"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older, they judge them; sometimes they forgive them." ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I Like You Just the Way You Are… Until I Don't!

Growing up with Doreen (aka Mom) wasn’t always a picnic. My mother could be challenging, at best.

In the fourth grade, I was learning to play the violin, and by the time our spring orchestra recital came around, I was quite proud of the progress I’d made. For an occasion this important, there was only one possible choice of outfit, my favorite purple dress with my lacy white tights and black patent leather shoes. (Lacy white tights were very popular with the elementary set at the time, I’ll have you know.)

Doreen wanted me to wear something she had selected. I honestly can’t remember what it was, but I do remember that somehow, for once, I won that round.

So there I sat on the stage in my purple dress, playing my heart out. When it was over, I went looking for her in the crowd, sure she was about to tell me how proud she was of the way I played. Instead, she told me I wasn’t sitting like a lady should. My posture, apparently, needed work.

I felt depleted. Sad. And like a complete disappointment.

In fairness to Doreen, she was up against some stiff competition. It was the 1960s and 70s, and the moms on TV were remarkable. Samantha Stevens could fix just about anything with a twitch of her nose. Carol Brady had Alice to do the laundry and still found time for a heart-to-heart at bedtime. Shirley Partridge drove her kids around in a painted bus and sang harmony with them, and Marion Cunningham called the Fonz Arthur and somehow got away with it. Every one of them came home from a long day smiling.

If Jan Brady had played her heart out at a spring recital, I have a feeling Carol would have been waiting afterward with a hug, and Alice would have had cookies on the table by the time they got home. Nobody would have said a word about Jan’s posture. Then again, Jan had enough to deal with living in Marcia’s shadow.

Growing up with Doreen was confusing. In my early years, I wanted her love and affection, and it rarely came the way I hoped. By my teens, I mostly wanted her to leave me alone, which also didn’t go the way I hoped. Some days, I simply felt invisible. Other days, I felt criticized and never quite enough. And somewhere deep inside, the girl in the purple dress decided she wasn’t worth loving the way the TV kids were.

That belief stayed with me for a very long time.

What I couldn’t see then was how little of it had to do with me.

Doreen was the third of eighteen children, raised on a farm with a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of chores to be done. Her father, my grandfather, was a hardcore little French farmer with an explosive temper and a real talent for making life miserable for anyone who stepped in his path. (I’m happy to report his edges softened as he grew old.) In a house like that, I can only imagine there was very little room for affection and a great deal of room for getting things right.

Sitting up straight, I suspect, was how a girl stayed out of trouble.

So when she corrected my posture that night, she may have been doing the only kind of protecting she knew. It might have been the closest thing she had to I’m proud of you.

It took me even longer to see the other half of it. I wanted Doreen to be Carol Brady. Doreen wanted me to be a proper young lady who sat the way a lady should. We each carried a picture of who the other was supposed to be, and neither of us ever quite fit the frame.

I’ve done this in my own life more times than I’d like to count, and I see it all the time in the people I work with. The husband who should be more romantic. The sister who should call more often. The grown child we’d happily redirect if we could. We love them, and we keep a running list of edits. The list tends to get longer, and the person on the other end of it tends to get smaller.

Doreen and I rarely got past the surface until near the end of her life. When she was ill with a rare form of sarcoma, I spent more and more time with her, and for the first time, we talked about things that actually mattered.

Somewhere in those conversations, the TV mom I’d been waiting for finally left the room, and my actual mother was sitting there. She had been there all along.

That’s the lesson I keep relearning, in my work and in my own life. Making room for what is, rather than what I think it should be. It hasn’t been an easy one, and it may be one of the most important any of us ever learn.

I wish I’d learned it much earlier. It might have changed how some of my own relationships unfolded.

When I think about that spring recital now, I see two people doing their best. A fourth grader in purple with her chin up, proud of her violin. And a mother in the audience, sitting up very straight, loving her the only way she knew how.

I like them both just the way they were.

Love and Light,

Copyright © 2026 Michele Heffron Life Strategist, All rights reserved.

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