Daughters Betrayed by Their Mothers: Moving from Brokenness to Wholeness

The author, Holli Kenley, is a marriage and family therapist who has grappled with her personal parental difficulties and investigates this trauma by exploring the problems other females endured because of disappointing maternal rearing and how each worked to overcome her perceived childhood harm. Following a questionnaire protocol that was taped and then transcribed, the daughters describe their feelings of betrayal, breached trust, and victimization by their birth parent during their vulnerable youthful innocence. Some of the mothers are plagued by mental problems, alcoholism, narcissism, and other stresses that interfere with the nurturing characteristics expected from an embracing and protective parent. What appears evident is that these children were raised in homes where the mothers themselves required therapy and that this behavior infected the offspring. Nonetheless, these six participants find corrective measures to assuage their pain and steer a path to recovery. The therapy mostly prescribed is distancing themselves from the vexatious mother. While this is an interesting topic, unfortunately, the text is tediously repetitious. The monotonous replay of the transcribed text seamed with over-flowery comments dulls the impact of the study, while one wonders about the veracity of the subjects’ perceptions.