Healing the Grief, the Love, and the Silence Around Your Mother

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tamsen Show – "Healing the Grief, the Love, and the Silence Around Your Mother"

Hosted by: Tamsen Fadal
Guest: Kelly McDaniel, Therapist and Author of Mother Hunger
Release Date: May 11, 2025

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Introduction: Navigating Mother-Daughter Relationships

In this deeply insightful episode of The Tamsen Show, host Tamsen Fadal engages in a heartfelt conversation with Kelly McDaniel, a renowned therapist and author of Mother Hunger. The discussion delves into the intricate dynamics of mother-daughter relationships, exploring themes of grief, love, and the often unspoken challenges that shape adult relationships and personal well-being.

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Defining Mother Hunger

Kelly McDaniel introduces the concept of Mother Hunger, defining it as:

"[Mother Hunger] comes from inadequate nurturing, protection, or guidance. It can impact all relationships."
(Timestamp: 01:30)

Mother Hunger represents a distinct craving or yearning for a quality of love typically associated with mothers. This unmet need can often be confused with romantic love but fundamentally stems from a desire for nurturing, safety, and admiration.

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Attachment Styles and Their Origins

The conversation transitions to attachment theory, elucidating how early bonds with mothers influence adult attachment styles:

"Our first love is our mother. We always want our mom. We will always need our mom."
(Timestamp: 01:21)

McDaniel explains that:

• Anxious Attachment: Results from inconsistent maternal availability, leading individuals to crave more attention and intimacy than comfortable.
• Avoidant Attachment: Develops when mothers are either overly suffocating or emotionally unavailable, causing individuals to downplay their need for closeness.

"Women who are on the more anxious end of the spectrum identify with Mother Hunger pretty readily."
(Timestamp: 11:46)

She also notes that attachment styles are not fixed and can shift based on the dynamics of current relationships.

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Impact on Romantic and Personal Relationships

Mother Hunger extends its influence into all facets of adult relationships. McDaniel highlights how unresolved maternal issues can manifest as:

• Love Addiction: Chasing the euphoric highs of new relationships to compensate for unmet maternal needs.
• Toxic Relationships: Engaging in unhealthy dynamics as a means to fulfill the deep-seated yearning for maternal love.

"We might be looking to our lovers and friends to compensate for where she was actually the one that was hurtful."
(Timestamp: 40:15)

Kelly adds that these patterns often lead to cycles of broken relationships, where individuals fail to recognize the root cause tied back to Mother Hunger.

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Mother Hunger and Emotional Eating

A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the relationship between Mother Hunger and food:

"Mother Hunger... is a word for loneliness. Like I'm alone in the world, I don't have a place to land to feel safe and feel good."
(Timestamp: 43:02)

McDaniel explains that:

• Emotional Eating: Serves as a substitute for the nurturing and comfort that was absent from the maternal relationship.
• Eating Disorders: Often stem from this unmet need, where food becomes a primary means of self-soothing and dealing with emotional voids.

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The Complexity of Grief and Mother's Day

The episode addresses the multifaceted nature of grief associated with Mother's Day, especially for those who have lost their mothers or have estranged relationships:

"Mother's Day is so difficult... those projects to bring home to mom... How tragic that is."
(Timestamp: 34:52)

Key points include:

• Ambiguous Loss: Feeling the absence of a mother who is physically present but emotionally unavailable creates a state of unresolved grief.
• Frozen Grief and Shame: Society often overlooks the complexities of grieving a mother, leading to emotions being suppressed or misunderstood.

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Caregiving in Midlife

As women enter midlife, many face the dual role of caring for aging parents while also managing their personal lives:

"Women feeling really guilty when they feel resentful about needing to take care of their mother... Facing burnout."
(Timestamp: 31:41)

McDaniel emphasizes the importance of:

• Self-Compassion: Understanding that needing to care for oneself while caring for a parent is natural and necessary.
• Setting Boundaries: Learning to balance caregiving responsibilities without succumbing to resentment or burnout.

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Forgiveness and Healing

A pivotal theme is the role of forgiveness in overcoming Mother Hunger:

"Forgiveness is something we really do to loosen up any resentment we feel... Until we forgive our mothers, we might be looking to our lovers and friends to compensate."
(Timestamp: 40:15)

McDaniel outlines that:

• Forgiving Our Mothers: Helps reduce the "apology ache" and prevents projecting unresolved issues onto others.
• Healing Environment: Creating a safe space to acknowledge and name these feelings is essential for healing.

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Practical Advice for Healing

Towards the end of the episode, McDaniel offers actionable strategies for those grappling with Mother Hunger:

1. Recognize and Name the Issue:

   • Understanding and labeling the feelings of Mother Hunger can initiate the healing process.

   "The correct environment begins with a name. If the name resonates, the body's already like, ah. And healing begins."
   (Timestamp: 22:06)

2. Healthy Self-Care vs. Indulgence:

   • Differentiating between nurturing oneself authentically and succumbing to indulgent behaviors.

   "There's a difference between healthy self-care and nurturing and indulgence."
   (Timestamp: 47:21)

3. Seek Professional Help:

   • Engaging with therapists who can guide individuals through understanding and addressing their attachment issues.

4. Build a Support Network:

   • Surrounding oneself with nurturing, trustworthy individuals who can provide the guidance and protection that may have been lacking.

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Notable Quotes

• Kelly McDaniel:

  "I lost my mom when I was 20 years old, and it really shaped everything. How I love, how, how I cope, how I show up in relationships."
  (Timestamp: 00:55)

• Guest Speaker:

  "Our first love is our mother. We always want our mom. We will always need our mom."
  (Timestamp: 01:21)

• Guest Speaker:

  "Eating is like love, it's nurturing. So it depends on the spectrum of deprivation."
  (Timestamp: 17:28)

• Kelly McDaniel:

  "If something in this conversation hit home, you are not alone."
  (Timestamp: 48:57)

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Conclusion: Rewriting Your Story

The episode concludes with a powerful message of hope and empowerment. Both Tamsen Fadal and Kelly McDaniel emphasize that regardless of past experiences, it is possible to heal and rewrite one’s personal narrative:

"You can rewrite your story at any age."
(Timestamp: 48:59)

Listeners are encouraged to seek understanding, embrace forgiveness, and engage in self-care practices to overcome the lingering effects of Mother Hunger and cultivate healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

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For More Information:

• Kelly McDaniel:

  • Instagram: @kellymcdanieltherapy
  • Website: kellymcdanieltherapy.com

• Book: Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel

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Connect with The Tamsen Show:

For more authentic conversations and weekly episodes, follow Tamsen Fadal on Instagram @tamsenfadal and subscribe to The Tamsen Show on your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Kelly McDaniel]

I lost my mom when I was 20 years old, and it really shaped everything. How I love, how, how I cope, how I show up in relationships.

[Tamsen Fadal]

But even if your mom is still here, the relationship might be complicated. Maybe she wasn't emotionally available. Maybe you were close, but maybe you've always felt a gap you just couldn't name. Today's conversation is for anybody who's ever felt that ache. Because what we didn't get in childhood often shows up in our adult relationships.

[Guest Speaker]

Our first love is our mother. We always want our mom. We will always need our mom.

[Tamsen Fadal]

My guest today is Kelly McDaniel, therapist and author of the book Mother Hunger.

[Guest Speaker]

Mother Hunger comes from inadequate nurturing protection or guidance. It can impact all relationships.

[Tamsen Fadal]

She's here to help us understand how our earliest bond shape our patterns in love and how to finally break free from what's been holding us back.

[Guest Speaker]

I think what surprised me is there was nothing in my clinical training that prepared me for this.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Let's get into it. Kelly, it is good to see you.

[Guest Speaker]

Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's wonderful to be here.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Well, I'm excited. This conversation is going to go a lot of ways, I think, just because it's so personal to me. But I was excited to talk because I feel like, you know, looking through the book and reading it and just getting into parts of it that were really personal to me, it changed a lot of my perspective of some different things. So I want to start by asking you, how did you get involved in this, in this area, in this specific space?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, it was an accident. There was no term Mother Hunger. But I remember when I was a young woman and I was in my graduate program for English literature, and I read Adrienne Rich. She wrote this beautiful book of woman born. And in that book it said the loss of the mother to the daughter and the daughter to the mother is the essential female tragedy. And that hit me. I didn't know why, but my whole body reacted. The fact that a mother, daughter could be central in any way was already kind of mind blowing. But then to really acknowledge that that loss is tragic felt very true to me. Fast forward 20 years and some other trainings, and I'm working in as a clinician with women primarily. And these are women that are struggling with things that most of us struggle with. Relationships and food. And so if either had become addictive and we were distilling it a bit like, what's happening? I heard over and over again, I want my mom.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Wow. It's interesting that it's relationships and food. Like, I get relationships. And I think the food part surprised me, but didn't surprise me. So let's define. Let's start at the beginning and define what is mother hunger.

[Guest Speaker]

I define it as a distinct craving or yearning for a quality of love that we actually assign to mothers. This yearning can get confused with romantic love, but it's a craving for nurturing and safety and for someone to admire.

[Kelly McDaniel]

It's mother to daughter. But what about mother and son? Is that a different kind of relationship?

[Guest Speaker]

Yes, I find that because mother hunger forms early on in the lifespan, generally between the age of 0 and 5, every infant born needs the same thing, nurturing and protection. So boys, girls, doesn't matter. Human infants need those things. Not because we're needy or broken, but because we're human.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

Where I see it, change for men is, and I'm speaking primarily about cisgendered heterosexual men, is that as they move into the world of men, they may look outside their mother for guidance, whereas daughters don't have to. We can keep the focus on our mother, ideally. I also find that men don't necessarily identify with this term. I think men have been taught from a very young age, don't feel, don't trust. And so emotions are not accessible. And then if you associate something with mom, it might be a sign of weakness. So I find that men will speak about their mothers in very reverential ways, respectful ways, or not speak about her at all. And as men grow, if they are fortunate enough to be attached to a nurturing female partner or any partner who's nurturing, they don't feel mother hunger because they're getting nurtured. Women are not generally getting nurtured in their primary relationships.

[Kelly McDaniel]

That's so fascinating. Okay, so I guess I want to. I know that, you know, there's a Lot of different areas of mother hunger, whether it's like me who lost a mother at an early age, or it's somebody who has their mother but doesn't maybe have that, you know, connection or is estranged. I mean, there's so many different things. And I know, you know, when I was reading your book, you talk about the. I think the part that really hit me was the. The adoption part of when children are adopted at an early age. So, you know my story. But for anybody that doesn't, I. My mother got sick when I was 14 years old and. And I became kind of the mother, you know, during. During that. Because that's usually what happens when a mother sick. And I lost her at 20 and didn't of horrible grief, obviously. And I. I always wondered if relationships were, you know, based off of that. But. But now as I go forward at 54 years old, I think about her more and differently. So that's what was. That's why I was so excited to have you on here to talk about this, because I feel like there's so many different level or layers that I've seen through the different decades that I've. That I've been around. Is that normal?

[Guest Speaker]

So normal. Mother hunger, I think, exists on a spectrum because mother hunger comes from inadequate nurturing, protection, or guidance for some daughters. They may have had a lot of cozy, loving moments with mom, but didn't always feel safe, let's say, or couldn't really look to her for guidance because either she died during formative years or she didn't get the chance to develop herself. So she can't necessarily guide her daughter into full development. So depending on which developmental need was missing, or if all three were missing, it can definitely impact the degree of mother hunger.

[Kelly McDaniel]

So where does that show up later in life? Or how does that start showing up, especially in the. In the. I guess anytime but in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and keep going. It's different in each one of those decades.

[Guest Speaker]

I find that it is very different in each one of those decades that younger women in their 20s and 30s, unless their mother died young, are not necessarily ready or able to examine deeply the relationship with mom. And I think there are lots of reasons for that. First of all, as women, we always want our mom. We will always need our mom. So to question that relationship could be really, deeply threatening to the most important bond that we have. And I think Mother Nature protects us from that. So it may take a woman going through a rite of passage, such as marriage or childbirth, or the loss of something Very significant. When she really, again needs her mother. And if mom is not able to show up, it's more evident later in life than as children. When Mother Nature can't let us see if mom's not showing up, we think the problem's us. Let's say mom can't be present when we really need her. It doesn't occur to us that maybe she's having a bad day or not feeling well. Instead, what we'll come up with is a different way to react. So maybe we get her attention and that forms our personality.

[Kelly McDaniel]

What are some of the ways that you see women in particular? I know we're kind of generalizing here, but when a woman has lost a mother or is not close to a mother or is estranged, how does that show up in a relationship? Does that show up in a relationship, romantic relationships, or all relationships that we're talking about?

[Guest Speaker]

It can impact all relationships. So if we think about this for all of us, our first love is our mother. We fall in love in utero. We hear her voice. We know the sound of her heartbeat, we know her smell. And so when we come into the world, we're designed to stay close to her. Based on how that unfolds, it's going to set our attachment style. Do we attach anxiously? Do we attach avoidantly? Are we a little disorganized or are we securely, happily attached? Now, most of us who are securely, happily attached do not end up in my office.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Understood? The one. The ones that do. What are those different attachments? If we break down each one of those.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. It's really nice that attachment theory has become part of mainstream.

[Tamsen Fadal]

It's got a word.

[Guest Speaker]

Yes. And I think more of us are kind of finding good information about what does it mean to be anxious or avoidant. But it's good to keep in mind these terms were created for research purposes, not so that we label ourselves. Not for Instagram, not for just Instagram, exactly. But there's some real validity to seeing how we predominantly attach, because our attachment system is a biological drive that is the strongest drive in our entire body, stronger than the need even to protect ourselves. So how we attach is essential. And we learn that with our first primary caregiver. So let's say we needed more. We wanted more attention, we needed more attunement, we needed more presence. We're probably going to end up on closer, on the insecure spectrum of anxiety. We're going to feel anxious, we're going to want and need more than we're comfortable with. I find that Women who are on the more anxious end of the spectrum identify with mother hunger pretty readily.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

As soon as they hear the term, their belly recognizes it. Like, oh, that's what this is. Huge relief. On the flip side, though, let's say a woman experienced her mother as maybe suffocating. Little too much mom. Or there was so little that at a very young age, the need for her shut down. Like, I just won't need anything, and then it won't hurt that she's not here.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

So whether we become needless wantless or we've been a little suffocated, we may be on the avoidance spectrum, where we're just like, I don't identify a need. I don't need relational closeness. The truth is, we're all somewhere on that spectrum if we are not securely attached to. Right. The science says 50% of us are securely attached.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Wow.

[Guest Speaker]

I find that really generous.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Do you?

[Guest Speaker]

Yes, I do. Because. Probably because my perspective. I've talked to thousands of women who did not experience enough nurturing or protection or guidance and don't feel securely attached. So it can impact relationships with friends, with lovers, with children that you may or may not have, with employers, with everyone. Because our relationship with our mother sets the template for all others.

[Kelly McDaniel]

If somebody is listening to this right now and they're trying to figure out whether or not this is something that they're. They're dealing with. I mean, obviously, if you've lost a mother, that's. That's a little more obvious if you have a mother here, but you might not have that closeness, but you don't know exactly. You know, if. If you fall into one of these categories, how do you identify that in yourself?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, it's not easy. And the reason it's so difficult is because of the primary nature of this bond, how important this bond is. Our body's really designed to keep us unaware, to protect us. To protect us. Mother Nature is very gentle. And so it's. Actually, there's a researcher, psychologist Jennifer Fried, who wrote the book Betrayal Blindness, and she wrote it for women who have experienced infidelity in their romantic relationships. And how we can just not know. We can truly not know what's happening. We don't see it. Mother Nature has blinders on us. And when we find out, it can be terribly shocking and really difficult. So I took that theory to apply. What happens when a little girl has a mother who can be frightening? Mother Nature will protect us from knowing that. Or let's say that she's just unavailable or not feeling well, but we need her. We're going to miss the ways she's unavailable. And then we may find ourselves attracted to friends who are not available or lovers who are not available.

[Kelly McDaniel]

So let's talk about the two areas. It can go into relationships, it can go into food relationships. With regard to partners, what kind of relationships would you find that person unavailable? Is one type of attachment.

[Guest Speaker]

Right, right. You know, and it's interesting because whoever we're in relationship with, we may find our attachment style sliding on the spectrum.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

For example, for me, if I am attracting a partner who is more on the anxious end of the spectrum, perhaps more needy, wants more of me than my intimacy threshold might be comfortable with, I'm going to look avoidant. I'm going to back off. Flip side, if I'm in a relationship with someone who's more avoidant, they have lots of other priorities. I'm not one of them. I'm going to look a lot more anxious. That's really normal. That's part of the spectrum. And what I have found with my clients and with myself is that in romantic relationships specifically, I may flip flop. So if I've experienced a romantic relationship as a little suffocating, I was with someone who was more anxious than I. The next time I'm dating someone or intrigued, probably they're going to be more avoidant.

[Kelly McDaniel]

The other way.

[Guest Speaker]

Yeah, the other way.

[Kelly McDaniel]

And then how does it apply to food in the relationship? And why is there a relationship with food when it comes to mothers?

[Guest Speaker]

Such a good question. And it's interesting because when I was thinking of writing this book, my clients were like, please talk about food. Really. I think it impacts so many of us as women in this culture and the eating disorder. Language can be very helpful if it's critical.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

But for those of us that are on a spectrum of eating that we're not really comfortable with, it doesn't always help. So I have come to understand mother hunger. And I use the word hunger because hunger is biological. We have to eat. The need for love is biological. We have to attach if that attachment doesn't happen early. And let's say we're born to a mother who's not available very often and we're passed around a bunch of caregivers and some feed us well and some don't. Or let's say we're born to a mother who tries her best. She's holding us, she's feeding us, nursing us, but she's not really comfortable and we're not really comfortable in her arms. The first experience we have of feeling good may come from having a full belly.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Oh, wow. Okay. When we're full, that's a comfort.

[Guest Speaker]

It literally takes away a hunger pain.

[Kelly McDaniel]

So does. Does that mother hunger, though, go right into eating disorder or food, food relationships or different types of relationships with food? What is that correlation?

[Guest Speaker]

Whenever I work with women, whether they're healing their relationship with their body and food or with lovers and friends, the root is mother hunger.

[Kelly McDaniel]

But did that surprise you? I mean, it just keeps coming up over and over. How did that happen that you realized that?

[Guest Speaker]

I think what surprised me is there was nothing in my clinical training that prepared me for this. It wasn't discussed. The primacy of early attachment was not being looked at. And so I was needing to go find other ways to train myself. One of the anthropologist authors I really enjoyed learning from was Helen Fisher. Dr. Helen Fisher. She talks about how when we fall in love, it's temporary madness. We literally lose our mind. And that's universal because there's so much dopamine when we fall in love, and we need that dopamine to feel good. They did brain scans on the brain in love and notice that the same parts of the brain light up with love as cocaine. And so when you think about how primary this need for love is, if it's not getting met in a healthy way, we're going to find a substitute. We have to. And a lot of times, the first substitute we have access to before the high that comes from cocaine or alcohol or work is food.

[Kelly McDaniel]

It totally makes sense. All right, let's talk about the different types of love there are, because I know that you've talked about toxic love before, healthy love. There's a lot of different types that come out of this. Does that all stem from. From your mother?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, let's look again at the word mother when we think of what does a mother do? I was not sure when I was going to write this book. I was seeing Mother Hunger in my office.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

I had named it. I didn't know how to operationalize it or write about it. So I looked up in the dictionary, what's the definition of mothering? And it said, to care for someone as a mother would. How is that helpful? So I think there's a real blind spot here culturally, about the primacy of the mother. Child dyad.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah.

[Guest Speaker]

How important it is. With that said, any adult who has the time, the willingness to nurture, protect, and guide the child can do that. It doesn't have to be the biological mother, but it needs to Be a primary attachment figure who's spending most of the time with this child in order for secure attachment to happen. So even though we're saying mother hunger, I like to think of mother in terms of those three things. When we need a mother, we need nurturing. When we need a mother, we need protection and we need guidance.

[Kelly McDaniel]

There are women that are not yet grieving. The lack of a mother. Do you notice that it comes up years later? I mean, I find myself oftentimes when I said, oh, my mom's not alive. Someone will say, I'm sorry. And I go, it's okay. I don't even want to talk about it. Not because. Because I don't want to make them uncomfortable.

[Guest Speaker]

Exactly.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Not. Not because. Because I don't want to make them uncomfortable. So I don't know if that's a form of grief. I don't know if that's a form of us protecting somebody else. But can we talk a little bit about grief? And I don't think that just ends in the first three years of loss, whatever type of loss it is.

[Guest Speaker]

I love that you said whatever kind of loss it is, because a lot of mother hunger is ambiguous loss, meaning unless she died, if she's physically there but emotionally not there, we're going to feel the loss but not know what it is or why. So a lot of mother hunger is very ambiguous. And for this reason, and because it's taboo to talk about our mothers in any authentic kind of way, I think the essence of mother hunger is twofold. One is frozen grief. The grief for not having access to her in the way we need her, whether she's alive or alive or gone. Freezes in her body because it's disenfranchised. Where do we go to talk about it? There's not a support group. If we find out we have cancer, we know we need support in order to go through the healing process of what's going to be involved, the treatments and the visits to doctors.

[Kelly McDaniel]

There's a roadmap.

[Guest Speaker]

There's a roadmap for grief so the grief doesn't get frozen. It can flow with something that's disenfranchised in our culture that we don't acknowledge or we don't know about. We don't have a name for it. The grief will freeze in the body. That can cause all kinds of complications that we can talk about. But the other element is shame. I think for lots of daughters, lots of us, to even identify that maybe we didn't feel loved by our mother is going to trigger a real primal sense of shame. What's wrong with me that she couldn't love me? What's wrong with me that I lost her? What did I do wrong?

[Kelly McDaniel]

How do you move past that with people that come to see you? Whether it's the frozen grief or the. What did I do wrong?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, moving past it can take quite some time and tenderness. And I find that our bodies, the wisdom of our body knows what we need for healing. We're designed to heal, actually. But the body will wait till there's the correct environment. The correct environment begins with a name. If the name resonates, the body's already like, ah. And healing begins. But then we also need those missing elements.

[Kelly McDaniel]

A name, like a person's name or.

[Guest Speaker]

Identifying, like Mother Hunger.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Oh, got it. Okay.

[Guest Speaker]

Like, until I knew what I didn't know what it was.

[Kelly McDaniel]

You didn't even know how to identify. You didn't even know how to identify it?

[Guest Speaker]

Yep. You don't even know what it is. And I. People feel this way sometimes about the right diagnoses, right? Sure. As soon as somebody says, oh, well, maybe you're struggling with attention deficit problems, it's like, oh. But it's interesting that what children and infants need, nurturing, protection, guidance. I find that that's what my clients need to heal. So if I can provide the environment that feels nurturing and safe and. And appropriate guidance, which is where I needed to go get a lot more training because I wasn't taught this. That's what creates healing.

[Kelly McDaniel]

What do you think?

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[Guest Speaker]

I believe we live in a culture that sentimentalizes motherhood, romanticizes motherhood, does not give motherhood the right amount of study, not unlike what we're finding with women and menopause or any health issue. The funding isn't there, the priority isn't there. And so a lot of us are wandering around going, what's wrong with my body? As we enter menopause. I think the same with mothering. Mothers aren't taught every mother is first a daughter. Where do we learn from our mothers, from our grandmothers, where did they learn? And so I don't think, I think psychology, just like medicine, is not well informed about the primacy of this relationship.

[Kelly McDaniel]

It's interesting you say that, people walking around trying to figure it out, because I do, I do feel like that's what it's like in midlife. I feel like there's no more of that roadmap for women. And I, I do wonder whether you have a mother or not, how midlife is defined in that second half by that relationship with the mother. You know, whether or not you, you look at your mother and see them going through certain things as they've gotten older. Like how we're going to live in the second half is probably going to be very different from how our, at least our grandmothers lived because we're going to have longevity. We're probably going to have a little better health in a lot of ways because we're paying attention to that stuff. But I just wonder what those relationships in the past due to the next chapter for us.

[Guest Speaker]

Such a powerful question. The relationship with our mothers changes throughout the lifespan. And I find that some mothers are more transparent with their daughters than others about their own menopause journey. I think every menopause journey is as unique as each mother daughter bond. Perhaps my mother, for example, if you were to talk to her about menopause, she'd say, menopause, I didn't have any problems. No problems at all, you know, never. But in hindsight, I can remember I didn't know what it was. Seeing some mood swings and some unpredictable behavior, and maybe I even saw some hot flashes, but it was just written off as, oh, it's just hot in here. But I did come to it totally unprepared because she sailed through it. So I thought, it's not going to happen to me.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Or she thinks she sailed through it.

[Guest Speaker]

She thinks she sailed through it. And I do feel like, for her mother and for herself, that it wasn't permitted to even admit, I'm struggling. There was a real ethic of, I got this. I can do everything.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Why do you think we have that as women? Why do you think there is that shamefulness around any type of suffering or admitting suffering?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I think when we live in a culture that values pull yourself up by your bootstraps and independence more than interdependence and the fact that we need each other, anything that would make us feel a little vulnerable might also leave us feeling worn down, that we are below someone with more capacity, someone with more power. And that's a threatening feeling.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah, there's no question about that. It's interesting you brought up menopause, because the number one statement I constantly get is, my mother never talked to me about this.

[Guest Speaker]

Right.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Every time no one says, my dad never told me about menopause, they say, my mother never told me about this. So I do think there's a lot of looking back during this time in life about trying to understand why. Feeling a little let down by that, even though it's not your mom's fault or any other female figure, I do think there's a little bit of that disappointment there.

[Guest Speaker]

Which reminds me, one of the things I will ask a woman when we're working together to help her identify her story. What happened when you got your period for the first time? Had you been told about it? Was your mother There. Did you know what was happening? Do you remember what happened?

[Kelly McDaniel]

What does that show you?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, our menstruation story can tell us a lot about the mother daughter bond.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah. If the mother's there present, willing to talk about it, open.

[Guest Speaker]

If she had prepared her daughter, if she was celebratory, or if she was repulsed or dismissive. Generally, how a mother approaches menstruation for her daughter is how she may feel about her own body, her own menstrual cycle. So I think it's just really positive when I hear of a mother who celebrated it with her daughter. Those stories are not as common as the ones where daughters would begin to bleed and didn't know where her mom was or didn't know what was happening.

[Kelly McDaniel]

I'm curious. You know, we get to this age in midlife where we're oftentimes either taking care of parents now the daughter is. Is mothering. We're getting back out there on the dating scene. Sometimes if someone's gone through a divorce or, or widowed or starting over again. So I want to hit those two areas first. I want to talk about the daughter, you know, mothering elderly parents, because I think that's a topic that keeps coming up over and over. And there's a lot of confusion around that in your mind about how that's supposed to work.

[Guest Speaker]

You're so right. And I hear over and over again, women feeling really guilty when they feel resentful about needing to take care of their mother, about being dutiful, because if they weren't adequately cared for and now they need to turn around and provide care, the ache will re emerge and it may come with anger and resentment. And I see a lot of women facing burnout when this is happening.

[Kelly McDaniel]

What do you do if you're one of those women dealing with that right now or feeling that type of resentment?

[Guest Speaker]

I think it's helpful just to know that it's okay. That of course, if you were not adequately mothered to turn around now and mother the mother hurts, physically hurts, and it's tiring and you can't really explain it to her. And it may feel like nobody understands and you may feel like a really ungrateful daughter if you try to talk to anyone. So you get lonely. You don't know what to do with these feelings. And so I just think if maybe hearing this can soothe the part of you that feels like a bad girl. You're not a bad girl. If you feel burned out or tired or you just don't want to do it.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah, it's I said it keeps coming up over and over again. Let's talk about women that are starting to date again because I do think that we're seeing that. I think that it can be a time where you're either looking for companionship long term in life, you know, over there for the second half. But there's a lot of those things that are left over from mother hunger.

[Guest Speaker]

Mother hunger definitely impacts dating at any age, whether that's when we're teenagers and we're new falling in love. And don't you wish someone had told you you're never going to forget those first loves?

[Kelly McDaniel]

Why is that? Why is that?

[Guest Speaker]

I think they're so impactful. And our brain, because we have a woman's brain, yes, of course, is designed for relational connection. So every relational connection that goes into our heart and penetrates, we're going to remember it. But I remember as a little girl in a developing adolescent, people saying, oh, you know, you're young, you'll get over it. What I have found is that with women with mother hunger, which means on some way we are insecurely attached. Sometimes we don't get over those early, early heartbreaks that come from love that doesn't go well. But the truth is, whoever we had a crush on, whoever we want to date, whoever we fall in love with is part of our story of how we attach.

[Kelly McDaniel]

All right, Mother's Day, I want to discuss this one because this is one of those ones where after my mother died, I avoided malls. I didn't want to talk about it. I completely, you know, shut that off. It can be really triggering for women, whether your mother's here or not. Just depending on the relationship advice. You have to kind of emotionally protect yourself or at least care for yourself during these times.

[Guest Speaker]

Mother's Day is so difficult. I hear so many stories of women that would stand in front of the row of Hallmark cards reading them, and not one single card felt authentic, felt real, like, I can't pick up this card because that's not the way my mother, that's not how I experience her. And I've talked to women who lost their mothers and on Mother's Day, being in school and there are things you're supposed to be doing, artwork or projects to bring home to mom. How tragic that is. I have noticed, and I don't know if you've noticed this, but in the last three years, I've noticed that some social media and marketing campaigns have started to develop some sensitivity to this. They may even put a trigger warning out if you don't want to hear about us or about Mother's Day, block us during May. I've been encouraged by this, that there's a recognition that this is not going to feel good for everybody. And it can be difficult as a daughter. It can be difficult as a woman who wanted children and didn't get to have them. It can be difficult for mothers who lost children. It is difficult in so many ways and speaks right to the fact that our culture sentimentalizes, it minimizes what an essential, important relationship this is.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Yeah, I agree. I. So it's funny, I don't know whether the advice is to ignore social media or to just be. I mean, you know, you don't want to go around ignoring everything. But I think that's a tough. Really a tough day. I have figured out, like, my own methodology of dealing with it, which I just move on and that's it. And I don't know if that's good or bad or denial, but I have noticed those warnings now, or people identifying mothers in different ways. They'll say, like, you know, somebody who is like a mother to me, somebody who is, you know, it doesn't have to be somebody that biologically had a, you know, that took care of you.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. Or saw you. Maybe it was a third grade teacher who every time you walked into her classroom, her eyes lit up. She clearly took delight in you. That makes an impact. And that is who you could think about on Mother's Day, whether it was an aunt, a friend, a babysitter, a teacher, whoever gave you a sense, even if it was only for 30 seconds.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Right? Right.

[Guest Speaker]

That you are delightful. That's something to think about on Mother's Day.

[Kelly McDaniel]

So do we need to forgive our mothers in order to find healthy love?

[Guest Speaker]

I think we need to forgive our mothers in order to be happy within ourselves. Forgiveness is something we really do to loosen up any resentment we feel to let ourselves off the hook of being angry or hurt or jealous.

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Kelly McDaniel]

You know I'm all about being comfortable.

[Tamsen Fadal]

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[Guest Speaker]

Mother whether she's alive or not. We can forgive our mother whether she apologizes or not. One of the terms I came up with in mother hunger is called an apology ache. Most adult daughters that I talk to are aching for their mother to see them acknowledge where she was hurtful, not available and say I'm sorry and change the behavior. Not just say I'm sorry, oh poor me, but literally change the behavior. What I find is that in forgiving our Mothers, that apology ache gets smaller and then we don't project it onto our lovers and friends. But until we forgive our mothers, we might be looking to our lovers and friends to compensate for where she was actually the one that was hurtful.

[Kelly McDaniel]

If somebody is dealing with food as a result of things and emotional eating, are there some tips that you can give us to help somebody who may say, I'm an emotional eater?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, being an emotional eater is also part of being human. Eating is like love, it's nurturing. So it depends on the spectrum of deprivation. Am I working with a woman who's feeling deprived that you starve yourself? I'm going to encourage that. Eating well is a form of self care and fuel and keeps us healthy in life. Sure, but that's going to take a long time. If I'm working with a woman who's struggling to find balance because she overeats again, awareness of health is going to help. Knowing that eating well is part of self nurturing. And the best way I found to ask a woman is, is, would you feed your daughter that way even if you don't have a daughter? Right, the hypothetical daughter. Would you feed her the way you're eating?

[Kelly McDaniel]

What is the most important thing for I think women to take away from this? I think that, you know, women, we struggle during this time with a lot of different things. Many will lose mothers as they go into, as they go into midlife or already have or don't have the relationship. Is there one key, something that they can take away from it? Because I do think there's guilt and shame and sometimes anger wrapped up in all these things.

[Guest Speaker]

You're exactly right.

[Kelly McDaniel]

And you don't even know a couple.

[Guest Speaker]

Of things I'd want to say. I want to validate anger. That part of grief is anger. Part of grief is blame. And those are stages to go through not to feel guilty about anger when it gets mixed with shame. And shame is part of mother hunger. Because mother hunger is essentially a word for loneliness. Like I'm alone in the world, I don't have a place to land to feel safe and feel good.

[Kelly McDaniel]

If you don't have that, what do you do? Do you look for other people that can fill that role? I mean, I'm sure you fill that role for a lot of your people that come to see you. And I'm sure that's not easy, but I'm sure you do.

[Guest Speaker]

It's an honor. I love.

[Kelly McDaniel]

That's so nice to hear.

[Guest Speaker]

I love what I get to do. But yes, because we're human, we're going to need to fill those needs that were lost.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Right.

[Guest Speaker]

So if I missed out on nurturing, I'm probably going to really need to get regular massage. I'm going to need to eat really well, take walks, take naps, rest. How many of us saw our mother's rest?

[Kelly McDaniel]

Never, never, never.

[Guest Speaker]

It was seen as lazy, but it's actually really a form of nurturing. And if we didn't see our mother nurture herself, chances are we didn't see her nurture us either. Let's say that we grew up not feeling very safe. We're going to really want to curate an environment of safety and may not know how to do that. That's where guidance really helps. Depending on the degree of mother hunger, that guidance could come from friends, family, even religious institutions. But more extreme forms of mother hunger, namely third degree mother hunger, which is a category that I came up with that explains what happens to the attachment system when a daughter has a mother who was abusive, who was actually frightening. So the object of attachment that we desperately need and want is also terrifying. So we learn to bond in fear.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Is that what we do in relationships down the line?

[Guest Speaker]

And then that's what we do in relationships. We will attract partners that other people might look at and say, oh, that's a bad idea. That person's kind of scary. But we don't see it because we grew up bonding to somebody who was untrustworthy. Our love attachment system thrives on that, knows how to deal with it. That feels like love. And it can take a long time and many broken relationships before a woman may pause and say, I'm the common denominator here. Something in me is hurting and needs attention. And that's when professional help really helps to identify what was lost. Identify that when you attach to someone who was dangerous, it really hijacked your attachment system and you're gonna need to take a break from relationships.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Is that. Is that the only way really to do it at that point? Because I think people jump from relationship to relationship to fill that void.

[Guest Speaker]

To fill the void, Exactly. Exactly. Because we can't stand those.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Is that toxic love? Is that really what that is? Or what do you define that as? Just unhealthy relationships?

[Guest Speaker]

Well, I've called it different things. When I see a pattern, a woman who's struggling to break the cycle of one relationship after another, and they're starting to get progressively more dangerous, let's say, or more risky, or her value system is getting compromised more and more, that's when it Starts to look like an addiction where we do something. And if you think about falling in love, that dopamine high, the temporary insanity. Right. It's pretty euphoric.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

We feel really bad.

[Kelly McDaniel]

You want it to last forever.

[Guest Speaker]

We want it to last forever. And there's a real reason this is biologically so strong. But we can get really attached to those dopamine hormones when we have mother hunger because we're hungry, we're starving, and that feels like what we need. So it's easy to get trapped in a cycle of falling in love without staying in love.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Got it. Got it. So you're still chasing. You're chasing the high.

[Guest Speaker]

That's right.

[Kelly McDaniel]

You're constantly chasing the high.

[Guest Speaker]

That's right.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Advice you would give to your younger self. As we wrap up right now, there's a lot of young women that listen and you know, I think that younger women are learning a lot from social media for it's good and it's bad about how to take care of themselves and learning how to nurture a little bit. But do you have any advice for young women that might be listening to this and struggling with mother hunger?

[Guest Speaker]

I think there's a difference between healthy self care and nurturing and indulgence.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

Right. That I think a lot of what we see on social media might err on indulgence and not necessarily teach what the body needs to heal a lack of nurturing. We are touch driven creatures. We need touch as much almost as we need food to thrive. And a lot of women learn to get that touch need met by being sexually desirable.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Sure.

[Guest Speaker]

So we may have to unlearn some unhealthy ways we've gone about getting nurturing because it ends up not being very nurturing.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Right, right.

[Guest Speaker]

We may objectify ourselves, we may put ourselves in harm's way because we're so hungry. So we're going to have to find healthy ways for touch so that we're not craving that.

[Kelly McDaniel]

You're so lovely.

[Guest Speaker]

Well, you are too. And I'm just wondering how you're doing with this conversation.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Oh, I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, I've had a lot of therapy.

[Guest Speaker]

Me too. 30 years actually.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Kelly, where can we find you?

[Guest Speaker]

I'm on instagram @kelly mcdaniel therapy. And you can go to my website also kellymcdanieltherapy.com where you'll find out if I'm doing any speaking or sending out a newsletter.

[Kelly McDaniel]

Kelly, thank you so much. It was good having you.

[Guest Speaker]

Really such a pleasure to be here. And thank you so much for your powerful work on menopause.

[Tamsen Fadal]

If something in this conversation hit home, you are not alone. Love addiction, Emotional eating, Toxic relationships. They're not personal failures. They're survival responses to unmet needs. The good news?

[Kelly McDaniel]

You can rewrite your story at any age.

[Tamsen Fadal]

If this conversation moved you like it did me, please leave a five star review and share this episode with a friend.

[Kelly McDaniel]

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

[Tamsen Fadal]

For more honest conversations and every week. And thanks so much for being with us. I'll see you next time on the Tamsen Show. The Tamsen show is an original production by Authentic Wave executive producers Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett and Rebecca Grierson. Brand director Johanna Ofznick. Our line producer is Sabrina Array. Editing by Zach Smith and Marquis Harris. The podcasting revolution gave voice to millions, but now its soul is up for grabs. Can podcasting survive big tech and big money? What's a podcast? The Revolution Redefined tells the story of how we got here and where we can go next. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.