My Story

I am a coach because I believe one question can have the power to change your life. It happened to me. One question changed my relationship with my mother.

I haven’t had a good relationship with my mother for 35 years.

I have always felt loved by her but never understood.

I have always been a dreamer, a go-getter, and a risk taker from a very young age. I would climb trees, fences, and mountains. I would hitch-hike with strangers. In high school I would go to dance festivals and summer dance camps with little or no money not knowing where I would sleep or how I would pay for food.

I always believed in things just working out, the good winning over evil, and in miracles.

My mother, on the other hand, has been a woman of what ifs and worst case scenarios. And not just any kind of what ifs – the impossible what ifs.

As a mother she wanted to protect me and my brother from those what ifs but she couldn’t. When I was born, we were poor, living in a state provided low-income apartment in the big city. The city was “full of opportunities” according to my mother, yet those opportunities came with a price.

My parents were young, not familiar with the new city life. Both grew up in small villages outside of the city and both were raised by single mothers. They left their families behind to pursue a better life even if that meant they had no support nor help in the big city. They had to figure it all out on their own quickly because reality was, they were alone, newly married with two young kids, and with only high school diplomas.

As a result, my parents had to go to work and leave me and my older brother in the apartment by ourselves. No childcare, no babysitter, no nanny. The rule was we could not leave the apartment, open the door to strangers, nor use the stove. I remember one day standing on a step stool on the balcony and waving happily to my mother hello when I saw her coming home. My mother remembers that moment as one of the worst moments of her life: seeing her two children standing on stools on the balcony of her 4th floor apartment. She said, “I couldn’t have run up the stairs faster than I did that day.”

My mother, I think to this day, has not forgiven herself for choosing work over her children and for not working harder to figure out a better way to make ends meet without sacrificing her time with her kids.

Her overwhelming wish to protect us has resulted in closing herself off from ever failing again.

She protected herself from any fun, any family trips, any friends, and any new experiences. To my disappointment, she protected herself from holiday celebrations and birthday parties, too. Yes, I have no memory of ever celebrating my birthdays as a child. Christmas was another day on the calendar.

Despite these circumstances, I grew up wanting to see the world. I became the total opposite of her. I became the daughter that made her forget her own shortcomings. Through my adventurous life as a teenager and young adult she had re-imagined her life, as a fantasy, safely from her cozy couch in our apartment.

Then in 2000 I did what she was most terrified of.

I left the apartment to spend my summer in the U.S. Sixteen months later I returned to announce my decision that I was going to get married and would be staying in the U.S.

From that moment on I desperately wanted to have a “better” relationship with my mother. Honestly, I wanted my kids to have their grandmother as they were growing up. So, I have tried and tried for many years and I have failed every time spectacularly.

Like everyone who is desperate to get what they think they want the most, this kind of desperation blinded me from seeing myself going off the cliff.

Under the pretext of “I am helping my mom” I committed the mistake of assuming I knew best what she needed the most. And I purchased it for her as a gift. I did not ask her, I did not ask my father, I did not ask anyone. I planned it all out to be a BIG SURPRISE and, oh boy, a big surprise it was.

I remember the day like it was yesterday. It was a beautiful, sunny late summer day. Not too hot with fluffy white clouds. Some breeze in the air as I walked over to the department store that was located just on the other side of the playground from my parent’s apartment. The store was inside the city’s favorite, most popular, and only shopping mall. My husband and I had this planned out to the smallest details. And everything went according to the plan. We purchased the gift and it was delivered to the apartment building on time.

My parents lived on the top 4th floor so I knew the noise of carrying this gift up four flights of stairs eventually would alert my mother. The noise did not disappoint – shoving, pushing, grunting, banging was echoing up the stairway like a call for help in a deep cave. I was sure that everyone in the apartment building heard the noises, too.

The naïve me thought the noises and the slow delivery up the stairs would give my mother the time and the chance to become excited.

I was wrong. My own excitement was blinding me from seeing the first clue: instead of being excited she started to become mad. But she was not showing it fully yet.

As a polite person would do, my mother waited until the delivery guys placed her gift in the kitchen and exited the apartment. Then she really showed us how mad she was.

There in the kitchen was standing a huge, modern, new white refrigerator – my gift.

A giant compared to the old ice box. Back then the delivery service did not include the removal of the old unit.

Instead of a thank you, my mother got silent and was staring at the giant ready to fight it like it was Goliath. Then she turned towards me and said “Andrea, why did you spend your money on a new refrigerator?” It wasn’t the question that cut through my heart as I was standing next to her in the crowded kitchen. What hit me in the heart like a brick thrown by the best baseball player was my realization of how BIG I have just failed.

And her eyes that she kept stuck on me.

What I heard was “Why did you come here to help me?” I choked up. No words came out. I was not prepared to defend myself. I wanted to help. I thought she needed help, a.k.a. monetary help to live a better life. Yes, I wanted to help her to live differently and better. I wanted to change her refrigerator, her furniture, her clothes, her shoes, and her apartment.

I wanted to DECIDE for her how to live her life.

No wonder my mother did not want any of that.

We started arguing, raising our voices, fighting with mean words, and cutting deep sword-like wounds into each other’s hearts. She won when she said “I wish you would have not come to visit. I wish you would have stayed away.” I felt the sword go right through my heart and soul.

I took my bag and walked out the apartment. I felt I was walking away from my mother for good. I went to the park by the apartment building and sat down on a bench. Don’t ask me how long I was sitting there; I don’t remember.

It was daylight when I sat down, and it was dark when I pulled myself together to call my friend.

He has been helping me, guiding me through my past smaller failures of trying to “help” my mother and to better our relationship. When he picked up, I mumbled something like “I just had a fight with mom. It was really bad. I need to talk.” He asked a few questions then he said he would be right there as soon as he could. He drove from the other side of the town to meet me. When he arrived, he said “Let’s go get a pen and paper.” I said okay, having no idea why I needed those. The walk to the close by store felt good. It calmed me. We purchased a pen and a notebook and sat down in a corner of the seating area of the mall. The same mall where a few hours ago I paid for the giant white refrigerator.

He let me share the details of what happened and watched me get mad and angry. Then he opened the notebook to a blank page and gave me the pen. He asked me to draw a circle on the page. In the circle to draw what I felt towards my mother in that moment. It didn’t take me long to create a decent looking pie chart with percentages and labels. I proudly pushed the notebook back towards him. He starred at my drawing (to be honest longer than I wanted him to look at it) and he asked one simple question that changed my whole life going forward:

“ I do not see LOVE in the circle. Don’t you LOVE YOUR MOTHER?”

In that moment nothing could have held back the flood of emotions and tears that I have been keeping at bay since I left the apartment.

I started balling.

In that moment I understood I did not have LOVE in my heart, and I did not have LOVE when I brought the giant white brand-new refrigerator either. Nor had I LOVE when I decided I would rescue my mother from her own life.

How can you truly help someone if you don’t LOVE them?

I wanted that new refrigerator. I wanted that new refrigerator since I was a small child. I thought if we would have had a bigger refrigerator, we would have had more food to put in it. And my parents would have argued less and we would have had more time to spend together as a family.

I didn’t know until later in my life it wasn’t the refrigerator’s fault that there has not been enough food, nor peace, nor harmony.

That one question changed everything for me.

I realized I haven’t had a clue about who my mother was.

In reality, I HAD NO RELATIONSHIP to make better. Because I have never developed a relationship with her. She thought of me as I was still that young teenager who lived in her apartment many year ago. I was just as stuck in her memory as she was stuck in mine: a teenage girl and a mother to be rescued.

In my life I always believed in giving strangers second chances when they screwed up the first time.

It was time to give my mother and myself our second chance.

After my friend left, I went home. I did not sleep that night. The first thing that I did was I turned the page in the notebook and wrote MY MOTHER on the top of a new page.

This blank page was the beginning of my journey of getting to know my own mother. As a person in the present. As she is today.

For the first time I saw her strong, courageous, determined and a loving woman. She was not just my mother, but now also an interesting human being.

On this journey I also committed to showing her who I was. Or better said, who I became over all these years being apart from her. The little girl has become an independent, brave, strong and kind woman herself.

I went from “knowing” what she liked to being curious about what she truly liked and what she didn’t like. I became curious about everything in her life: her feelings, her challenges, her joys, and her desires. I started to open up the doors that connected her past, her present and her future.

Since that night of fighting, we shared many deep conversations about her upbringing, her family, and her life before I was born.

I have never heard those stories before.

I have never before been curious enough to care and to listen. Today those stories are part of my own life story. Now I know where I came from.

Today we are still building our relationship. What I know for sure though that she loves me even if I am thousands of miles away, and I know for sure that she knows that I love her back.

In a letter I forgave her for everything in my past and I invited her to forgive herself as well. I don’t know if she has done that yet or not. I gave her the letter the day she was leaving my home to return to her home after she visited me in the U.S. I had a feeling that was her last visit across the ocean.

I became a coach because I realized how powerful ONE QUESTION could be.

 AND I wanted to be that friend, that coach – like my friend was to me – to someone else.

I believe we can only get so far using our own skills, talent and knowledge and to get to the next level in our life we have to enroll another person’s help. Like I did. Together is better.

I believe anybody can transform their relationships in life, even if the relationship is with themselves.  I know it’s possible because I have done it.

And if I could do it, you can do it, too.

But you have to make that ONE phone call.