When Mother-Daughter Relationships Go Bad

Nov. 14, 2005 — -- Cindy McCord and her daughter, Natalie Bush, used to have a close relationship, but over the years that relationship has deteriorated, and now both feel like the victim of the other's wrath.

"There always seems to be this competition," McCord said. "She thinks that I use her son against her and I don't … all she does is criticize me."

"She always takes everything personally," Bush, 31, said. "She never admits she's done anything wrong."

In a two-part series called, "Turning Points," "Good Morning America" stages an intervention in this mother-daughter relationship in crisis.

"If it doesn't change, I'll close the door, and I don't want to close the door on my daughter," McCord said.

In 1977, McCord was a single mom struggling to raise her baby alone. She called her daughter the "light of my life."

"I chose to stay single for 15 years to raise her because that was my choice," McCord, 53, said. "I wanted to do the best for her that I could."

But at 16, Bush started dating Mike Bush, then 23, whom she later married and together they have a son, Anakin, 6. Both say things changed after that point. Mike Bush has become a constant source of tension. McCord claims he controls her daughter so much, she won't visit any more.

"I don't understand why she harbors all these terrible feelings against my husband which come out toward me," Bush said, adding she feels her mother is critical of her parenting skills and still expects thanks for raising her.

McCord married after her daughter left the house. Her husband is 15 years her junior, the same age as Mike Bush.

McCord and her daughter recently took a trip meant to bring them back together, but ultimately pushed them further apart.

"I just looked at her and said, 'you're just a b*** and everybody else thinks so too,'" McCord said.

"She said it in front of my then-5-year-old son and it upset him terribly," Bush said.

As the holidays approach, mother and daughter are struggling to find a way to breach the gap that has developed between them, for the sake of each other and Bush's son.

"I'm sensing that they'll either move or take my grandson away from me, or poison him against me, and I couldn't handle that," McCord said.

Life coach and O magazine contributor Martha Beck, said there is a lot of love in McCord and Bush's relationship, but there are also a lot of control issues.

Tune in to "GMA" on Tuesday when Beck sits down with Bush and McCord to mediate and to try to help this mother and daughter toward the path of reconciliation.