We all have mothers, and they are rarely (even for those of us who love them) who we’d like them to be. Of all our relationships, the one with our mother is often the most complex and difficult because we are literally a part of her, the first emotional bond we ever make. Her legacy is for ever imprinted on our souls, and freeing ourselves from that intractable connection causes more problems than almost any other area in our lives.

Every week, letters riddled with disappointment and rage arrive in my Aunt Sally inbox. How can I forgive my mother? How can I stop being so angry? How can I stop my mother bullying me? They are from people in their twenties and thirties; some in their forties and fifties. Age has no relevance. In the presence of our mothers, we are always children. Even in death, they cast long shadows.

Not all mothers are a problem, of course (I’m all for celebrating mothers: I am one), but, sadly, it is grievance rather than praise that sounds most loudly. Yet even the mother who gets it badly wrong often does so in the name of love. She is doing her best. It might not be our best, but that should not diminish the sentiment. The bullying mother might be replaying a pattern she herself learnt as a child: love as extreme attention. The overanxious mother (smother mothers, as they are known in therapy) can’t stop interfering in her children’s lives, not because she doesn’t trust them, but because she doesn’t trust herself. Then there are the “me-first” mothers (narcissism is often a cover for extreme insecurity), the victim mothers (black holes that no amount of love and attention can ever fill), cold mothers (who learnt emotional frigidity at their own mother’s knee) and competitive mothers (desperate to hold on to their diminishing youth and desirability).

There are all kinds of mothers, just as there are all kinds of women. Good mothering means teaching our children to leave us, sending them out into the world as happy, confident individuals. Loving our mother means taking a step back, seeing her as vulnerable and human — often way more human than, at heart, we’d like her to be. The problem is usually a failure of separation — on both sides. So how can we free ourselves from that emotional legacy? Well, by setting our mother free. I know it sounds odd. We instinctively believe she is the problem, not us, but we forget how compelling anger and resentment can be. By hanging onto them, we keep our mothers close. Even a thousand miles of separation is no defence against a maternal inner critic, which is perhaps why the most often-asked question is; how do I learn to forgive?

Forgiveness is such a big word. I prefer “acceptance”. If we accept that, for whatever reason, our mother is not the person we wanted her to be, but the person she thought it was right to be (or did not know there was any other way to be), we may find space for forgiveness. We might also look to ourselves and take responsibility for our own behaviour, see the way we react, or overreact, in her presence. We might try to find some patience and understanding. Generally, it’s only when we become mothers ourselves that we begin to understand how easily we project our own needs and desires onto our children and just how difficult the task of mothering can be.

One of the gifts we might give ourselves is freedom from guilt. That’s the beginning of true emotional separation. We are not responsible for our mother’s life. We are responsible for our own. Nobody has more power over our own lives than we do. If we believe our mother holds all the power, it is because we give it to her. Taking it back means being less interested in what our mother did to us as children, and more interested in managing our relationship in the here and now. We all have triggers; the buttons every mother knows how to press. If we can see them with humour — “Oh, look, there goes that button again” — we can work on disabling them, disconnecting them one by one.

We may always be children in the presence of our mothers, but that does not mean we cannot be adults and set healthy boundaries, the simplest of which is learning to use the word “no” with firm consistency. “No, Mum, I can’t ring you every day. I’ll call you when I can.” No is a complete sentence; it requires no excuses, explanations or apologies. We may be met by emotional blackmail, pleading, scolding or punishing silence but, eventually, the message will get through because we all have something our mothers want: we have ourselves. Sympathy helps too, even for the most difficult mothers. She may find it hard to let us go. Once we are grown, her job is done; she is, essentially, redundant and may be fearful of losing her power or mourning the unconditional love we gave her as children. She may even, emotionally, still be a child herself, so seeing us walk away is more than she can bear.

Honesty, however disloyal and difficult it may at first feel, is often the best policy. There is no law that says we have to love, or even like, our mother. What we might do instead is find some compassion and see her as just another human being, beset by fear, vanity, doubt and insecurity. Compassion, not anger, sets us free. Most of all, we have to decide whose life we want to live: our own, or our mother’s?

Helpful reading: The Mother Factor by Stephen Poulter (Prometheus Books £12.99). How to Manage Your Mother by Alyce Faye Cleese and Brain Bates (Arrow Books £8.99)

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