Pursue Healing for Your Mother/Daughter Relationship (Review)

God created us to be in community, to be supported and to support others through our relationships. Yet walking through life with those closest to us can be an imposing assignment, especially for mothers and daughters.

Relationship Restoration

That relationship between a mother and daughter proves powerful yet unpredictable, especially in the teenage years when emotions tend to run high. Angry or hurtful words from either party spew all too easily, putting distance between a mother and daughter. And when a heart is wounded, restoration is needed.

The Lord is a god of restoration, and hope survives even when you doubt the relationship can.

The Lord is a god of restoration, and hope survives even when you doubt the relationship can. Click To Tweet

Maybe, despite everything you do, restoration with your mother or daughter remains elusive after years of trying. Hope still abounds, because pursuing restoration refines and transforms our own hearts, not simply those whom we desire a relationship with. Future generations will be positively impacted as we establish a healthy pattern of relating to those we love. 

But how? How do we begin to seek restoration and reconnection? What should we say or not say, do or not do? How do we establish healthier patterns of relating to those we love the most? 

Where to Begin

The mother/daughter duo of Blythe Daniel and Dr. Helen McIntosh offer us a road map to destination restoration. They explore the rebuilding and deepening of the critical mother/daughter relationship in their new book, Mended: Restoring the Hearts of Mothers and Daughters. Blythe and Helen do provide assurance that there is hope for any relationship. But they also provide practical steps to restore frayed relationships, believing each of us holds “a powerful tool—the words that can bring life.” To that end, examples of phrasing and prayers to customize or use as is fill the pages of Mended.

Mended lays out a process of restoration and reconciliation. This important resource encourages mothers and daughters to seek common ground, choosing to value the relationship above differences, ask permission before offering advice, pose the right questions, and pray. Filled with personal stories of the authors’ own successes and failures, Mended keeps circling back to the importance of valuing the relationship above all else. Blythe explains that “the goal of our exchanges is restoration, not being right or wrong.”

When we keep that in mind, we can have peace even if we don’t yet have reconciliation in the relationship. 

When we remember that 'the goal of our exchanges is restoration, not being right or wrong,' we can have peace even if we don't yet have reconciliation in the relationship. #ourmendedhearts Click To Tweet

Move Toward Connectedness

No matter what your past relationship looks like with your mother or daughter, today is a new day and a new opportunity to move toward healing and restoration, to seek connection with God and with your mother or daughter. As the Mended authors point out, “Mending your heart with your mother or daughter is the result of the time you press into loving her, not for who she is but who she is becoming.”

Therefore, follow Blythe’s urging and “use every opportunity you have to draw closer, because you don’t know the influence that any and every gesture can have.” Lead with love, seek God’s guidance, and keep pursuing relationship. It’s always worth it. 

Lead with love, seek God's guidance, and keep pursuing relationship. It's always worth it. Click To Tweet

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.³ Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:2-3 

Reflections: Is your relationship with your mother or daughter strained? Have you sought reconciliation? Have you pursued restoration, perhaps with your mother or daughter, but for sure for your own heart?