Dunhamisms Issue #3

Can our mothers ever change? And do we want them to?

Hey Honeys,

Aunt Lena, back again to answer more of the questions you’ve so generously shared.

I’m now two shows into my little Famesick tour, and my favorite part of the evening is when I get the chance (along with my guests: thus far Emrata- in a leopard pony hair trench and Tory Burch earrings because you better believe I’m asking for the tags even in real life- and my sweet Elijah forever, Andrew Rannells, in pajama-esque pinstripes.)

my girl

back where we belong

suiting up to be ready to answer your questions in style, with patron saint Brad Renfro on my lapel

Getting the chance to answer such vulnerable questions live and direct- not from a vantage point of being a completed work or a wise sage, but of finally knowing those are impossible goals- has been practically religious. We have a QR code that lets folks leave them via voice memo so we can play them over the sound a system in the theaters, and I can’t help but close my eyes as I listen and get a little bit lost in the sweetness.

not gonna say all my advice has been super useful…

My other favorite thing is these carnival boards, painted by my friend Feather Blass. No cowboys or mermaids- just a faceless girl freaking out. Goals! Did any of you take pics with them at the bar in Brooklyn?

Anyway, this week I’m responding to two questions that felt equally urgent. Thank you to the two askers, who have given me a reason to ask myself some hard questions too. That’s what the best advice questions do (and what my favorite advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who I read at Elle from an age far too young to be appropriate, taught me: it’s about what the questions make you demand of yourself.)

Hi Lena, My question is - do you think our moms truly have the capacity to change? Can the relationship improve at this point when one person is in their 20s and the other is in their 60s? My relationship with my mother has always been strained and recently I’ve been wondering if we should just be estranged entirely. But it’s hard because even though she’s hurt me more than anyone else, she’s my mom and I don’t want to be without a mom.

Hello Angel. I felt this question deeply. I felt the love, longing, hope, frustration and a real willingness to accept someone, warts and all, if they’ll only accept you.

It came just after a bedtime chat the other night with my best friend Russell. We were falling asleep (side by side- natch- my husband knows our sleepovers are a forever thing and he is thrilled I have my human teddy bear- albeit a very opinionated teddy bear- on tour with me.)

We were talking generally about parents and what we owe them. I expressed a thought that, while the new language of “no contact” is an incredible new tool for people whose parents have been genuinely and unforgivably negligent and abusive, that creating such a serious boundary with a parent must be taken, well, seriously. Maybe it’s because I was raised by Jewish women, a tribe for whom love is often inextricably linked to martyr-ly obligation (and often comes along with a healthy dose of critical feedback you must gird your loins for.) I’m not trying to traffic in pat overbearing Jewish mother cliches, but different cultures have different pain points, and it’s a culture in which you show up for your foremothers even if every other sentence is a referendum on your life choices. Russell argued that he wants to choose to show up for his people, not do it because it’s just what you do.

“I don’t have to talk to anyone I don’t want to talk to” he said. “My presence is a gift I give only willingly.” And I couldn’t argue with that! And yet… he still talks to plenty of complex people and, it should be noted, his mother (who is a complex icon, hence creating a complex icon.) And he doesn’t plan to stop. We can say whatever we want about refusing to accept certain kinds of interactions, but the drive to be mothered- even into adulthood- can feel as innate as avoiding the edges of cliffs, or huddling against the cold.

This is all to say that the question of when to pack it in is a tangled one, and the cutoff for bad behavior for a mother involves a lot more slack on the bungee than we’d extend for pretty much anyone else.

Let me start by saying things you should never accept: abuse, verbal or physical. Someone picking apart essential aspects of your identity, such as sexuality or race or body type or neurodiversity etc. Someone who lies, regularly and with destructive consequences. Whether they gave birth to you or not, raised you and fed you or not, nobody is permitted to behave in these ways toward you and you’re not paying off a debt you owe simply for being born.

But there is a lot of space between a loving, present and understanding mother and an abusive one. Indeed, the shades and shadows of maternal complexity have powered much of literature (my favorite motherhood book of the last ten years was Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt.)

It sounds like you’re living in that gray area- while you don’t directly describe your mother’s momming style, I sense that she has made you feel tense, unseen and at times very alone. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to endure that. Once a therapist told me that to create a securely attached child, a parent must simply fulfill 30% of their needs- keep them clothed, fed, sheltered and be a loving anchor as they meet the world, which fulfills the rest. If this is indeed true, based on who I’m meeting it’s pretty shocking just how many parents fall woefully short of this goal.

My mother is the spoke around which the wheel of my life has spun. The spool to the thread. All the metaphors! And yet there have been many times when she made me feel so misunderstood or underestimated that I grew despondent or (don’t know if this is better or worse) impotent with rage. I know that wasn’t her intention. I know she’s also a person, with a story that started 36 years before mine, and in hindsight I can even see why she acted the way she did and how much of it came from a desire to protect me from the challenges she faced, from the gnarlier parts of being a woman specifically. But all this understanding is cold comfort when we’re screaming at each other on the street in Cobble Hill and indie darlings Imogen Poots and Lili Taylor are having coffee ten feet away and I think “now they’ll know, I’m just another little girl who wants her mommy.”

But in the last decade, she and I have found a new peace that means our relationship is as stable as it is deep. When we fight, we repair quickly. When we hang out, we listen more carefully and jump to fewer conclusions. Some of this can be chalked up to my getting older and chilling. She is also older, and has become less willful and more open to contemplative shifts in her behavior. Time really does a lot, but time also requires patience. That patience was very hard to access when I was in my teens and twenties, that odd time after you’re a little girl whose mother can do no wrong and before you’re old enough to truly understand that mothers are just regular ass women who happen to have had a baby.

I was only able to summon it because, after getting sober, I was told to HALT when I had a big feeling. HALT- hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? Usually when we encounter a major dip or blip during the day (barring cataclysmic or unforeseen events) we can chalk it up to one of these, and if we attend to that- mother ourselves a little bit- before taking action, we will often find a new approach awaits us. I had been experiencing my mother as intentionally provocative or willfully misunderstanding, when actually she was just being herself. And by reacting quickly, with irritation or disdain, I was pouring an accelerant on the flames, and misunderstanding her just as much.

It’s wild that we go from little girls in our mother’s care to two women, who- while bound by the wild experience of being someone’s parent or child- are both grappling with the mess and obligation of an adult life. There is also a mountain of projection in both directions, plus the pain of not being able to ensure the other’s happiness. With all this challenging and charged content, it’s a wonder anyone ever talks to their mother at all!

So can she change? And have you asked her, directly and clearly, for what it is you want? Have you told her the shifts that would help you to feel safe and calm in her presence? And if so, has she shown a willingness to look at your feelings and try her best? Some people are too defended to even hear feedback. Some will hear it but don’t have the capacity to do anything with it, which is a disappointing thing to learn about anyone, much less your mom. And some will surprise you by saying “I’m so sorry, I really hear you, and I’ll try.” Which can make the whole rigmarole worth it in the first place. It can give you reserves of patience you didn’t even know you had.

Finding peace with your mother will involve reconfigurations on both sides, compromise and willingness. Tolerating your mother in order to have one at all is a horse of a different color, and a choice only you know enough to make. And, if the present relationship is hurting other areas of your life, then it may be time to unhook yourself from that intergenerational obligation.

No matter the answer, have you taken the time to think about what you would have wanted out of a mother that you didn’t get? What kind of mothering style would have made you feel safest, and what do you wish she’d said and done that she never did? Assemble a picture of this person. Really hear their voice, feel their hugs, let them tell you what it is you need to hear. She can look any way- like Meryl Streep or Storm from X-Men or that chubby, joyful teapot from Beauty and the Beast. In essence, you must picture her and then become her- not for any offspring you may have, who will no doubt their have *own* ideal mother in their heads, but for *you*. Because at the end of the day, mothering ourselves, treating ourselves with the kind of care we always craved, is as important a job as any other, and a lifetime one.

You can never go no contact with her.

Hi Lena! Here’s my question for your newsletter 💌

How to cope with loss, rejection and feeling like you are forever stuck in your own life’s waiting room?

I am struggling to find a job, meet someone who I could have a healthy relationship with, chronic pain and depression, and racism on every day basis.

I am turning 33 soon so.. How to keep on going? How does one find joy in a times like these?

Hi sweetie- wow. What you’re describing is dense, challenging and relatable for more people than you probably even know. It’s not just a single problem, easy to solve with a few self help slogans and some metaphorical duct tape. It’s what my therapist at rehab would call a “fifty car pileup,” the sensation that your issues are daisy chaining, oroborosing, human centipeding (sorry, so sorry.) There’s the personal (love, self image.) There’s the practical (career.) There’s the physical (chronic pain.) There’s the cultural (the fact of systemic, surround sound racism, and the brutality of this political moment.) They all compound each other and the personal is, of course, impossible to detangle from the political, just as the political is excruciatingly personal. It sounds like all of this together is putting you in a state of fight or flight where your nervous system is choosing freeze. And who could blame it?

Well it sounds, from your note, like perhaps you do blame it a bit, or blame yourself. I sense a subtle but bitter top note of self-recrimination, which I recognize because it’s also my preferred mode. And I think the most important thing to say is that none of this is your fault. We *do* live in a world where connection is becoming harder to find, safety is becoming tougher to imagine - especially for POC- and women’s health is so often ignored and, if acknowledged at all, held against us. Sorry to sound like a bummer, but I don’t want to question your reality, because your reality is real!

The good news- and there is good news- is that you are able to acknowledge all of this, grieve it, and then start your mission to get out of this freeze state. Everyone’s approach to this is different- everything from meditation to crafting to primal scream therapy- but it sounds to me like the biggest help to you would be some community.

A quick example: when I was really feeling fucked up after my hysterectomy, lonely and bitter and watching so many of my friends get pregnant after a guy in Levi’s basically sneezed on them, I made it a mission to meet other women who had dealt with chronic illness and infertility. Though the internet is a crazy place, it was also a place to gather with these people, and I found we had more in common than fuck-ass reproductive organs. We had all had experiences of depression and anxiety, chronic pain, being ignored or taken for a ride by doctors who were meant to help us. We were worn down in the same way and made the same doomy jokes. We had a vibe going that made me feel so much less freaky, so much less terminally unique. And I could do it all from my bed, alone but also less alone than I felt with anyone else.

Have you spent any time in the chronic illness world online, talking to other women who will likely share your experience and have more Venn overlap than you’re expecting? Have you found writing on Substack by people whose narrative resonates with you? When you’re stuck in bed or stuck in freeze, do you watch art that affirms you, read books and articles that reflect the world back as you experience it? Can you make it a point to seek these things out? This essay by Johanna Hedva really does draw the map between all the conditions you’re talking about and is a great place to start.

One of the hardest aspects of chronic illness is that it saps you of your life force, stops you from consuming the things you love and suspends you in a state of just coping. Societal prejudice is similar. But I’ve come to believe that this appetite for engaging is a bit like turbine wind power, in that energy creates more energy, and expanding our minds feeds our bodies.

I don’t presume to know your circumstances from this letter alone- how many obligations you have, how much support and stability is in your life, and so I don’t want to make blithe and deluded suggestions like one of those women who casually says “nobody know the meaning of hard work anymore” and then recommends a protein powder. I want to affirm your sense that all of this is hard, because it is, and unfair, because it’s that too, and not offer any trite “everything happens for a reason” shit because that’s only sometimes true. But I do want to share one of my favorite quotes, by the luminary Martha Graham:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

As for your age? I got sober just before I turned 32. I pretty much stayed in bed until I turned 34. I met my husband at 35, after really resigning myself to the fact- and it is a fact- that I didn’t need one, and I married him in part because he reflected back to me that my challenges were real, I wasn’t hysterical or unmoored, and he wanted to help (just like I wanted to do that for him.) I only got out of bed at all because I stopped being so hard on myself about my own inertia and started honoring the fact that we are all just doing our very best, and some of us need more time.

Go where it’s warm. Look for people that don’t ask of you what you don’t have. Look for jobs that allow you the latitude to heal, jobs you think you can do without feeling like you’re failing just by living in the body you were born in. Read and watch and listen to things that don’t tell you stories about the world that feel false.

Remind yourself that your experience isn’t just valid, but universal- and soon you’ll be the person offering the answer, unsure if she’s qualified but humbled to do it.

Love always,

Lena