Houston Moms Share Why Mother-Daughter Therapy Works

At the age of 22, Syretta Avent was married and longing for motherhood.

She wanted things to be different than they were for her mother, a single mother with limited resources. She didn’t want to worry about finances or be so tired that she couldn’t enjoy fun things with her kids, like sporting events and trips.

Therapy was never part of his plan, but she started thinking about it when her daughter, Noa, became a teenager.

“There were so many things I wanted to fix as a mother; things my mother couldn’t do because she was a single mother,” Avent said. “I wanted to understand Noa better. I can make mistakes as a mother and I want to do things right.

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Avent discovered a new app, called Passport Journeys, that pairs mothers and daughters with licensed therapists to strengthen their relationships. and help them communicate better. She wanted to try it. They didn’t have any problems, Avent said, but she wanted to make sure they never did.

The app was founded by Lacey Tezino, a program manager at Rice University, married with three children. It costs around $220 per month and includes two virtual therapy sessions with journaling exercises, worksheets, and bonding activities, such as road trips, walks in the park, virtual cooking classes and online workouts.

“Mother-daughter relationships can be extremely delicate, but there is a beautiful willingness on the part of many mothers to be proactive,” Tezino said. “Mothers arrive with their young daughters to establish a better foundation. Many mothers want to get it right sooner. They don’t want to wait for the trauma. They want to increase intimacy.

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So far, 12 mother-daughter couples are using the app. Tezino said she’s growing her business slowly because “you don’t want to move too fast when it comes to mental health.”

Even before the pandemic, there was a growing demand for online therapies, making mental health support convenient and, in some cases, more affordable. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are more than 10,000 mental health and wellness apps on the market.

Tezino’s app is unique since it focuses solely on mothers and daughters. This relationship, she says, is often complicated. Some are the best friends in the world. Others are triggered by the slightest problem.

Tezino knows this better than anyone. She was 18 when she first met her mother on Mother’s Day 2005. Her mother gave her up for adoption to a man who owned a Montrose bar and raised her in her hometown of Vidor. He is dead from brain cancer when Tezino was 7 and his parents became his guardians.

Tezino was in college when she first contacted her mother and spent the next decade trying to make up for missed years. It was difficult, and her mother’s alcoholism and recovery made their relationship even more complex. She died in 2014 from cancer at the age of 53.

Therapy helped Tezino heal the deep sadness and loss she felt after her mother’s death.

“Sharing a cry with my therapist made me feel closer to her,” Tezino wrote in his 2023 memoir.

“I’ve heard many mothers and daughters say that communication is their biggest problem, but that’s superficial. Once you dig deeper, you encounter issues such as being misunderstood, feeling unheard, and emotional unavailability. Many of us are angry at our mothers for things they never talked about,” she said.

My relationship with my mother is far from perfect. We sometimes have difficulty making ourselves heard, as if we were speaking two different languages. I vowed to make things better with my daughter, but it’s not easy. Tezino is right, therapy helps.

Tezino hopes the app will help transform mother-daughter relationships so that future generations are not burdened by broken bonds.

“You don’t just find a good relationship. It takes intentional work,” she said.

Avent and her daughter underwent several therapy sessions together and individually. She said it helped her become more aware of the words and tone she uses with her daughter. It also increased his compassion for his mother.

“From the beginning, my mother was managing life and doing the best she could with what she had,” Avent said. “I think I owe him an apology.”