- Sarah McLachlan, 58, says going to therapy helped her repair her relationship with her eldest daughter.
- She realized that the way she was communicating with her daughter was making her feel bad about herself.
- “It’s funny because I thought clearly in my mind that I was the opposite of my mother,” she said.
Sarah McLachlan, 58, says she had to rethink how she raised her daughter to rebuild their relationship.
“I would have handled it differently. I was harsh,” MacLachlan told Amy Poehler on Tuesday’s episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.”
McLachlan has two daughters with her ex-husband Ashwin Sood: India Anne, born in 2002, and Taja Summer, born in 2007.
“It’s funny because I thought clearly in my mind that I was the opposite of my mother. And I looked at the way my mother was raising me, and I thought: I would do everything completely differently,” McLachlan said. “Then her words come out of your mouth in a moment of anger and frustration, and you say, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.’
She said her eldest daughter would sometimes become silent or lash out when things got difficult, and at the time, McLachlan didn’t fully understand what was behind that.
“I looked at that and said, ‘How can I help you with this? How can we get through this, because the world out there is scary and big, and you have to have some grit, and you have to do hard things until you know you can do it,'” McLachlan said, describing the strict approach she took with her daughter.
It was only after they went to family counseling that she realized her daughter was suffering from a lot of anxiety.
“The way I was communicating with her was making her feel bad about herself instead of building it up, which was the exact opposite of what she thought I was doing,” McLachlan said.
“I had to eat a lot of humble pie and evaluate it and say, ‘Okay, look, I want a relationship with my child. So, I need to learn how to communicate with her differently,'” she said.
Through this process, she said her daughter also learned how to take responsibility for her reactions.
“It was a long process, but it was beautiful and powerful. We now have an open, loving relationship because of it,” McLachlan said.
This is not the first time McLachlan has spoken about her relationship with her firstborn child. In August, she told Variety that the separation from their relationship inspired the second single, “Gravity,” from her latest album, released last year.
“It feels really good to be able to sing this song and know that we’re in a better place, having been through this really difficult time together,” she said.
In September, MacLachlan told People magazine that therapy gave her a “safe environment” to connect with her daughter.
“What I realized was the way I was expressing my love to her, she wasn’t hearing it, she wasn’t feeling it,” McLachlan said. “I couldn’t reach her. And for me as a parent, it’s devastating because you just want to take your child in your arms and hold them and hold them.”
India Sood did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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