The Knots of Relationships: Mother, Daughter, Mother-in-law, Sister-in-law and me
The Knots of Relationships
A reflective personal essay about family, memory, and the emotional knots we inherit—and pass on.
A story of how relationships can drain us—and still guide us back to ourselves.
Relationships grow like knots. At first, they are thin and seem easy to untie. But as life goes on, they become thicker, tighter, and harder to loosen. We tell ourselves we should untangle them. Then we postpone it. We look away. And one day, we feel the urge to cut them instead. This is how relationships change—quietly, in the hands of time.
The most complicated knots in my life are tied to four women. Whether we are together or apart, our lives are deeply entangled. My mother. My daughter. My mother-in-law. My sister-in-law. And me. Just naming them makes a quiet ache rise somewhere inside my chest.
Children look for someone to blame, and most often that someone is the closest person: a parent. Parents, on the other hand, forget easily—especially the moments when they hurt their children. What they remember clearly are the years of effort, the sacrifices, the days they endured for their family. Children are not so different. They forget the wounds they caused, but remember vividly the wounds they received. We live the same years, yet carry different memories. Perhaps that is what it means to be human—we remember from our own side first.
Every parent, sooner or later, faces the day their life is judged by their child. No one escapes that moment. There are no perfect parents. When a child grows up and begins to look at their parents with distance, or with honesty, or even with cold clarity, the parents are often already standing near the end of their long road.
By then, excuses come too late. Explanations lose their strength. All that remains is to receive it—quietly, with the whole body and heart. And maybe, in that moment, they finally remember their own parents. “My mother must have been in pain because of me, too.”
Realization always arrives late. That is why it hurts so much.
God, it seems, is never lazy when it comes to teaching us. What we avoid, what we ignore, what we pretend not to see—eventually returns to us like a boomerang: unavoidable, and painful enough to make us understand.
Ironically, the relationships that once exhausted me now exist again inside my own life. I am a daughter, and a mother, and a daughter-in-law, and a sister-in-law. And one day, I will become a mother-in-law too. The roles change, but the structure remains. Perhaps God uses people as mirrors, so we can finally see ourselves.
My Mother
My mother was born the second daughter in a large family. From a young age, she carried the weight of the household and took care of her younger siblings. She was strong, practical, and sharp in temperament. At twenty-three, she married and stepped into another large family, taking care of her parents-in-law, her brother-in-law, and her sister-in-law. Her education was short. What she knew was how to work, how to endure, how to survive.
Her voice was loud, her personality tough. But when it came to feeding her family, she was tireless. She raised a son and a daughter through difficult times, lost her husband in her sixties, and now, in her eighties, she lives alone. Time has made her lighter—and lonelier.
And Me
I am her daughter. To a daughter, a mother is like a stone laid at the bottom of life—always there, even when unseen. Her way of speaking, her habits, her way of thinking—without realizing it, I became her. I came to the United States at twenty-two and began to live on my own, yet I still cooked, loved, and endured life in the ways I learned from her.
We were never a sweet, friendly mother and daughter. We moved through time by hating, understanding, giving up, and enduring. Now I am the one who calls to check on her. She has become someone fragile I need to watch over. Love and resentment remain quietly mixed inside my heart under one name: Mother.
My Daughter
And then, I became a mother myself. I raised my daughter the way I was raised. I was strict. I had many rules. I believed that was love. But in my daughter’s memory, I am sometimes the one who caused pain.
She remembers what I have forgotten: the homecoming she couldn’t go to, the makeup I threw away, the apologies I never truly gave. One day, she said to me, “A real apology doesn’t come with excuses.” In front of those words, I felt less like an adult and more like a child.
After she left, the house became quiet. My heart did not. And then I thought of my mother. “My mother must have been in pain because of me, too.”
While the knots with my own child led me back to my roots, the family I gained through marriage tightened around me from a different direction. Beyond the sturdy ropes of blood, there remained other lingering, stubborn knots tied in the name of in-laws.
My Mother-in-law and Sister-in-law
They lived quietly in my thoughts, even when I tried not to think about them.
I do not know what their hearts were like, but I know what happened to mine: too much of my life was colored by tension, endurance, and feelings I had to carry alone.
My sister-in-law and my mother-in-law are knots with different names—relationships that hurt more because they are called family. The time we lived together, the suffocating air, and then the small apartment that felt more peaceful than any palace. That was when I learned: sometimes, it is not space that imprisons us—it is relationships.
Now I understand a little—the way my mother-in-law looks at her son, and the possibility that one day, I may stand in the same place.
The Four Women of My Life
The emotions I received from these women, and the emotions I gave back, have shaped much of who I am. Now I live with some distance, and it hurts a little less. But these knots will probably stay with me for life.
And still, I know this:
All these relationships are quietly leading me back to myself.
Note: This essay reflects my personal experience and emotions as they are. Each family story holds its own truth, and I share mine with care.
🌿 Related Essays & Reflections
Explore more personal essays and reflections in my quiet archive.
📚 Go to Reflections
Comments
Post a Comment