When you say ”mother” or ”father” you describe three separate phenomena. There is the giant who made you and loomed over your early years; there is whatever more human-scale version might have been possible to perceive and maybe even befriend; and there is the internalized version of the parent with whom you struggle—to appease, to escape, to be yourself, to understand and be understood by—and they make up a chaotic and contradictory trinity.

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby