Occasionally, I try to be a better mother than my mother was.
You can probably relate, right?
Is there anything wrong with wanting to improve, to evolve, to progress?
When a child evolves, they achieve more than their parents, and that's fine, that's the natural order of things.
But when their motivation is to show their parents that they can do better than them – that’s a reversal of roles.
When I want to be better than my mother, out of ego, out of vulnerability, it's as if I'm saying to her:
"I know better than you, I'm the adult, and you, mother, you don’t know anything – you're the younger one."
This causes imbalance;
I'm invalidating my mother.
And when I'm invalidating my mother and her parenting
I'm invalidating myself,
and everything positive I ever received from her.