Like My Mother Always Said… by Erin McHugh

“It’s only a problem if you make it a problem.”

— ROSEMARY, mother of Betsy

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“Pain equals growth.”

— BARBARA, mother of Michelle

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“You’re wishing your life away.”

— KAY, mother of David

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On the dangers of TV:

“That thing is the idiot’s lantern.”

— VALERIA, mother of Elisa

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“You kids think you’re immortal.”

— KIMMEY, mother of Ann

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“Look it up.” We thought we should even have this etched on her tombstone. She would never give us the answer to anything. We had to “look it up.” So annoying. Yet, after my mother died, the one thing my daughter wanted to remind her of Grandma was my mother’s much-used, nearly falling apart dictionary.

— ANNE, daughter of Patsy

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My mom would say, "l may be responsible for all of your problems, but you are responsible for all the solutions."

ANNE, daughter of Mary Anne

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“Don’t be impressed by a man’s car—he may be living in it.”

— CAROLYN, mother of Melody

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“No one is paying as much attention to you as you pay to yourself.”

— JOALICE, mother of Sharon

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“There’s always going to be someone smarter than you, richer than you, and better looking than you. So don’t get too full of yourself.”

— MARILYN, mother of James

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My mother is an amazing listener, and that’s taught me how to listen to my own daughters. Sometimes we don’t always want advice, just an open ear and a big hug.

— First Lady MICHELLE OBAMA, daughter of Marian

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My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.

— Artist PABLO PICASSO, son of Maria

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“Why give them the satisfaction of letting them know they hurt you? You go have the best time without them. That will teach them!”

— DENISE, mother of Alexandra

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“Don’t ever let anyone define you; you define yourself.”

— SHIRLEY, mother of Tim

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“You can do anything you put your mind to.”

— DORETHA, mother of Shantelle

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I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing. Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all of her virtues but mostly for never once having said, “I told you so.”

— Author ERMA BOMBECK, daughter of Erma

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I broke up with someone after many years together and lived in a major slump after it happened. Shortly after the breakup, I went home for Thanksgiving and my mother—wise, all-knowing, passionate, Italian, in Palazzo pants and a blow-out—took extra-special care of me throughout the day: a knowing nod, allowing me to snag a stuffed mushroom before she served them, a reprieve from garbage duty.

At the end Of the night, as I gathered my stuff to head home, my mother grabbed me, brought me outside, handed me a cigarette, and lit it. We smoked together in the cold, New Jersey quiet, frozen snow on the ground, the front steps cold under our feet. Finally, she looked at me, her eyes teary, and said, "Take care ofyourself. And f*ck everything else." And with that she stubbed her cigarette out under her ballet flat and kissed me good-bye.

— FRANCESCO, son of Rochelle

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When I was in middle school and subjected to mean-girl banter on a daily basis, I would come home from school confused and hurt. My mother would always say, “People are going to talk. You march right through the middle of the pack of them with your head up, shoulders straight, and never, ever let them see you sweat.”

— DENISE, daughter of Connie

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My childhood did not suffer from traditional advice but rather from prolonged social coaching and insight into emotional intelligence that I, on the Asperger's spectrum, lacked spectacularly. I had learned at a very early age that one does not go down on the floor, bark, and crawl under a table when greeted by an adult but looks the adult in the eye and shakes his or her hand. My mother is keenly emotionally and intellectually intelligent, but above all, she retains a gift for understanding what makes people tick, a subject that I had zero interest in when young. Better still, she was able to couch this understanding in terms that I could understand. When girls bullied me in middle school, she explained not that girls were bitchy and competitive but that they were like hurt, wild animals that might lash out at anything kind and different.

"Don't let anyone be mean to you—that's never OK," she would say. My mother is my advocate, teacher, ally, prod, and example, and, hopefully, I can emulate her wisdom when I choose to raise off-spring of my own.

ALI, daughter of Barb

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“What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation. Freedom is a loose leash, a license to be different from your mother and still be loved…. Freedom is … not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.”

— Author and feminist ERICA JONG, mother of Molly

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“If you don’t like it, change it.”

— MARTHA, mother of Sue

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“Don’t wait for people to ask you questions—just speak up!”

— MARGARET, mother of Andrea

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After my father died, my mother told me not to worry so much. She said she found that the things she spent a lot of time worrying about never happened, and the things that went wrong she never anticipated.

— SUSAN, daughter of Sue

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FOLLOW YOUR PASSION.

JULIA, mother of Bethanne

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“If you read, you will find a whole new world out there.”

— ELEANOR, mother of Dianne

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I was a typically self-absorbed teenage girl in the 1960s who fretted over every perceived flaw in my appearance. My freckles were too noticeable. My hair wasn’t thick enough. I was too short. My skin was too fair to tan. On and on. I had taken to throwing down copies of Seventeen magazine in disgust because I knew I’d never look like its frequent cover girl, Cheryl Tiegs. One day, my very patient mother, who’d had about enough of this self-deprecating nonsense, said, “Just stop it now! You are a beautiful girl and nothing is wrong with you! Even Elizabeth Taylor gets pimples on her butt! Nobody’s perfect!” Since then I have never once seen a photo of Elizabeth Taylor without thinking that even one of the most beautiful women in the world was human after all, just like me!

— CHRIS, daughter of Nancy

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“Don’t do as I do. Do as I say. We’re building your character.”

— ETHEL, mother of Sara

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“Don’t stack dishes at the table.”

— PEG, mother of Drew

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“Always order the cheapest thing on the menu when somebody takes you out to dinner.”

— DOROTHY, mother of June

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"If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."

CHERIE, mother of Chris

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“Walk in as if you own the place.”

— PEG, mother of Margaret

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“Always remember that you are not better than anyone else, and no one is better than you.”

— SANNY, mother of Tom

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Whenever we would say, “Everyone is doing it”—whatever “it” was— my mother would respond, “Be the engine and not the caboose.”

— JANE, daughter of Omerine

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“Live in the present, look forward to the future, and refuse to be dominated by the past.”

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“If we fill our hours with regrets of yesterday and with worries of tomorrow, we have no today in which to be thankful.”

— HERTHA, mother of Tina

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“It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

— MERRILL, mother of Sarah

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“It is not how old you are—but how you are old.”

— HERTHA, mother of Tina

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“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

— RITA, mother of Lisa

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“Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard.”

— ANN, mother of Amelia

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“It’s nice to be rich, no disgrace to be poor—but it’s damn inconvenient at times.’

— BROOKS, mother of Pamela

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“Don’t think so much!” my mother was always saying. “You’re going to get depressed, and you’ll get big wrinkles on the bridge of your nose.” She was not joking—and, viewed in a certain light, she was right.

— CHRISTINE, daughter of Anne

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“You have to work with what you have to get what you want.”

— FRANCES, grandmother of Tim