Transcript - The Mental Health We Inherit — and the Healing We Choose with Leslie and Lindsey Glass

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: The Mental Health We Inherit — and the Healing We Choose with Leslie and Lindsey Glass

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] Paula: Thank you for joining us for episode 569 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s also the month when we celebrate Mother’s Day, so what better time to look at moms and mental health? There’s no better team to do that than today’s guests. I’m your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I’m joined by Leslie and Lindsey Glass, the mother and daughter duo who co-authored The Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover and The Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover Workbook. They’ve lived through estrangement and healing, and now they share that message with others. Let’s hear what they have to say about moms, daughters, and mental health.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:40] Paula: All right, it is time. I can’t believe I’m getting to see you ladies again. It’s my favorite mother-daughter duo since the Gilmore Girls. Lindsey and Leslie Glass, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

[0:00:52] Leslie: Oh, it’s our pleasure. It’s Mother’s Day season, so we come out from the rock from which we live under.

[0:00:59] Paula: Well, and I love the fact that, May, not only do we have Mother’s Day, but we have Mental Health Awareness Month, and I’ve always felt like that’s no coincidence that the two are in the same month, and also the fact is that nobody can combine those two things like you two. I really wanted to have you here to talk a little bit about the mental health journey as it applies to the mother-daughter relationship. I wanted to start by having you, each one, say who you are, so that as our listeners hear this, they know who they are listening to.

[0:01:30] Leslie: I’m Leslie Glass. I’m the mom.

[0:01:32] Lindsey: I’m Lindsey. I am the daughter. Over the last, gosh, four and a half years, we were just reflecting on this. We have done over a hundred media spots to promote our Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover healing series, because unbeknownst to us, it was a trending topic, and a lot of people needed help around this issue.

[0:01:56] Paula: Absolutely. It is a tough topic, because even people who have the supposed good relationship between mother and daughter, there’s still conflict, there’s still ups and downs in it. As I said, I really wanted to talk to you about the mental health journey as it applies to the mother-daughter relationship. Can we talk about how our mental health patterns and our coping strategies are being passed down generationally?

[0:02:21] Lindsey: Oh, my God. We’d love to talk about it.

[0:02:23] Paula: Well, good.

[0:02:24] Leslie: Not just our mother’s generation, but our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, and from over-millenniums.

[0:02:31] Lindsey: We were making a list of the things we inherited, because we wanted to answer specifically. What did you come up with?

[0:02:38] Leslie: Well, we both are very anxious. Our mothers were very anxious, very fearful. A lot of phobias, also food issues. My mother was the first one in her family to start restricting. Our food issues are overeating, under-eating, control over that.

[0:02:57] Lindsey: I thought that a really big one, and I think it’s harder for my mom to really acknowledge it, and it’s a generational thing. I think Paula is going to enjoy this. It is so ingrained in my mom’s generation and her mother’s generation for the kind of women we were raised by to not share your feelings.

[0:03:19] Paula: Right.

[0:03:19] Lindsey: Not be a problem. Pull your bootstraps up. When I brought up, we’re so emotionally, whatever we are, and we push it down, we’ve both had so much therapy to deal with our emotions and deal with them in healthy ways and not push them down. She was like, “Huh?” If you have to like, what are the ones? I don’t even know what they are. Gen Z, it’s all the feelings.

[0:03:42] Paula: Right. Everything’s out there.

[0:03:44] Lindsey: But I feel, but I feel, we’ve taught these kids to feel.

[0:03:48] Leslie: My mother didn’t want me to feel. She said, “You’ve got everything. What’s wrong with you?” I have the security self-esteem of Swiss cheese, literally. Because it was march like a soldier. You have everything you need. You have nothing to complain about. Look at everybody else in the world and all their suffering. Did I say that to you, Lindsey?

[0:04:09] Lindsey: Yeah.

[0:04:10] Leslie: Yeah, I did. Basically, I would also encourage Lindsey to just be like me, which is overcome your anxiety, overcome your self-esteem issues, and just march like a soldier.

[0:04:24] Lindsey: It’s interesting. You didn’t mention that before, but she’s right when she says, just like me, it was like, we pick missions, we pick causes. Her mother was a social activist. She was a social activist. I’m a social activist. It’s part of the way we feel better about ourselves is by overcompensating in other areas.

[0:04:46] Leslie: Ooh.

[0:04:47] Paula: That is really good. We don’t recognize necessarily that our behavior is something that’s passed down. They might say, “Oh, you’re just like your mom, because XYZ,” but we don’t see how that is going back to the grandmother. I’m so glad that you brought up the anxiety. I know my mom was very anxious. Myself and my siblings have all dealt with anxiety. I didn’t realize this was a generational thing until one of my aunts had said something to my sister who was having a panic attack and she’s like, “That’s just what we do.” It was, what? Then I found out, this had been going on for generations that we just – they’re like, we’re anxious people and didn’t feel there was anything we could do about it. What about those coping patterns that we adopt that aren’t good that we don’t even recognize as being passed down? How do you start recognizing the patterns that are being passed down and then how do you change them?

[0:05:42] Lindsey: The first thing you want to do is start to pay attention to what’s happening. Where are you having emotional distortion? Where are you getting really, really upset in your daily life? Are you having the same fight with your mother? Is it when she comes over, you’re fighting about childcare, food, money?

[0:06:05] Leslie: The way you look.

[0:06:06] Lindsey: Yeah. But the first thing you really have to do in self-discovery is the first part of both of our books. Because if you don’t start to have some self-awareness about what’s going on, it’s really impossible to see those patterns. We recommend and not in a judgmental, shameful way. Pay attention. Make notes. This is what journaling is for. “Oh, we had another fight again. What was it about?” Or, “How was I feeling that morning? What were the things going on in my life?” And really starting to say, “Oh, you know what? When I’m stressed, this is how I react.”

The other thing you want to notice as you start to see, are you playing a role? Are you always the peacekeeper? Are you always the blamer? Another thing we have in common is if there’s silence, we’ll start becoming the court jester, both of us.

[0:06:58] Leslie: We’re going to fill it.

[0:06:59] Lindsey: Because we’re going to entertain you. We don’t want people to feel uncomfortable. You start to see these patterns and you’re like, “Oh, wow. I really am the one who makes my mom feel better every day, or she’s really the one that triggers me.” That’s where you start with this stuff.

[0:07:16] Leslie: Yeah.

[0:07:17] Paula: But once you recognize those, once you’ve done some journaling, done your own homework and started figuring out what’s going on, how then do you have that conversation? How do you start working up, just in your head to think about, “All right, this is the conversation I want to have with my mom, or if it’s a mom, I want to have with my daughter.” Then, how do you do that?

[0:07:38] Leslie: I think that what you need to do is literally change the conversation. Change the way that you communicate. You want to give an example of that?

[0:07:46] Lindsey: I think you have to start really small. You have to move away from the door slamming statements. “You never let me have my feelings.”

[0:07:54] Leslie: You don’t listen. You always do this.

[0:07:57] Lindsey: Part of paying attention in the patterns is seeing how you’re communicating. When you decide you want to have conversations that are going to open the door, not close the door, you have to start small and with non-threatening statements. It’s okay to be vulnerable. Vulnerable is a beautiful thing. Say something like, “I wish we were closer. Maybe we can find some ways to do some things together, or just try things.” I think the point is it’s baby steps. If you can get through really small conversations in a safe way, you’re opening the door for bigger conversations. If you’ve been fighting with your mom for years, you’re not going to sit down and suddenly have the conversation you dream.

[0:08:43] Paula: It’s all good. Right.

[0:08:46] Lindsey: But if you say, “You know what? I love you so much. I would like us to understand each other better,” and come from that place of non-shaming, non-blaming, “How do we fix this?” I think you could just start to set a tone.

[0:09:00] Leslie: I would start with share pleasant time. Let’s go and have tea together, or let’s go to the movies, or let’s do something like that, and begin to model what being together should look like. Let’s agree that we’re going to go to dinner and we’re not going to fight about the past. We’re not going to talk about this. We’re not going to talk about that. The baby steps might be, “I’d really like to spend some quality time with you. Here are some ways that we can get along better.”

[0:09:29] Lindsey: You know what else really helps? This is how we reconciled and we still do it today. We always talk about it, but the cooking and the dogs. It’s two things we have in common.

[0:09:40] Paula: Find that common ground.

[0:09:42] Lindsey: Walk the dogs. We don’t always even talk to each other, but we walk the dogs and we notice the weather and we look at the birds.

[0:09:49] Leslie: The birds. I love the birds.

[0:09:50] Lindsey: Because we love the animals.

[0:09:51] Leslie: We also share comedy videos, because laughing is really important.

[0:09:57] Paula: Oh, and that bonds so well. That helps you.

[0:09:59] Leslie: What kind of comedy, or laughter can we share? Can we make fun of other people, instead of ourselves? Or make fun of ourselves and not beat each other up? I mean, the whole idea is to create new memories and new patterns that can be passed on not only with us, but with other relatives and with the next generation.

[0:10:22] Paula: What happens if one person is ready to have that conversation and the other person is not? I have a friend who has had a very tumultuous relationship with her mom and she is ready. She would love to be able to sit down and talk with her mom about all the things that happened, the abuse, the misunderstandings, and the mother wants nothing to do with that. What happens in those cases if you feel like the other person isn’t willing to have that conversation with you?

[0:10:53] Leslie: Well, first of all, I would say in the mom’s case and in all of our cases, we really want to be good people. We want to feel that we are good people. If a mom has been involved in a relationship, say, the husband or other family members in which the child growing up has experienced abuse, the mom doesn’t want to talk about that, because she doesn’t want to be blamed for it. I think that in 37% of adult children are not speaking to one, or both of their parents. Yeah.

[0:11:23] Paula: That’s a staggering number.

[0:11:26] Leslie: Family estrangement is a huge, huge subject all across the world right now. In most of these cases, it’s not the parents who don’t want their children. It’s the children who don’t want their – And part of that is because parents are having a great deal of trouble acknowledging the pain of their children, or the trauma, or whatever it is. They just want to stop. They don’t want to think about it. I would say, this is very, very common situation. One wants it. The other doesn’t. Okay, go.

[0:11:59] Lindsey: I think when you’re in this situation, you have to work on yourself. That’s what you really have to focus on. When they’re not ready to get back with you, that is the time to see if you can find some understanding of why this is happening. Also, some compassion for the other person and what they might need right now. This is the time to be patient. This is the time to understand that people sometimes need to go off on their own and find their own way and everybody has a right to do that. For the person who’s on the other end, it’s really important to be able to enjoy your life.

We were just talking about this with some people last night, who had been asking about our separation. The truth was she was figuring out who she was in those years and what she enjoyed. She’d been a mom. She’d been a wife. Suddenly, she was on her own. I was off learning how to be independent, how to be an adult, how to take care of myself. I think if you can focus on what you need to be whole without that person, because they may or they may not come back. You want to be hopeful that they will. But if they do, you want to be a safe space for them to land. I think this is the really tough thing to acknowledge, whether you’re a mother or a daughter and you find yourself in a no-contact situation, it takes two to tango. I don’t care who’s more to blame, it does take two to tango.

[0:13:34] Leslie: I want to go back to this point that you made about being safe. I think for the mom who doesn’t want to hear about anything about the past, she may feel unsafe. I think that she may feel that she’s going to be accused. This is the moment for a daughter, or anybody, maybe to do a little bit of sleuthing to find out what state the mother was in during those traumatic years, and maybe find a way to say to the mom, “I really understand. It was so difficult for you.” But then, the daughter may not want to hear what mother had to say. You may have really very, very different opinions, or different memories about what happened.

You may not be able to find common ground to talk about. Once again, if you can find common ground, or a safe way to explore who you were, or who you want to be now. Once again, there are moms who say, “My way, or the highway.” Or daughters who say, “My way or the highway,” you have to determine who you are on your own.

[0:14:41] Paula: That takes a lot of forgiveness to be able to look at the other person’s life, to look at what they were going through, put yourself in their shoes. That can be very difficult. How do you do it? And can it be repaired without walking down that road of forgiveness of empathy, of understanding?

[0:15:04] Leslie: Well, I mean, this is why Lindsey and I wrote the book, because it wasn’t until we started doing the journal prompts and doing that self-discovery where we’re able to say, “Oh, my God, my mom’s life was not what I thought.”

[0:15:18] Lindsey: I actually have a tough answer to this one. Again, we had this conversation last night with some people who are asking about it. I don’t think it can be repaired. If both people aren’t doing a little bit of work, I don’t. I think if one person is really angry and can’t back away from their rigid beliefs about what happened and their hurts, it’s going to be very, very hard to have these open conversations, because you’re stuck in your story about what happened.

[0:15:50] Paula: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

[BREAK]

[0:15:58] Paula: Now, let’s hear more from Leslie and Lindsey Glass.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:16:03] Paula: How do we then prepare ourselves? How do we let ourselves be okay with what we need to hear? It’s not just a one-sided, “I’m going to tell you how I feel.” It’s, “I’m going to hear what it felt like for them, too.” How do you open that?

[0:16:15] Leslie: Can you sit in ambiguity? Because the mother-daughter relationship is love-hate, love-hate, love-hate. We all want to be loved. We all want to be accepted. We all want all of those things. The relationship is inherently full of ambivalence.

[0:16:33] Lindsey: And conflict.

[0:16:34] Leslie: And conflict. We have to be able to accept that, particularly in the teenage years, I mean, daughters can be quite abusive.

[0:16:43] Lindsey: Let’s look at this from a different angle. I mean, I think it’s like, one has to be able to say, “What do I want from this relationship?”

[0:16:51] Paula: Right.

[0:16:52] Leslie: When you’re adults. When you’re adults.

[0:16:53] Lindsey: Yeah. What do I want? What am I capable of? What is she capable of? It’s like, all right, maybe we’re not going to totally get on the same page here, because you don’t have to agree for things to get better. Maybe we’re not totally going to be on the same page here. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be able to be together on holidays and get along, or let mom see the grandkids and not have our issues come into play. I think there is a lot of room if people are open to it to say, okay, we’re not going to be able to sit down and say, all good, everything’s water under the bridge. I love you. I want us to be in family wellness, and we’re going to find some ways to be together that are not so contentious and open the door to healing. Maybe pick up a book like ours, or listen to a podcast like yours. Maybe today you don’t think you did anything wrong, but maybe in three months, a thought is triggered and you think, “You know what? I could have been a little bit more chill. I’m going to give my mom a ring and say something about that today.”

[0:18:04] Leslie: Well, the other thing is that the last 10 years of political strife has torn a lot of families apart. If you have different religious beliefs, I know one mother who is very, very strong in her church, the daughter believes in crystals and the mom, well, the daughter won’t let the mom see her child, the child because one has got the crystals and the other one is like, they’re at loggerheads over it. They cannot come to common ground over it.

[0:18:38] Paula: How do you draw up these rules of engagement, so that you can have a relationship that takes your differences and puts them aside, finds what is good and what works and lets you be in that space and nurture that?

[0:18:54] Leslie: In this mother-daughter, the grandmother has got to put aside her very strong beliefs in order to be able to see your grandchild, and is she able to do that? So far, she hasn’t.

[0:19:06] Lindsey: Here is a wonderful word. Where are you with your boundaries?

[0:19:11] Paula: Yes.

[0:19:11] Lindsey: Right? Here’s the answer. In order to do what you just asked, how do we get together and do these things and blah, blah, blah? It’s going to go a lot better if you understand and have the ability to use boundaries. Because one of the things that I think is a very healthy thing to do, but again, you have to be in a place to be able to have these conversations. It’s very important to say, “I love you dearly. We don’t agree about this. Please don’t bring it up tonight.”

[0:19:43] Leslie: “Let’s not talk about it.”

[0:19:45] Lindsey: “I don’t want to start an issue at the dinner table.” Again, you’re paying attention to the patterns, right? At this point, we understand what some of the triggers are, some of the patterns. You say, “Mom/daughter, I really want to have a great summer. I want to have a great summer with you. I want us to get along. I want us to be close. Here are my recommendations. I’m going to let you think about them and get back to me on your time, but I’d like to do these activities that we both like and focus on the activities.” Going to a baseball game. Going to the rodeo. I don’t know. Wherever you live in America, whatever activities are available now that the weather is nice. We’re going to take the grandkids to the fair. And pick like, here are the things we like to do. Here’s what makes them safe. If you’re coming for the 4th of July, we’re not serving hard alcohol.

[0:20:38] Leslie: No.

[0:20:39] Lindsey: Whatever your issues are, you start to set some boundaries around them.

[0:20:43] Paula: That takes commitment from both sides. They both have to dig in and say, “This relationship is more important than this issue that we disagree on.”

[0:20:55] Lindsey: Can I give you a little bit of, because we’ve come around, this is what I will say as a daughter that’s been estranged from family and now back with family. Family is great. If you can get along with your family, if you can have the support of a parent, I really think life is better that way. It’s not perfect. We both have to work at this ongoing. But I think if you can remember, I only get one family. If we can be on the same team, if we can set an example for the next generation, if we have the power to heal some of these wounds and understand each other, you’re giving your mom or your daughter a huge gift by making a commitment to be pleasant with them.

[0:21:40] Leslie: That’s it. That’s it. That’s all that’s required. Just be nice. It’s literally.

[0:21:47] Paula: Like what we learned in kindergarten.

[0:21:47] Leslie: Everything that we learned in kindergarten is what is important as adults.

[0:21:52] Lindsey: We have a rule called light and polite.

[0:21:54] Leslie: Yeah, we do. We do.

[0:21:55] Lindsey: Whether if we’re at dinner with certain people, or we’re on a certain show, where we don’t want somebody interviewing us to get to –

[0:22:03] Leslie: Our fighting.

[0:22:04] Lindsey: – confrontational with us, we have the light and polite and we will just be like, “Well, that’s great. Have you seen the weather?”

[0:22:14] Paula: Yes. What about those relationships that can’t be repaired? I mean, in a perfect world, we could use your tools and techniques and we can repair all our relationships, but that’s not always the case. When is it okay to know that you’ve tried, but it isn’t working right now, maybe it’s a timing thing, maybe it’ll never work, but it’s not working right now. How do you put that aside? Also, how do you manage the guilt that comes with losing that person?

[0:22:44] Leslie: This is Mental Health Month, right?

[0:22:45] Paula: Yes.

[0:22:47] Leslie: All right. Let’s talk about mental health, because one of the things that really gets in the way of mother-daughter relationships, or any relationships are other people’s mental health issues, or character issues, personality issues, addiction is another one. When those people, if your family situation has addiction in it and it’s not safe for you, or it’s not safe for your grandchildren, or your kids, or whatever, if there is a person who is manic-depressive and you’re always in a state of caretaking, worrying, whatever, this is where you have to get into survival mode and not feel bad about saying, “This is not working for me. I need some space. I need my own safety.” Safety first. Safety first.

I know for caretakers, it’s very difficult to let go of someone, particularly a child or a mother who has addiction issues, it’s very hard to let go. But letting go and finding yourself in your own life is really, really important.

[0:23:52] Paula: How do you do that? Let’s talk about that. It’s one thing to say, “Yes, this is what I need to do.” It’s something else to say, “This is how I’m going to do it.”

[0:24:00] Lindsey: As nicely as possible. If you’re with somebody who’s stable, it’s a little bit easier, because if you’re with somebody who’s unstable, you don’t know what kind of reaction you’re going to get, and it can be very, very scary. You really have to look out, if somebody is out of control, struggling with their mental health, has a personality disorder, if you’re going to get screamed at, if it is going to cause you distress, email, keep it really, really safe, you don’t have to get on the phone with people who are going to scream at you. If they’re raging back at you by email, you don’t have to read it. You don’t have to accept those emails.

I think it is important to be clear with somebody and say, “I need a break,” and if you want to say why or what the parameters are. I think you have to think about it like this. When we did our separation and we were both dealt with suicidal depression around it. It’s not an easy thing. But I needed to go and work on myself and I had professional help. I was seeking professional help and professionals were saying, “Here’s what’s wrong with you. Here’s what you need to go do about it.” Then I started to follow those steps. In terms of the shame and guilt, as much as it was humiliating to have people say to me, “You don’t talk to your mom?” And, “What’s wrong with you? It’s your mom.” I needed to grow up. I needed to do those things for myself and trust me, she’s happier today that that happened and I went out. By the way, I appreciate her so much more.

You have to look at that guilt and grieve it, because it’s so, you need to grieve people, even when they’re alive and acknowledge that this is unnatural, this is not what you wanted, this is maybe even not fair, whether it’s your mom or your daughter. Because there are a lot of daughters who lose their moms, because they’re drinking, or whatever else. You just think, “Where’s the mom I wanted? This is so unfair.” But you’re in self-preservation. You’re making sure that you stay mentally healthy and you’re doing what you need to do. You need to have more pride in the fact that you’re able to put yourself first and take care of yourself, than shame over the fact that it isn’t perfect.

[0:26:20] Leslie: I would say, that first of all, if you’re in a very difficult situation, the person that you love is not willing to change, you don’t want to break up and you’re very enmeshed. I think that mothers and daughters can be very enmeshed. The way you begin to detach is you get some help. You get some other people who can talk to you and assess your situation and say, “Oh, this is really causing you more distress than you need. This is preventing you from having a happy life.” Either this person is encroaching on you too much, taking your time, taking your money, taking whatever it is, is putting you down, not appreciating you, whatever it is, you have to be able to recognize that whatever that relationship is, it’s really damaging you.

You may have the feelings and the feelings may not be right, but if it’s really happening to you, you need to be able to have somebody else be able to say to you, “Oh, this is what’s happening and this is what you need to do to detach.” Now, what Lindsey did was ghost me. See, that was not a good thing to do. Generally speaking, if you want to change or improve your relationship, it is better to have a plan and say to the other person, “I love you deeply, deeply, deeply, but I think we need to limit the amount of time that we spend together,” or take a break all together. I think identifying is the first situation. Identifying is that person really bad, or is it just me imagining that person is bad? If the situation really is very bad, then to be able to determine what you want to do about it. And then develop a plan on how to do it without cutting somebody off from your life forever, because that’s really horrible and it’s really hard to get back.

[0:28:13] Paula: What about those cases where mom and the daughter go on the journey together and we start that healing? How is that shared healing different and maybe more powerful than just healing alone? If each went to their separate corner and worked on themselves, how is that different than them coming together and doing this healing together, like you two have done?

[0:28:33] Lindsey: Well, I think that that’s just an extraordinary thing. If that can happen, that is going to speed up the process so much more for both of them. One, I think when you do this journey together, you’re really saying to your mother, or daughter like, “I care about your health and wellness and I care about mine.” I think your both mother and daughter are modeling a love and support for each other that I think will just do miracles for building trust moving forward. I think it’s a way to get to know each other. It’s a way to learn how to communicate in healthier and safer ways.

[0:29:18] Paula: You have a lot in your book, obviously, that tells us some of the ways that we can do this. As we move into and through Mental Health Awareness Month, what are the main things that mothers and daughters can do to support each other’s mental health journey?

[0:29:32] Leslie: I would just start with the listening.

[0:29:35] Paula: Okay.

[0:29:36] Leslie: I think it’s really important for mothers and daughters to feel safe with each other and for me to be able to say, “Lindsey, how are you feeling today?” We often do a feeling check with each other. How are you feeling today?

[0:29:47] Lindsey: I also think we had an interesting conversation with somebody last week about asking different questions.

[0:29:53] Paula: Oh, tell me about that.

[0:29:53] Lindsey: Getting out of the regular, how is your day? But being really clear. “How are you feeling? Let’s check in. Is there anything that’s troubling you right now? Is there anything I can help with?” I think it’s not just doing that regular day-to-day talking, but really trying to ask questions that are going to foster deeper communication. I think it is absolutely a wonderful thing if mothers and daughters can look at each other in Mental Health Month and say, “How’s your mental health? Is there anything we need to be working on?” Because I don’t care what age you are as a woman, you’re experiencing something with your hormones. I don’t care. At every age, I have bitched about my hormones to other women. That plays a huge role in our mental health and wellness.

I think if we can look at each other and say, “Are you happy? Are your relationships healthy? How’s your daughter?” If you have one. Just literally making that space available for somebody to say, “You know what? I’m not doing great,” or, “I am fighting with my partner,” or, “You know what? We’re low on money and I’m scared.” I think in all of this performative stuff around Mother’s Day, if you can actually find that space to not just go buy an expensive gift if you have to, but ask somebody what they want, mother’s being sensitive and saying, “Get what you can afford this year. $75 worth of flowers.”

[0:31:30] Leslie: No. Please, don’t.

[0:31:32] Lindsey: Come over and make me breakfast. Those kinds of trying to be thoughtful with each other.

[0:31:39] Leslie: The thing is that mom doesn’t have to fix everything. If Lindsey is saying to me, “I’m really feeling bad. I’m scared. I’m worried about this. I don’t have enough money.” Mom doesn’t have to provide the money. She just have to listen.

[0:31:52] Lindsey: That’s really important. You don’t have to fix things for each other.

[0:31:55] Leslie: No.

[0:31:56] Paula: Yeah, that’s good to hear. That’s an important thing for everyone to hear.

[0:32:00] Lindsey: So uncomfortable, right? Because you want to fix something for your daughter. You want to fix something for your mother, but sometimes you –

[0:32:05] Leslie: You don’t. Shouldn’t do it. Don’t do it.

[0:32:09] Paula: Don’t do it. Just don’t do it.

[0:32:10] Leslie: Don’t do it.

[0:32:12] Paula: As we let you go, what is it that you hope the listeners take away and carry with them through Mother’s Day, through Mental Health Awareness Month?

[0:32:20] Leslie: I would say that hope is there. That you need to have hope that wherever you are in your relationship right now, people can change. It may feel like people can’t change, or haven’t changed in the past, but that doesn’t mean they won’t change in the future. Planting seeds can grow a whole new forest of happiness.

[0:32:40] Lindsey: Work on your happiness.

[0:32:42] Leslie: Yeah.

[0:32:42] Lindsey: Just work on your own happiness. Because until you feel a little bit better, it’s going to be really hard to repair. Your mental health matters. Whether somebody’s mad at you or not, whether somebody’s speaking to you or not, it still matters if you’re happy. It is your responsibility as mother, or daughter to be responsible for your own happiness, to have things in your life that you care about.

[0:33:09] Leslie: And people.

[0:33:10] Lindsey: And take care of other people. If the one person you want to take care of isn’t there, find other people.

[0:33:17] Paula: I love it. Lindsey, Leslie, you always give us so much to think about. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

[0:33:25] Leslie: So much fun.

[0:33:25] Lindsey: Thank you. Happy Mother’s Day.

[0:33:28] Leslie: Happy Mother’s Day.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:33:33] Paula: That was Leslie and Lindsey Glass, talking about how to heal a fraught mother-daughter relationship and how to support each other’s mental health. If you’d like to learn more about them, check out their books, follow them on social media, or discover their Reach Out Recovery platform, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How generational patterns of anxiety, emotional suppression, and coping get passed down — and how to interrupt them.
What healthy reconnection looks like, from “baby‑step conversations” to shared activities that rebuild safety and trust.
How to navigate estrangement, boundaries, and forgiveness when one person is ready to heal and the other isn’t.

Visit their Reach Out Recovery website.

Discover their book, The Mother Daughter Relationship Makeover.

Get a free sample download from The Mother Daughter Relationship Makeover.

Follow Leslie and Lindsey on social media:

Facebook: @ReachoutRecovery
Instagram: @reachoutrecovery
Pinterest: @reachoutrecovery

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