without end.

And, if you’ve ever wondered why your mother complains so much about her mom when she’s more or less the same person, you cannot fix what you cannot see.

So, how do you see?

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

You must seek to understand your mother in a world that’s inherently unpleasant and unwelcoming to womanhood. Because without this empathy, not only do you make the inverse of their mistakes, but a more grotesque (in Pearl’s case) version of it. This, of course, doesn’t excuse your matriarch of her wrongdoings, but it does give her a fair trial.

And why burn a witch when you can have a beheading and be swift with it?

To exist is to make holes. On the earth. And in ourselves. You cannot escape damaging another soul, most of all, you cannot escape damaging your daughter.

But by leading with empathy, you set a healthier trend. You get to be understood in the future. And you get a fair trial when your time comes to face the gauntlet.

fin.

a little bonus for my lovelies - 10 movies that explore the mother-daughter dynamic beautifully

LadyBird (2019) - of fucking course
I, Tonya (2017) - margot Robbie’s best performance to date, so says I.
The Edge of Seventeen (2016) - always makes me cry
The Piano Teacher (2001) - literal chills down my spine
Pearl (2022) - duh
Black Swan (2010) - tortured artist and mother wound? yes, please.
Run (2020) - horror at its peak
Brave (2012) - adore scottish accents and stern mothers getting softer
Turning Red (2022) - I still have no idea how this flopped, it was BRILLIANT.
Everything, Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Love Kaothar.

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