Mothers and Daughters

by Holly Silvers

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How can I blame my mother when I see she’s the way she is because of my grandmother?
And my grandmother is one of my favorite people in the world,
but I wouldn't want her as a mother. I can see how she’d strain you all over.
And I know nothing of my grandmother’s mother. How did she strain?
And what made her into a mother who strains?
Was it her mother?
I can’t blame my mother for anything because I see the line of mothers behind her who made her into who she is.
And I can't blame my ancestral line of mothers because they were mothers in times when women and mothers were subhuman, and they mothered and woman-ed despite those times.
I can't find anyone to blame wholeheartedly
so I blame myself
for my mother’s and her mother’s and her mother’s shortcomings.
All these mothers and daughters and daughters and mothers having
no one to blame.
Our society of blameless motherhood. Blameless daughters.
Women without anywhere to put their pain but back into themselves and then to pass it on into their daughters because how do you be a woman without that pain?
We are bred into it, we know nothing without it.
So here, take it, you’ll need it because I had it and my mother had it and her mother had it and now you have it, too.
Help me to understand it through you.
Mothers and daughters and daughters and mothers.