Some of you have noticed and remarked that I haven’t written much about my mom. It’s true. I haven’t.
Even my mother asked, some months ago.
“When are you going to write about me? You write so much about Sid.” My father.
A part of me, the resentful, angry part wanted to say, “You don’t want me to write about you. I’ll wait until you’re gone. Or maybe I’ll never write about you.”
I changed the subject instead.
The relationship I have with my mother has been fraught. Maybe not when I was a little girl, because my power of discernment was undeveloped; I saw a hero, a person who was responsible for my well-being, my survival. Maybe it wasn’t so fraught––because when I look at the photos I have of the two of us together when I was a child–– it seemed as if I adored her. Maybe I did adore her. I know she adored me.
I have great memories of my mom reading to me, acting out the beloved stories of my childhood, Madeline, Dr. Seuss anything, Caps for Sale, Where the Wild Things Are, and on and on. I’m most likely the reader I am because of the time she took with me, the books she sought out and shared.
Other than that, few of my childhood memories of my mother are positive, more of them are sad and disappointing. Memories I’ve relived so many times I’ve lost count, the stories I’ve told over and over. Telling those stories doesn’t bring much relief, much healing. They’re filled with resentment, and they disable me. I know the stories have morphed over time. They’ve been reconstructed with each telling, embellished, and enlarged. Memory is untrustworthy. But some are etched into my neural pathways, deep grooves of anger and disgust, of grief and longing, and I have no doubt they’re true. They’re true because they’re what I experienced.
I remember an odd pride I had when I was a child that she was my mom. She was young and sparkling, and the kids that I knew wanted her to be their mom. I loved that people envied me.
The details of the disappointments aren’t necessary. The horror stories can go untold. It’s enough to know that they’re painful for me and that it’s been hard to let them go. I may never be able to let the memories go, but I must come to a place of forgiveness so that I can mend the rift and accept her for who she is. To focus on the things that are good, see all of her and not just the hurt that’s been created between us.
We walk on eggshells around each other, neither of us getting what we want or need. There’s little trust at this point. I take that back. The thing I’ve come to trust is that we will come together, and we will come apart. We’re both very good at that. We are consistently disappointing to one another and it’s heartbreaking.
I see my mother for who she is, and I see myself in her, so clearly. And I don’t want to be like her, and I want to be just like her.
My mother is ebullient, talented, generous, smart, and at times, a very lovely human being. I share those qualities. My mother is selfish, narcissistic, angry, sad, privileged, and childish. I share those qualities, as well.
My mother loves me, and I love my mother. We are both children of trauma.
We want attention and love. We want our needs met. We don’t always know how to meet our own needs. That’s a crucial piece for me, learning how to do that.
Personal inquiry, from years of therapy and not as many years of 12-Step recovery has helped me see more truths about our relationship, to not look at situations in my life with her as solely black and white. It’s helped me understand myself better and our very difficult dynamic.
It feels strange and scary to write about her here, knowing full well that she’ll most likely read this, as she reads every single one of my essays, except for the few weeks she missed when, out of reactivity, in one of my decidedly less mature moments, I blocked her and refunded the unused portion of the founder’s subscription she bought when I started this newsletter last January. And maybe, I’m doing this because it’s less scary than trying to have a conversation with her. I can’t right now, because she’s taking a break from Nan. I don’t know that I would be ready even if she weren’t.
This feels like a turning point, an opportunity to speak.
Her declaration of needing a break happened Saturday. And even though it’s painful when one of us steps away, I also feel relief. It’s a break from her expectations, her need for us to be a certain way. It lets me off the hook. I get a pause in which I don’t have to make plans to see her or bear her disappointment when I say I don’t want to visit. The one who steps away is usually me.
My therapist has told me that I need to individuate. Cut the cord, give up my expectations of wanting a mother who doesn’t exist. People tell me over and over again that I need to stop going to the hardware store for milk, or apples, or oranges. So clever. So true.
My friends have two standard questions for me. The first is “What are you eating these days?” The second, “How are things with you and your mother?”
I never individuated from either of my parents. I’m 63 years old. As a child I was afraid of so many things, scared to take risks, terrified of being hurt emotionally and physically. I didn’t inhabit myself in many ways. My epilepsy diagnosis made me fearful, and feelings of impending abandonment were always there.
When I was a very small child, my nickname was “Nancy No-No,” and even if my predilection for rebellion was annoying to my parents, “the terrible twos,” it could have been regarded as a reason to celebrate. I was beginning my earliest journey toward individuation. And then at 8, epilepsy happened, and my world changed. I don’t think it was just about the epilepsy, because the dynamics in my family system weren’t healthy. There were a lot of secrets and a lot of lying. That contributed to my anxiety. Of needing to be attached to them.
When I was 17 and everyone was applying to go away to college, I stayed close to home, afraid to leave them, to be too far away. In my 20s, I’d strike out on my own, only to be pulled back in, needing rescue, again and again. I wanted to grow up, I didn’t want to grow up. I wanted to take care of myself, I wanted to be taken care of. And my parents were always there to pick up my pieces. I was grateful and resentful. I was a child. I am a child. I am a child in an adult’s body. So is my mother.
When my mother was 6 years old, her father died suddenly. And it changed the arc of her entire life. She never got over it, she never fully recovered from that loss. I didn’t understand it for a very long time, the depth of that wound. It was only when I started viewing my own life through the lens of trauma did I come to see the pain she struggled with, the fears that plagued her. She was scared and young, terrified that she’d lose her remaining parent. What would become of her if she did?
I believe she lived in a constant state of anxiety and made lots of choices that were born of fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of not having enough, fear of not being loved. And my mother didn’t see her own worth. She married a man who was gay. She must have known, at least subconsciously, that things weren’t right. And she didn’t leave, I’m sure for many reasons. She tells me it was mostly because she wanted us to grow up with a mother AND a father. Something she didn’t get to do. I believe her. She wasn’t ready to leave him, to act, until 15 years into the marriage, realizing that she deserved better than a man who couldn’t give her basic things that women want and need. She never had good taste in men. No one could ever replace the idealized memory of her father. He was an idol to her. I did the same thing with my father. I made him an idol. I excused his lies, and I made her the enemy, and that wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve it.
Having never been a mother, I can’t relate to what mothers feel. The devotion, the “I’d die for my kid” commitment. Would you really die for your child? I don’t understand that kind of love. I’m not the right person to discuss the topic of motherlove. I don’t know that one. Far be it for me to question another’s truth.
We’re both superb at melting down. We’re often held in thrall by what program describes as “takeovers.” When we’re both in our reactivity, we can’t see or hear ourselves clearly, we can’t seem to squash the feelings that come up, the vitriol, the rage. The on/off switch goes missing. There is no reset button. We often dissociate from damage done.
The night before my father died, my mother and I experienced a huge rupture. There was a fight, there was physical violence, and when I needed her the most, needed her care, she melted down, acted out, screaming “When is someone going to take care of me?” I was outraged, repulsed, wounded, and unforgiving. What she’s told me is that she has no recollection of that night. I believe her. Because she wasn’t there. Her 6-year-old self was. And that little girl needed care. And she got triggered, and I was in her path. It took me years to understand that. Years. When I made the connection so much made sense. But it’s still hard for me to forgive her.
I need to individuate. That’s my work right now. I’ve made so much progress, but I’m not there yet. I need space, I need boundaries, I need time. But time is running out. I am 63, My mother is 86. My father had to die for me to free myself from the dysfunction of our bond. I will not let her die, and I will not die, before we heal this. And it may not meet our expectations of what a textbook mother-daughter relationship looks like, if there’s even such a thing. Maybe we can create our own definition of what our mother-daughter relationship looks like and find satisfaction in that.
Recently––a couple of weeks ago––I bopped into my therapist’s office for my weekly session.
She saw how buoyant I was. In program there’s a wish to live life happy, joyous, and free. This comes from gaining emotional sobriety.
She asked, “Are you happy?” I bounced back an enthusiastic “Yes!”
She asked, “Are you joyous?” I replied with a resounding “I am!” All smiles. I waited for the next question, knowing I had to tell the truth.
She asked, “Are you free?” I said, “Only partly.” She beckoned to me to be more specific.
I said I was mostly free. Except for my relationship with my mother and with food.
My mother has let me down many times. I’ve let her down just as many, if not more. I couldn’t accept my mom as flawed, as human. I focused on her disappointment in me. My perception was that I always needed to be better. My parents were both trapped in perfectionistic thinking. And it seems I was too. I needed her to be perfect. I needed her to be the mother I deserved instead of the mother I got. That’s impossible. There’s no such thing as a perfect anything. I need the mother that I have. She’s perfect for me. And I need to forgive her, and myself. It’s time.
End note:
As I was almost finished with my first draft of this essay, my mother texted me with a lot to say. The bottom line for now is she wants to end her break from me. I answered her text with lots to say as well. She’s given me permission to write about us, in fact, she suggested it in her text, specifically about our dysfunction, not knowing that it’s what I was doing.
I think it’s very brave of her to make that suggestion.
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Nan, your words moved me deeply. I can feel the tenderness and rawness of your journey with your mother. It’s beautifully written and layered with complexity—I sense you walking on eggshells, perhaps more than you realize.
The way you express both the longing and the complexity of this bond resonates profoundly—it’s such a delicate dance between love, pain, and the tension created by how we wish things could be versus how they are.
When you wrote, ‘I need the mother that I have. She’s perfect for me. And I need to forgive her, and myself. It’s time,’ I felt the weight and the courage in those words. They made me pause and wonder: where does this ‘need to’ come from? Is it a call from within, or does it perhaps echo something external—an expectation, a pressure to resolve or redefine what’s inherently complex?
I wonder, too, what it might feel like to let go of the ‘need’ altogether—not as resignation, but as an opening. To create space for all the contradictions of this relationship to simply coexist: the love, the hurt, the misunderstandings, and even the unfulfilled hopes. What if acceptance, as it is, could be enough?
Whatever path you take, I honor the bravery it takes to hold space for this kind of truth. Thank you for sharing your deeply personal story with us.
Nan, this was such a brave, beautiful, tender, raw, real piece of writing. I could see you working it all out, this relationship with your mother, as you wrote--well, not quite working it out, it's clearly a work in progress, as these primal bonds are for many of us. But you have made such progress in what I consider rule #1: forgiving and loving yourself, soothing and loving one's own inner child whose needs were unmet, and in so doing, able to forgive the parent who did not meet those needs. What I've come to understand late in life is that only I can meet those needs, only I can fill those holes. And it's never too late to lovingly parent ourselves. How happy I am that your mother gave her permission, ever her urging, for you to write so honestly. May it bring the two of you more healing. This is brave work and you're doing it. Much love to you.