Bonding Over Brew: A Quality Time My Mom

Parents-children relationship can be challenging but there are ways to rekindle the relationship with our family. It took a bit of time and patience but in the end it’s really worth it. My parents and I used to have a communication problem until I decided to work on it. It’s never 100% perfect but everyday is a constant learning for both of us. When I started communicating with my parents, I started learning that they still see me as a child who needs help in everything they do and as if I didn’t know better about life. Knowing where they are coming from, I decided to work on convincing my parents that I am no longer a child, I am a mature adult capable of having responsibilities and bearing the consequences of everything I do. I am no longer under them but an equal human being. They should also treat me with respect and I should do the same. When I first started rekindling my relationship with my mom, we had many coffee dates and chatted over coffee to talk about life, memories and perhaps important matters.Now that activity is something we do at least once a month where we check on each other about how we feel and what we aspire to in our life. That is one of the ways that I learned about communicating with parents. At the same time,When I first posted in this community, I wanted to share my experience dealing with multiple sets of parents. I may not be a professionally certified family counselor but life taught me a thing or two as a child who was adopted, dealing with multiple parents as an adult and growing up surrounded by it. Parents have their own parenting style and it has been quite a ride dealing with each one of them.Having to experience those, one thing I am great at is adaptability where I can match the people I am dealing and talking with.

By having different parents, it also has been an interesting experience as the things I do with my mom would not work with other moms I have. If you have a nasty stepmother, bonding over a coffee chat isn’t going to be enough. The way I dealt with my step mother requires a bit of work. I sort of switch to my other personalities when I am around her and being even nastier because that’s just the way she chooses to communicate. And of course, though we aren’t close, at least we managed to rekindle our relationship through satirical conversation and cynicism. It isn’t healthy but the relationship I have with her has even been better than in the past where she sort of bullies me and I could not communicate with her. Now, I found her way to communicate and we are 100% fine.

However, sometimes in life you find an irreparable relationship like the one I have with my biological mother. As much as I admire her as a woman, communicating with her has been a challenge even more so because I see myself in her and I know damn well that trying to squeeze out information from a closed-off person is a challenge. And when a relationship is only transactional, it’s also a challenge until at one point I started talking the way she does and we also got along pretty well, temporarily. I did the coffee dates and the thing I do with my first mom but that also did not work well. In the end though, I decided to move on from that relationship and from her, I learned that the word “mom” is a title that’s earned and not given.

When my mom and I were talking, it was raining outside and it set even more of a mood to talk about memories. We talked about how we struggled in the past but also the good things that we did last year. Recently, my mom is going out again and I am very happy for her. She started meeting her friends again and from there I got to listen to many stories. It’s funny to listen to her stories because despite their old age, — boomers as I say it, have their own type of drama that’s popcorn worthy. It has been something so worthy of my time when I hang out around old people, they have fun stories and lessons you can learn from. Like with my mom, I know she can be harsh when it comes to my cooking and everything in my life but as I get older, I simply ignore it when it gets annoying. I think she just wants the best for me and that’s how she encourages it like typical asian moms out there. Otherwise, our relationship has been amicable and we have each other especially when the going gets tough. For all I know, relationships with parents can be challenging but sometimes when we commit to working towards bettering it, things certainly will improve. I certainly recommend going out with your parents, trying bonding and learning where they come from. You’d be surprised to learn many things and sometimes resentment comes because we fail to communicate our needs and wants.