Mother & Daughter
"You are like your mother" – I used to take this sentence as an insult. In fact, it is considered one of the deadliest sentences in a relationship among couples therapists. Because no one wants to be like their parents: nitpicky, hysterical, or self-righteous. Or, in the case of my mother: cheeky, demanding, and ready for a fight.
By now I think: I wish I were more like my mother. As a single mother with three children from two men and her own business, she showed me and the patients in her gynecologist practice financial independence, patchwork families, and empowerment – and that at a time when these terms were not yet widely known.
On the contrary: I used to feel that we were freaks and that my mother intimidated many people. Precisely because she lived so self-determined and loudly shared her opinion in every political or social debate. She didn’t let anyone, as the saying goes, "shit on the counter."
After my father’s suicide, it was hard for her to meet a partner on equal footing. She didn’t need a provider, she looked for friends with benefits or younger men who had no money but had humor and could play Supertramp songs on the guitar. As a child, I compared our family to those in the neighborhood and was ashamed that we only had lunch at 3 p.m.
Only as an adult woman do I understand the great emancipatory moment behind it. My mother never wanted to be dependent on a man again, neither financially nor emotionally. She went to work, societal expectations about how she should be as a woman (and when the right time for lunch was) didn’t matter to her, because she had been disappointed by the concept multiple times.
As a daughter, that shaped me. Patriarchal structures are still foreign to me today, which is why I repeatedly clash not only in my profession but also in relationships. But I no longer see it as a flaw, but as a strength of character, even though, unlike my mother, I am not always able to clearly define my needs.
Meanwhile, every fifth child in Germany grows up with only one parent – mostly with the mother. A study by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology scientifically confirmed what I experienced as the daughter of a single mom: children raised by a single mother are just as happy as children who have two parents. I think I owe all my social skills, such as my sense of responsibility and organizational talent, to my single mom, even if I can only appreciate that now.
At the same time, the risk of becoming depressed is up to three times higher for single mothers compared to mothers living in a partnership. I have also experienced this up close: not only the empowerment of a woman in her early 40s but also the price she had to pay for it. Years of loneliness in a phase of life when women are said to become invisible. At 43 years old, even living in a relationship, I understand what that means.
But my mother never gave up, as if she had sensed that life as a retiree would hold more for her than playing golf and babysitting grandchildren. And indeed: at 75 years old, my mother found love for the rest of her life again: John, an American she knew from her university days. They hadn't seen each other for 50 years. But his memories of my mother's uniqueness were so vivid that it only took a few phone calls for their love to rekindle. “Your mother is the cheekiest girl I've ever met,” John said to me when I asked what he liked about my mother. He's right. She still is at almost 80. And that's exactly the spirit I love about her. I hope I will be like her someday.
Alexa von Heyden worked as a fashion journalist and blogger for Vanity Fair, Stern, and Zitty, among others. In 2007, she founded her jewelry label vonhey. She lives in Berlin. Last year, she discovered country life for herself and exchanged her old apartment in the city for a house by the lake in the countryside.