I spent all my younger years trying not to be like my mother. And, yet, here we are

I’d done it again: accidentally flipped my phone to selfie mode instead of capturing the paragraph I wanted to save from the book I was reading. I scramble to hit the “reverse camera” button, but the damage – the damage – is done.

The face staring back at me isn’t mine. It’s my mother’s.

Lately, it’s becoming a habit. One unguarded moment is all it takes: in front of the bathroom mirror. Passing a shop window. Mid-Zoom call – before I can arrange my features into a smile.

Jen Vuk (left) with her mother on the beach at Portarlington, Victoria, in 1978.

And there it is. That severe downturn of the lips. The distracted gaze. A brow pressed – like by a thumb – into a triangle of sadness. Add the grey I’ve stopped disguising and the shorter cut I’ve chosen for convenience and ease, and it’s no longer just a subtle nod to Mum. It’s a broadcast.

No matter how often it happens, the shock always feels immediate, like leaning against a fence you keep forgetting is electric. But why? It makes sense, after all, that one or both of the people who shaped your DNA might eventually emerge in your profile. And not just in your face, but in your gestures, speech, thoughts, even your politics.

In short, it’s complicated – even if, like me, you’d classify your own mother-daughter relationship as “vaguely annoying, occasionally infuriating, unwaveringly loving”.

In fact, author and mother-daughter relationship expert Rosjke Hasseldine has long maintained that “the mother-daughter relationship is largely thought to be one of the most complicated relationships to understand”.

Recognised as the architect of the Mother-Daughter Attachment Model, the New Zealand-born, US-based psychotherapist brings more than 30 years of experience as a mother-daughter therapist, having worked with mothers and daughters across various ages, countries and cultures.

According to Hasseldine, the Mother-Daughter Attachment Model digs under the emotional layers of underlying common conflicts between mothers and daughters and the “flash points in the lifespan of a mother-daughter relationship”. Essentially, she says, the model “tells the story of women’s lives”.

In one article published on her website, Hasseldine adds – perhaps with some understatement – that “the mother-daughter relationship is the most powerful relationship for a woman. A daughter’s relationship with her mother lays the foundation for her relationship with herself.”

American author Jessica Machado gingerly tested the footing of her own mother-daughter dynamic in a 2014 Vice article. As Machado writes, during an ordinary evening at home, after putting together a quick dinner, pouring a glass of red and settling in front of Wheel of Fortune, she was hit by a startling realisation: the ritual wasn’t hers alone.

During my own adolescence, I practically majored in “How Not to Look, Be, Sound or (God forbid) Dress Like My Mother”.

“That’s when I realised, clear as my Windexed windows,” Machado continues. “I had become my mother.”

The alignment is particularly galling for Machado, a “loud-and-proud feminist” on the “Gen X-millennial cusp”, who rallies against her “prim and proper” mother, “vowing to never, ever be anything like her. I mean, how could I! … I was outspoken and sulky in patent leather boots. She listened to Linda Ronstadt and said things like, ‘Geez Louise.’”

Machado and I had parallel missions when it came to our mothers (even though, admittedly, these days I’m prone to the odd “Geez Louise” myself). During my own adolescence, I practically majored in “How Not to Look, Be, Sound or (God forbid) Dress Like My Mother” and passed with flying colours. I can still hear her voice ringing in my ears: If only you put that kind of effort into your actual schoolwork.

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But, as life would have it, by my early 20s – and stranded in Valencia, Spain, nearing the end of a year-long overseas adventure – I’d sunk into a deep funk from missing her (by then, the bottomless sangrias had well and truly lost their charm and the travellers’ cheques had all been cashed).

I finally understood – with startling clarity – exactly why we refer to our birthplace as “the motherland”. (I’m certainly not the first to think or feel this way. As American author and editor Michele Filgate once wrote: “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” )

It was after I returned from that overseas trip that our relationship found a new rhythm. Sure, Mum had to first look deep into her heart to forgive me (I had “accidentally” got married while briefly in Reno, Nevada), but once she saw I was serious about finding a job and building a career, she exhaled.

As our relationship matured, the air between us cleared. Mum became “Maydsey” – a nickname born from my habit of riffing on names (hers was Mayda). Maydsey gave me the space I needed not just to grow, but to grow up.

Jen Vuk (left) with her mother on a visit to Sydney in the 1990s.

It was also around that time I saw her in full stride, commanding her space as business manager of a large organisation. She was tall, and I remember her height vividly then – not just her physical height, but the way she stood in her confidence.

Having a successful career was extremely important to Mum and her achievement was particularly sweet for someone who had who arrived in Australia in the late 1950s as a young refugee fleeing what was communist Yugoslavia. Back then, her English may have been halting, but she was fluent in the language of survival, and she had managed to somehow successfully talk her way into her first job.

In just a few years, Mum had ticked off major milestones: marriage, motherhood and homeownership. In the years following, she also earned her first certification in medical terminology and worked her way up from admin assistant to running businesses.

In 1991, at just 56, she stepped away from the job she had long loved. The rising care needs of her mother (recently debilitated by a second stroke), the emotional toll of the burgeoning war in the former Yugoslavia – her motherland – and the impending birth of her first grandchild made the decision feel not just logical, but kind of necessary. Still, there was nothing easy about her decision.

Mum died in November 2019, aged 83 – just a few months before COVID swept the world, and just as I entered perimenopause.

Our family photo albums offer proof that Mum found not just joy, but renewed purpose after leaving her job. She became secretary of her bowling club (causing a minor stir by refusing to wear a petticoat under her white uniform), embraced grandparenting with delight, cultivated close friendships, took up tai chi, travelled widely and even wrote an autobiography.

But during those first few months after she left her job, I have firm memories of Mum hustling for part-time work – temp jobs, bookkeeping – anything to stay in the game and stay useful. That second time around, no one gave her a chance. The world that once saw her potential now looked past her.

By her mid- to late 50s, after repeatedly proving herself and reaching what was arguably the peak of her career, she should have felt invincible. Instead, she’d become invisible. It hurt. And she wasn’t the only one hurting.

And maybe that’s it. That’s where the complexity and discomfort lie for me – not that I look like Mum, but that I’ve reached her age – the age – when still, after all these years, the world hasn’t really stopped whispering that your time is up.

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Actually, scratch that. According to a recent Australian report into ageism, that noise I’m hearing isn’t a whisper at all. It’s a bang. The Gen Seen Report 2024, commissioned by Australian Seniors in collaboration with consumer research group MyMavins, found that 73 per cent of the 5000 respondents experienced some form of ageism after turning 50.

I’d be kidding myself if I said that it doesn’t feel like history repeating. Like Mum, I’ve recently walked away from my job without a safety net. The circumstances are vastly different – there’s certainly no first grandchild on the horizon (thankfully, as my boys are only 18 and 15) – but if I’m honest, I’m a little afraid of what’s waiting on the other side.

What I do have is this: a strong, stubborn instinct that it was time to leap and see what I’m made of. And if I forget or start feeling more than a little uncertain, I only have to look in the mirror – or take a selfie.

Because she’s right there.

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