When Mom's a bitch

This one's for all you women out there with epically shitty mothers

This week’s email might be hard for some people to read, but if you have ever wondered why your mother hurts you so much, read on.

I received two emails last week that were shockingly similar. One was from a reader of this newsletter, and the other was from a LinkedIn connection. What they shared with me rocked my world. Both gave me glimpses into their troubled relationships with their mothers, and thanked me for being so candid in sharing my own horrible mom stories in The Girl in the Gold Bikini.

You see, for 35 years, I put up with a lot of garbage from my mother. She was a narcissist who made me feel bad about all my choices. Pick a subject, and my mother found a way to shit all over it. Her words to me were hateful and hurtful. I still carry the criticisms with me, even though I decided to sever our relationship in 2006.

I was a mother myself by then, and I did not want my boys to grow up seeing how their grandmother treated their mother. I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before she turned on my children, or worse, said horrible things to them about me. Every fibre in my body was wound tight when she was around. I was ready to spring into action, a mother bear defending her cubs.

I had seen her take liberties with her poisonous opinions with other members of the family. She poked her nose into everyone’s business, telling them what she thought despite no one asking and no one caring. Except me. I cared about how people saw me through my mother’s eyes.

For years, I bent to her will. I worked my ass off to please her. I wanted to walk away from her when I was 15, and again at 22. Whenever we’d have a fight, she’d give me the silent treatment and I would give in. When she pressed charges against me for threatening her with a dull kitchen knife and I went to live with my father, my grandmother begged me to make up with her daughter.

“She’s you mother,” she implored. “You have to get along with her.”

And this is the BIG FUCKING PROBLEM. I thought I was duty bound to respect my mother. In fact, she demanded it. If your mother heaves insults, you have to take it. If your mother withholds love, you have to work harder to earn it. If your mother is kinder to strangers than she is to you, you have to fix whatever is broken inside you.

I saw my friends doing things with their mothers and enjoying it. I watched friends go on vacation with their mothers, go to dinner, to plays, to concerts, etc. and I couldn't wrap my head around why anyone would want to do that. It took me a long time to realize that my relationship with my mother was not normal. Instead of being confused, I became jealous of the loving, reciprocal, caring relationships I saw my friends had wth their moms.

There is so much pressure on women to honour and respect and love their mothers, but sometimes they make that impossible. It is 100% acceptable to not be close to your mother. You are not responsible for her happiness. You don’t owe her anything. You are no longer living under her roof and have to keep the peace to keep living there. You don’t have to lose weight, earn more money, misgender yourself, or buy into the gaslighting bullshit in order to be loved by her. Some moms are simply incapable of loving you. And you don’t have to pony up enough love for the both of you. Your only job is to protect your heart, so you can move forward and love your people the way you want to.

When my mother died in October 2021, I did not shed a tear. I had done all my grieving between 2006 and 2008, as I worked to build a life without my mother’s voice infusing all my choices and actions. I mourned for a relationship we would never be able to have. I had to recover from more than three decades of self-doubt and build myself back up. I was fortunate to have a husband who lifted me up on every step of that journey.

When you realize you can never have the relationship with your mother that you’d like to have, you CAN WALK AWAY. There, I said it. Consider this the golden ticket to a better, happier, you.

And now…a cleansing view as I got ready to write.

The Pacific Ocean is my muse. Five days at sea and I have nearly finished the first draft of a new novel (and some of it is actually good!)