Mother's day memo: she is always with you.

• Author: Poulter, Stephan B.
• Position: Life in America

THE FIRST WOMAN we ever loved was our mother. We may love many women later in life, but our mother was the fast, making this relationship the most prominent factor in emotional development. You literally were a part of your mother during her pregnancy. The wiring in your brain naturally makes you want to bond and connect with her emotionally. Babies wish to be held, fed, and cared for by their mother. This initial bond becomes the seedbed and foundation from which all future emotional development, communication styles, personality types, and self-esteem formations evolve. No other relationship has the potential to shape an individual as this one does. The more you understand the emotional components of it, the more choices and opportunities will be available to you for relationship change and personal growth.

Some would think that the one thing mothers and children have in common--their time together from birth onward--automatically would create a positive emotional bond and a healthy, productive mother factor. However, it does not always work out that way. The collective emotional experience of being in this relationship can create ripples--and sometimes tidal waves--in subsequent relationships that are felt for the duration of an adult child's life. It is the lack of bonding and unhealthy development with one's mother that creates the early fractures (lack of trust, paranoia) in a person's psychological development and emotional foundation.

The wealth of literature on the power of our first love has been a topic of popular psychological mainstream discussion since Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Melanie Klein described the lifelong influence and power that mothers have on their children. It has become widely accepted that a child's emotional disposition dramatically is influenced, impacted, and shaped by the day-to-day interactions with his or her mother. The typical "blind spot" of this relationship is not understanding the legacy of these interactions, where we assume that emotional stumbling blocks are random and inevitable.

When the topic of mothers is raised, hardly anyone is without an opinion. (Saying that you have no opinion about your mother or feeling numb toward her indicates very serious anger issues.) Consider the following questions and statements and how they relate to the mother-child relationship:

* "I never get very close emotionally to my girlfriends," a son says.

* "I have no close girlfriends; all my friends are men," a daughter confides.

* "Why does my girlfriend get along fabulously with her mother and I can hardly stand to be in the same room with mine?"

* "I wish I was close to my mother."

* "I am very irritable with people when they don't follow through on things for me. My mother is the same way with me."

* "My mother forever was saying to me, 'No one will ever be good enough for you.' I never have had a relationship last longer than six months."

* "Every time I talk to my mother, why does the discussion always focus on her?"

* "I felt invisible to my mother while I was growing up. She still does not know what I do every day."

* "I do not trust women."

* "My mother's opinions, emotions, and communication style are a huge problem in my marriage: my wife hates my...