If you are confused or hurt by your mother’s behavior, or your relationship with her is less than satisfying or even painful, you can discover how to cope, heal, and take back your personal power.

So, what’s a Lemon Mom?

A Lemon Mom parents by shaming, blaming, humiliating, manipulating, guilting, and belittling. She has narcissistic traits; and she may be on the narcissism spectrum (or have full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder.)

She has trouble emotionally connecting with others, even her children. She finds it hard to show unconditional love, provide a sense of safety or security, or nurture and accept them as they are. Her children grow up feeling “not good enough,” or confused, unloved, misunderstood, unimportant, or invisible, and often think that they don’t matter. When they’re adults, they treat themselves the same way; disliking, ignoring, or neglecting themselves, taking unnecessary risks, being attracted to people who aren’t good for them, minimizing themselves so others can feel good, staying in hurtful relationships, putting themselves last on their priority list, if at all.

Did you grow up in an unpredictable home? Was there frequent drama? Were you preoccupied with your mother? Were you usually confused, trying to figure out why she said or did certain things? Did you take her “emotional temperature” and adjust your behavior accordingly to feel safe? Inconsistency, lack of supervision, few boundaries, and little parental involvement were the norm?

Me too

For as long as I can remember, there was something different about my mother. She wasn’t like other mothers.

My mom didn’t hug, kiss, smile at, spend time with, or play with me. She never seemed happy to see me. She didn’t ask about my school day and wasn’t interested in knowing my friends. She seemed to have no interest in me or anything that I did.

No boundaries, name-calling, invalidation, neglect

My mom called me hurtful names and obscenities, and at times ignored me, not speaking to me for days, weeks, or even months. I was expected to care for my younger siblings and was often blamed or punished for their misbehavior.

I was not allowed to express feelings, ask questions, or show initiative or curiosity. My feelings were discounted, minimized, or invalidated. She re-wrote my memories, and I was expected to believe her version. I was to obey, stay quiet, not question.

There’s an unspoken rule in this type of family: don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. If there’s manipulation, power struggles, or cruelty in your relationship, this book can help. If you second-guess your memory, doubt your judgment or sanity, or continually seek your mother’s withheld affection, attention, or approval, this book can explain why.

Her behavior isn’t caused by any shortcomings within yourself. There is nothing—and there never was—anything wrong with you. You are lovable, and you matter.

You can’t change your mother, but you can change your thoughts, behavior, and, most importantly, how you interact with her. When you apply this understanding along with the tools in this book, your relationship can change.

This book helps you reconcile past relational trauma and move you forward even while your mother feels no accountability or responsibility for her hurtful actions. As you update your historical view of yourself, changes begin.

PREVIEW HERE!

Until now, you had two choices: live on her terms (focusing on her, chasing after her withheld acceptance) or go “no contact.” I suggest you have a third option: decode the hurtful behavior, take back your power, and move on:

• identify gaslighting
• understand the differences between PTSD and C-PTSD
• remove drama
• set enforceable boundaries
• identify and shut down manipulation
• strategize conversations to flow the way you want
• gain clarity by taking the end-of-chapter Action Steps, or use the Lemon Moms Companion Workbook.

Excerpt:

When we were kids, if our mother was emotionally and/or physically detached, if she neglected us, was self-absorbed, wasn’t interested in what we said or did, didn’t care about our friends, wasn’t happy to see us, or didn’t hug, kiss, hold, sing or read to us often, we may have gotten the message that we weren’t important. We accepted that we didn’t matter.

If our mother parented by blaming, shaming, humiliating, intimidating, manipulating, mocking, using hurtful sarcastic comments, lying, or gaslighting, then it’s likely that we often felt like something was wrong with us. As children, we may have witnessed everyone else’s needs, especially our mothers, being more important than our own. And, if you’re like me, you thought you were a burden to her simply because you existed. We were too young to understand that her behavior was about herself, and not caused by any shortcoming within ourselves. And now as adults, we feel “less than,” “not good enough,” or “undeserving” of love or happiness, and we don’t know why.

Growing up in this kind of environment meant that we couldn’t express our feelings, or ask questions because mom wasn’t interested in them, or they were seen as a challenge to her authority, It didn’t feel safe for us to use our voices or to speak up to share our thoughts and feelings with her.

The result of this type of dysfunctional upbringing is that we never got to experience what it’s like to be seen and heard. We didn’t know the feeling of being validated. We started accepting the feeling that we weren’t good enough and that others’ needs and desires were more valid or important than our own. 

This mindset affects our self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence. It contributes to developing anxiety, depression, and codependency. It’s important to know that when thoughts are connected with feelings, a belief is created. And without intervention, we carry these faulty beliefs about ourselves into adulthood.

If we believe that we’re fundamentally flawed or undeserving of being loved or treated well, we become a dumping ground for others’ emotional garbage.

Even though we don’t like the way others treat us, deep down we believe we deserve nothing better. We’ve never seen healthy boundaries in our family, so we don’t know how to set them and use them to protect ourselves. We grow up to unconsciously and silently broadcast the message that we exist to be of service to others and that it doesn’t matter how poorly they treat us. We accept disrespect, unfair or unkind treatment, and sometimes even physical, verbal, and emotional abuse...

The Lemon Moms Companion Workbook is your safe space for healing.

Your mother doesn’t need a diagnosis to determine that your relationship with her is unhealthy. If you like detailed writing, personal examples, and a touch of humor, you’ll love the authenticity and conversational style.

Combined with the book Lemon Moms: A Guide to Understand and Survive Maternal Narcissism,” you’ll walk through the chaos and confusion of maternal narcissism: what it is, what it does, and how to recover from its devastating effects. Explore and answer thought-provoking questions., then take action-oriented steps to gain insight and perspective for beginning, or continuing your healing journey. You can recover and move forward to live your best life!

Excerpt

“Healing” is not the deletion of the pain or the memories. Healing doesn’t erase what happened, and it certainly doesn’t wipe away the memories or the hurt, or your feelings or thoughts about your childhood experiences, or of your mother. Healing isn’t about forgetting.

Healing is about reframing your painful and traumatic experiences so that they add depth and meaning to your personal story. If you were able to erase those experiences, you would also erase a huge opportunity for personal growth and development.

In the process of healing, we take painful memories and experiences and create a whole new understanding around them.

Healing means that when we’ve come out on the other side, we have a scar, a permanent reminder of what we’ve survived. It will be a part of us always. After a while, scars don’t hurt. We hardly remember they’re there. Our scars simply become another aspect of our personal story. Without that story or that experience, we wouldn’t be who we are today.

PREVIEW HERE!

Recuperating from any kind of mistreatment or abuse requires us to be willing to become new and better versions of ourselves. Being able to forgive ourselves is an important part of this process Why? Because we may have knowingly or unknowingly hurt others as a result of our unhealed or unacknowledged childhood wounds.

Healing gives us back the capacity to trust ourselves We then begin to trust our judgment and make healthy and meaningful decisions. We begin to trust others. We become better human beings.

When we self-avoid the healing process, our emotional triggers become more sensitive. When we’re easily triggered we put even more emotional energy into self-avoidance to keep from getting re-triggered. It becomes a cycle of hiding from our pain any time pain is felt. Eventually, we might need the help of substances or certain activities to keep from feeling the pain; alcohol, drugs, food, sex, shopping, gambling, etc. Pretty much anything can serve as a distraction to avoid pain. The result is that nothing gets healed and the pain and the emotional triggers continue to grow.

“AFFIRMATIONAL THERAPY MAY BE THE ONE EFFECTIVE HEALING TECHNIQUE YOU HAVEN’T TRIED YET!”

If you live with a narcissist, dysfunctional or toxic person, or have one in your life… you already know how much it negatively affects what you think, how you feel, and how you treat yourself. You can change that!

It’s time to take your healing a step further! Start healing the damage by changing how you see yourself. When you change your self-talk, you literally change your mindset and perspective!

Introducing book #3 in the Lemon Moms Series: Life-Altering Affirmations, Change Your Self-talk, Change YourSELF!

You can’t change others, but you can absolutely change yourself! When you go from unsupportive inner dialogue to affirming who you are as your authentic self, every day, research shows that you literally change your self-identity.

By using healing affirmations, you will begin to:

• reinforce a new self-narrative
• see yourself differently
• adopt a broader definition of your “identity”
• adopt a broader definition of your roles
• define things like “success” differently

This book shows you the research:

• explains how and why affirmations work
• teaches you, step-by-step, using a simple formula, how to write effective, action-oriented healing affirmations of your own.

You’ll also learn how to:

• apply the four daily fundamentals to change yourself
• make your healing affirmations resonate highly
• use particular steps to make them the most powerful and effective

PREVIEW HERE!

Comes with over 200 pre-written healing affirmations! 

Use them as-is, or personalize them using the steps and dedicated space provided in each chapter to make them your own.

Examines emotional regulation, self-validation, boundaries, self-trust, safety, security, and discovering your authentic self.

Aligns with the topics discussed in book #1 Lemon Moms: A Guide to Understand and Survive Maternal Narcissism:

• gaslighting and confusion
• betrayal wounds
• blame
• rejection
• shame
• scapegoating
• grief
• emotional abandonment
• anxiety
• anger
• triggering
• C-PTSD
• and cognitive dissonance.

Don’t wait any longer. Start moving forward today!