Momma Drama: Adult Daughters and Moms in Conflict
By Maryan Pelland

How often do you anticipate a lovely afternoon with your mother--lunch at your favorite place, shopping, a movie--and midway between salad and dessert you find yourselves arguing about silly things?

You comment about how she folds her napkin. She criticizes the route you took to the restaurant. Tempers flare. Most women don't understand why it's so easy to fire up a conflict with mom, and most wish they could stop the dynamic.

Find a way to make healthy choices at a day-long seminar, Saturday, March 4, "The Adult Daughter and Her Mother Relationship." Pastoral guidance counselor Catherine Portera can help you unlock the mystery of "mama-drama" to bring peace and warm friendship to your relationship with the most important woman in your life. The seminar, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Elgin Community College, is intended to help adult daughters break old patterns and heal guilt in an often difficult area of their lives.

"When I do these classes, I speak to women in their sixties, women in their teens and every age in between," says Portera. "All of us have unsettled issues with our mothers, and the women who look for insight and understanding are very lucky."

Portera, a geriatric nurse for 24 years, chose not to pursue a hospital administration career. She decided to earn a bachelor's degree in allied health and education from National Louis University, and her masters in pastoral studies from Loyola University.

While working with aging patients, she learned how many women come to almost unbearable grief over conflicts still unresolved when their mothers die. She decided to bring awareness to daughters, and help them build a better system.

"If we begin to understand that the issues our mother has with us are usually the same conflicts she had with her mother, we can break the pattern and make exciting changes so we don't rehash the same issues with our daughters."

Portera wrote the adult daughter program to help women find resources within themselves, she says.
A firm believer in effective communication as a healing tool, Portera thinks teaching women to recognize and avoid negative words, body language, and critical attitudes when they talk to their mothers goes a long way to diffusing arguments that might otherwise repeat for generations.

She asks women to consider interesting ideas like whether their mother had fewer choices than women of today. She asks them to recognize that it's ok for rules to change from generation to generation in a changing world. She suggests mothers and daughters pick battles carefully. Is the way your mother bakes a pie important enough to cause bickering? Must you make Monday laundry day because your mother did? Is it bad for a daughter to ......

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