Newswise — Durango, CO -- Mother’s Day is just a few short spring weeks away. If you have a mother you love, the day is welcomed and shared, but what if the relationship between mother and daughter is forever broken? To millions of Americans, Mother’s Day simply serves as a reminder of a failed and painful primal relationship. What if there was a way to change that? According to writers Annie Phenix and Patricia Holt, there is a viable, healthy way to heal what was believed un-healable: Choose your own non-biological mother or daughter as an adult. It’s just what these two survivors of severely dysfunctional families did.
“My birth mother grew up as an only child with a paranoid schizophrenic mother and a father who ignored the situation. It seems to have stunted her mothering abilities and for many years, I suffered tremendously from feeling unloved,” Phenix says. “Twenty-three years ago I met a woman who became my chosen mother. She has a daughter who also suffers from schizophrenia and that condition caused her to reject her mother. We both had a need and love to give, so we chose to give it to one another.”
Her chosen mother, Pat Holt says, “Annie and I recognized the hole in each other’s hearts when we worked together on a small newspaper in Texas in 1990. We allowed love back into our lives from the first day we met. From that day forward, I had a daughter whom I could love with all of my heart.”
While the two have not made the “adoption” official, they do everything as a mother and daughter pair. Holt lives with Phenix half of the year in Colorado and spends the other half of the year in Georgia with her eldest biological daughter. Holt’s other children welcomed Phenix into the family as a sister. “They are able to do that because they started out in life with a mother who showed them how to love,” Phenix says. “I am grateful to them every day.”
If the annual celebration of Mother’s Day leaves a pang in your heart – whether because your mother is no longer living or because she rejected a part of you – these two women want to share their fateful decision with those still in pain. On their blog (www.chosenmotherschosendaughters.com), they offer tips on how to find your perfect mother or daughter if the one in your life proves to be toxic to you. The site is aimed at adults and not for those under 18 years of age.
“Neither of us harbor anything other than compassion for where our relatives are on their journey. We just came to the conclusion after many years of therapy and continued birth-familial misery that we wanted to love someone in our lives in these roles. We wanted to share our story as a way for others in the same situation to finally find some peace, forgiveness and most of all – love. The love that only a mother and daughter can share,” Phenix says.
If Mother’s Day brings up a sense of panic or great loss, please visit www.chosenmotherschosendaughters.com and learn more about how to find the love in your life that up until now was not there. # # #
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