Perusing some of the links in my favorite online parenting journal, I ran across an interesting little story of a mother and daughter, told from the daughter’s perspective primarily. (Full article here.) The background goes as follows: the mother is apparently in the hospital, hooked up to tubes and unresponsive. The daughter is at her mother’s bedside begging for her to respond. “Please? Mom? C’mon…you have to wake up. This whole thing is freaking me out! You’re just staring.” Throughout the story, the daughter repeats: “Mom, blink if you can hear me.”
But the daughter’s story is less about getting her mother to hear her and more about what she had always heard from her mother.
The daughter recounts her own descent into an angry young woman. She unloaded her anger on her mother directly through verbal attacks, or indirectly by insulting herself—a double whammy attack plan, i.e. If my insults to you don’t hurt, I’ll criticize the thing you love!
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