As the story below shows, when comparison plays out between mothers and daughters, it creates a legacy that keeps women small, stunted and locked in worthlessness for generations.
Recently, a friend shared how her daughter-in-law to be was a beautiful young woman inside and out, but her mother was a little wacky. The three women went together to the bridal dress fitting and when the young bride-to-be drew the curtain back, it was breathtaking to behold her beauty – the glow and delicateness of her; she was gorgeous. My friend noticed how the young woman’s eyes went straight to her mother. When her mother remained silent, the young woman asked “Well, what do you think?” and the mother answered, “If you like it then that’s all that matters”. Born of comparison and jealousy, this comment was designed to crush.
Have we not all done some version of this to another woman, and been on the receiving end of it ourselves?
Between mothers and daughters there can be an even deeper crushing – aren’t mothers supposed to love their daughters? But mothers are women first and if a woman has lost her connection to her own worth and beauty, then comparison is her constant companion.
Withholding acknowledging the beauty, the amazingness we register in another woman, leaves a gap that if not for a strong sense of self worth, is easily filled with self doubt, confusion, sadness, and feelings of being invisible, not good enough or wrong somehow.
Comparison teaches us to not value ourselves.
Whenever we lose the connection to our own gorgeousness we are at the mercy of what does, (or does not) come from other women – mothers, daughters, sisters, aunties, grandmothers, friends, teachers, colleagues – and the world at large. When our sense of self worth is only as good as our last compliment or the last approving glance, word or touch, we are at the mercy of the world.
Our true legacy as women is restored when we break the cycle of comparison between mothers and daughters, and all the women in our lives. When we connect to our innate value and worth, to the absolute preciousness we are and knowing it in every cell of our body, we come to understand that the only person who can make us feel less, see ourselves as less, or live less than who we are, is us. Loving who we are inside means we no longer need to use comparison to hold us back and the enormity of what we can bring to each other and the world by simply being and treasuring the women we are, will become what flows from one generation to the next.
Inspired by the Esoteric Women’s Health presentations of Jenny Ellis, Rebecca Poole and Mary Louise Myers.
By Adrienne Hutchins, BEd, Brisbane, Australia
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