The Mother-Daughter Connection

I learned that sometimes you must be your child's advocate and other times you must help them find their own way.

A few months ago, something magical happened. The children’s book my daughter Colleen and I had been writing and manifesting for years got published by Briley & Baxter Publications and on our pre-sale date, became a #1 Best Seller on Amazon. “Nelson’s Garden” is a sweet tale that had been percolating for a while. Our story is based on a chance meeting with a local legend named Nelson McNutt from Weston, MA, who lived to be 105.   Every summer morning, we’d see him tending his garden. In a grand gesture, Nelson would tip his hat as we drove by. One morning, we pulled over to say hello, and he said:  Top of the morning to you, I’m Nelson McNutt.  At that moment, we were enchanted by him and the seed for our story was planted.

The book tells the story of a little girl’s wish to learn how to grow a garden and stars Belle and Rosie, Colleen’s daughters…my grandbabies!  Pretty magical, right?

Writing a children’s book series with my daughter has been the kind of deep, satisfying joy that is hard to describe. She’s my best friend. I am her person and she is mine. We complement each other. We’re a team. We are connected.

Colleen Esposito and our own Candy O’Terry. The mother-daughter duo penned the beautiful story Nelson’s Garden, about meaningful friendships.

This soul-to-soul connection with my daughter changed my life. Can I tell you why?

Because I am a motherless daughter.

I was only 14 when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was 48 and her cancer was relentless, moving from breast to breast, from bone to liver.  I was 18 when she died and as the only child of divorced parents, I was thrust into adulthood. The loss of a mother at such a pivotal time in life is explained beautifully in the groundbreaking book “Motherless Daughters” by Hope Edelman. “When a young woman is experiencing developmental milestones and her mother dies, her successful launch into adulthood is interrupted. She asks herself how will I manage all of the events in my life without my mother?”

I was already the mother of two when Hope Edelman’s book was launched in 1994 but I read it from cover to cover, wondering where this book had been all my life. Like so many motherless daughters, I was strong, brave and resilient, but I was also fragile. I tried too hard to gain approval, I was terrified of failure and I rushed into marriage, hoping to find the love I was so desperately missing in my life.

When my son Christopher was born, I had the chance to learn what mother-love means. Holding my baby boy in my arms at 22, I understood how hard it must have been for my own mother to leave me. I felt a fierce and protective love rise up inside of me. In those first few hours of Christopher’s life, I rocked him to sleep, softly whispering the promise my mother wasn’t able to keep:  I will never leave you.

But when my daughter Colleen was born nearly three years later, the scars on my fragile heart burst wide open and somehow, miraculously, I was reborn.  On that day, I was no longer a motherless daughter. I was the mother of a daughter.

Giving birth to Colleen healed me. Just by being born, she gave me a second chance to experience the beauty and the magic of the mother-daughter connection.

Nelson’s Garden is in stores now!

And there have been powerful lessons along the way. The biggest one? She is not me. She is her own smart, beautiful, capable, complicated and very sassy self. When Colleen was in middle school, I was working crazy hours on three radio stations to make ends meet. I needed help, so I reached out to my favorite strong women and asked them to take Colleen under their wings. These exceptional women gave my daughter companionship, wisdom and love.

It takes a village to raise a child. Connection is not just about coming together to form a bond, it is also about being an ally for your child. I learned that sometimes you must be your child’s advocate and other times you must help them find their own way.  In her book “Mother Daughter Wisdom,” Dr. Christiane Northrop says: “One of the most potent ways a daughter learns to trust herself and her own value is by experiencing her mother taking a stand on her behalf.

When a girl’s mother stands up for her, it becomes a part of her emotional DNA, which she will pass down to her daughter in a seamless chain of maternal empowerment.”

The same emotional DNA that flowed from me to Colleen now flows from Colleen to Belle and Rosie. When it rains, she is their umbrella, and when they are standing on their own two feet, discovering who they are, she loves them from the sidelines, giving them love and light, just like a dream catcher. As I watch my daughter with her girls, I know that the way I loved her has been passed on to the way she loves them.

This beautiful issue of Living Crue magazine features raw and bold stories about connection. I think we can all agree that the mother-daughter connection is among the most powerful many of us will ever experience. As I type these words to you, I realize that connection is a learned behavior and our greatest accomplishment in this life is when we pass it on.

For a weekly dose of inspiration, please download my podcast series, The Story Behind Her Success, available on all podcast platforms.  If you know someone I should feature on the show, I’d love to hear about her, just go to candyoterry.com.