Personal Narrative: My Relationship With My Mother

The relationship I am writing about is the relationship with my mother. My mother and I have what I would consider a pretty close relationship as mother and daughter. We often describe ourselves as frenemies, meaning we are friends but we bicker or lightly argue as well. One of our biggest perceptual differences is the different ways that we see my age and maturity. I believe myself to be a very mature, responsible young woman and try to be independent as I can be; sometimes maybe even trying to be too independent for my age. My mother does credit me as mature and responsible, but she also seems to believe I need guidance or “mothering” where I don’t. I consider this a long-term perceptual difference as it started when I was about fifteen

When emotions in this relationship are expressed nonverbally it is through body language. I use the nonverbal emotional expression more often than my mother as I consider my mother to have a high emotional intelligence. An example of nonverbal emotional expression using body language that I do is, I’ll often “storm” up to my room when I am upset with her and this is how I am trying to show her I am upset with her. Since we are mother and daughter, some emotions are not necessarily appropriate or acceptable to express, this is because respect comes in to play. When I am angry at her, I have to be careful about how I express it. In my opinion, expressing anger towards a peer or even one of my siblings is much more different than to my mother. For example, sometimes if I am upset or angry with my sister, I express this by yelling at her which is something I can not do when expressing emotions like anger to my mom. It would be very unacceptable and disrespectful to yell at my mother. My mother does not seem to have many emotions that are unacceptable to express towards me as she uses emotional labor to suppress expressions that I shouldn’t be exposed to. I often struggle with expressing my emotions to my mother as I consider myself to have a lower emotional intelligence. I also find that when I am upset with her, even if it is something minor like if she parked in the garage poorly so it was