A bunch of rambling about creating "boundaries" but presented in such a vague way as to be completely unhelpful. The author seriously says that a mother's emotional abuse of her children only becomes abuse when the children internalize it and let it affect them. Miriam’s daughter felt that she had to mind read what her mother really felt and wanted, and she was tired of it.

I helped her understand the gender inequality her family and culture normalized, and I taught her how to claim her own ideas of who she wanted to be and what she needed in her relationship with her mother — and in all her relationships.I chose to specialize in the mother-daughter relationship back in the 1990s because that relationship is central to women understanding themselves. I connected with the author because she put so many of her own experiences in the book that I can relate to. Sometimes I wondered if the author herself is a narcissist because she enjoys making patronizing and offensive comments to the reader and then couching it in terms of tough love.

This book had good tidbits of information which I noted, as well as journal prompts to work through, but her attitude throughout the book was frustrating. L. Anderson shows women how to emotionally separate from their difficult mothers without guilt and anxiety, so they can finally create a life based on their own values, desires, needs, and preferences. A woman who has the ability to take what happened to you in the past, and transform it into greater wisdom, depth and authentic love. She also needed to understand what was going on in this environment that apparently caused her mother to be so angry and critical, and what caused Sandeep and her mother to believe that it was Sandeep’s responsibility to do all the housekeeping. I see how this dynamic makes women invisible, and how being invisible makes women hungry for attention.

If their feelings are quashed by their husband, I would argue that they are still subject to patriarchy. For example, only in 2016 was the Adult Daughter-Mother Relationship Questionnaire developed (for more, see Julie Cwikel’s article in The Family Journal). Accept that and we can support each other’s weaknesses, gain from each other’s strengths, be sympathetic to each other’s needs and have fun with and learn from our differences. I gave it two stars because I liked the journaling suggestions, but besides that the book was on the verge of being harmful to those who are really traumatized.