A Different Kind of Grief

It was around this time two years ago that I chose to block my mother’s phone number. I know that statement alone is far fetched and inflammatory to some of you, but this kind of dramatic narrative has defined most of my life. 2 years ago my mother told me ‘fuck you’ and I blocked her number. I am still grieving. 

It was 2018 and several months before Christmas. We were beginning to talk about her annual trip around the time of New Years to visit, something she had been doing since my daughter, Madison, was about one and a half. This would have been her fourth trip, the biggest difference this particular year was that she would be coming alone as my younger brother would be spending Christmas with his dad. Of course I was disappointed I wouldn’t see my brother but I told her I was excited to see her and spend another holiday together. It was a normal conversation between a mother and daughter, until it slowly devolved into ‘our normal’. 

It’s hard to write this because thinking back to that time, the way we communicated was so dysfunctional. My mother needed to be the center of my world; nothing should come before her or her texts and calls; not my job, not my husband, not my child, not my own anxiety, not a bad day, nothing. So when she would text me asking me something about our Christmas together, and I didn’t text her back for one of the above reasons, a passive aggressive text always followed. Late night texts that would say things like: “It feels like you don’t want me to come.” or “Sorry I bothered you. Goodnight” or “You ignore me and it hurts”. And like the good dutiful daughter I was, I would always reply the next morning. I would explain that I loved her, that I had things going on in my own life that were stressing me out and creating anxiety, that if I was angry with her or didn’t want her to come that I would tell her, and that I love her, unconditionally. I would send paragraphs upon paragraphs pleading with her to believe that I meant what I said, pleading with her to understand that me not replying to a text was not me ignoring her. I would throw myself on the sword, insist I would do better, and sometimes I would get a text with a heart emoji that would tell me we were good again, only to then be met with another late night passive aggressive text a few days later. 

Other times my words didn’t even scratch her surface. She responded to one of my texts by saying “I would love you unconditionally too if you texted me back within a timely manner”. Another time, she changed her dates to come before Christmas Eve (which she had never done) and then she said that she would not be coming if I would be spending any time with ‘them’ while she was visiting (by them she meant my father and my stepmother who we had spent every Christmas Eve with since Madison was born and who Madison calls “Papa” and “Nana”). I calmly explained to her that we would be spending Christmas Eve with my dad and stepmom as we did every year and that it would not be fair to deprive Madison of that experience. I reaffirmed to her that we would spend Christmas Day together and every day after that could be filled with whatever she would like to do with her granddaughter.

Round and round we went, for 3 months, before my mother finally said she wasn’t going to visit for Christmas. I had tried to convince her that I loved her, that I wanted to spend Christmas with her, that she mattered to me, and it wasn’t enough, it never was. I had started out not wanting to text her (or anyone for that matter), and then ended up texting her more anyways trying to prove my undying love to her. It’s the perfect depiction of the toxic circle we have lived all of my life. 

The final reason my mother gave me for not visiting was because she couldn’t afford it. She had already cancelled her room reservation and she couldn’t afford the gas to make the 16 hour drive. I was going to a Halloween party at a friend’s house kid free, and I might have drank a little too much that night. After the months of manipulation and gaslighting that she had put me through (not that I was calling it those things at that time), after the way her cancelling had made me feel, I was understanding. I told her it was okay and that I loved her and we would figure out another time to connect. I put my feelings to the side, like I have done so many times before. I silenced myself over and over to try and earn the validation and approval from her I was desperately seeking. 

I told my daughter and she cried, like heavy sobs, tantrum on the floor crying. A part of me was expecting this because I knew there was a part of my Gemini daughter that absolutely loved my Gemini mother. She loved the cute clothes her “Gigi” would buy, the cute accessories she would send, the high pitched playful way my mother would speak to her. Madison adored her, and watching her devastation at losing the one time of year she got with her Gigi broke my heart. I thought about all of the reasons my mother had made about not wanting to come, all of the reasons she said she had not felt loved enough or wanted enough, and here I was watching her number 1 fan crying on my living room floor. I felt all the years of never being good enough form in the pit of my stomach. I thought to myself: “Am I going to let her put my daughter through what she has constantly put me through?” I pushed these thoughts away (but not out of my mind) and assured Madison that her Gigi loved her and that if Gigi could make the trip, she would.

I can’t remember the time frame between my mother telling me she was not coming to visit and the next conversation we had. I have to be honest, I might have told myself I pushed my feelings to the side, but I didn’t really. I didn’t want to respond to her texts or answer her calls. She sent me gifts for my birthday that I cordially thanked her for, and we wished each other a Merry Christmas when the day came, but our contact was very minimal. I was hurt, and there had never been a time in my life where I had been able to speak to my mother about how I feel, so my M.O. was to avoid talking to her about it until I was over it. This was something I didn’t realize was not going to work for me for much longer. 

It was a dark December night, shortly after Christmas, and I was getting ready to close my work office and start my 4 day weekend. I was waiting on my manager to tell me he was downstairs so I could bring him our reservation books, and I decided to open Facebook to pass the time. I saw the first post and I felt the instant tingle all over my body that is anxiety. At the top of my timeline was a picture of my mother on the beach, with my stepdad, his wife, and my brother. The caption she wrote was: “Family is everything!”. I knew in my gut the post was meant for me. 

In my knee jerk reaction, I wrote a Facebook status alluding to her post, and then deleted it almost immediately. I closed the app, cried a little, then my manager texted me that he was downstairs. I put my phone away, picked up the books and walked out the door. By the time I got to my car about 10 minutes later, I had texts on my phone from her. 

“I just want you to know that it’s not a walk in the park. XXX didn’t want me to be alone for Christmas so pathetically I accepted.” 

“It’s pretty much up there with the most hardest things I’ve done.” 

“Anyway I love you all and please kiss Madison for GiGi… just walked out in the pouring rain to say my goodbyes to Cooper.” 

I was beside myself. She had laid the perfect bait, and I fell for it. She had known I would see that post, knew that it would upset me, was waiting for me to react, to then paint herself as the helpless victim who shouldn’t have been alone on Christmas and really I was the problem anyways. To then end it by saying she was going to go walk in the pouring rain to grieve our family dog that had died 6 months prior to garner my sympathy. It was not the first time my mother had pulled a master manipulation like this, but it was the first time I was seeing it for what it was. 

I replied: “There are so many things I want to say to you. Out of hurt and anger and frustration. But I won’t, because no matter what I say it gets twisted. And I love you, and I do not wish to attack you or hurt you. That’s what you do when you love someone unconditionally. If you had cared about me knowing why you spent Christmas in XXXX (even though the last reason you gave me for not being able to come here was that you couldn’t afford it) you would’ve texted me about it before I saw it on Facebook. Family is everything, right mom? You can play the victim role all you want, but I do not fall for it anymore. Because the only hurt that I saw, was my baby asking me why Gigi wasn’t here for Christmas and how much she missed you. Because you feeling unwanted, unloved, not wanting to be around my dad, WHATEVER your reason was for not coming here, it was obviously more important than the one time of year you get with my daughter. Not anymore, mom. If you want a relationship with me or Madison, heal yourself. Deal with your shit. And all I can do is pray for you. This is just the tip of the iceberg on how I feel about everything that has transpired over the last few months, and I will be mailing my letter to you once it’s done. Please don’t reply. I need space. And if you are going to respond to this message with anything other than love, kindness, and acceptance, then I will have no choice but to block your number.” 

I started the drive home and about 10 minutes later, my phone dinged. I couldn’t stop myself from looking. 

“Fuck you”

Another ding.

 

“This is totally unacceptable”

I pulled over.

“Block me fine. You’ve broken my heart for the very last time.”

“How dare you.”

I picked up the phone and started to text,

“Don’t”

“Don’t”

“Don’t”

“Respond”

“Don’t”

“Do not”

“Stop” 

The texting bubble on our iPhones prompted her responses, but that didn’t stop me from sending the text:

“Right, fuck me for being honest about my feelings even if they make you uncomfortable. Keep proving how much you unconditionally love me. Trust me I feel just as done. And you don’t listen when I ask you not to respond so *shrug shoulders emoji* you will be blocked. Whether you believe it or not, I hate that it’s come to this.”

Her immediate response: “Blocking you.”

I couldn’t believe it. Like, REALLY couldn’t believe it. 

“HAHAHAHAHAHA. K DO SO.”

“God forbid you take responsibility.”

It was definitely a moment of immaturity, and I should not have done it, but I’m human, and at this point I was shaking with rage.

“You’re completely mean.”

“Omg you’re”

“Responsibility for what???????”

“Are you cracking”

“What the fuck is your problem?????? Lies lies lies and I’ve done nothing to you”

“I’ll be praying for you”

“I’m sorry for everything”

“I understand your dad is your family” 

“You’ve blocked me hated me so much since a child because of him so be it. I wish you peace. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.” 

All texts she sent in the 2 minute period it took me to block her number on my phone, before I pulled out and drove the rest of the way home.

She started sending me emails within minutes. The first one’s subject was a bunch of question marks and said: “I would’ve told had you been talking to me but for whatever god reason you were not. You were texting XXX to tell me and so I left you alone.” 

The next one was 45 minutes later, this one had a subject that said “I don’t know” and continued in the body to say “who the fuck you think you are to talk to me the way you do and lie like you do. Its so fricken evil and crazy as shit. Don’t fuck with me. Period.” 

Another one, an hour later at 10pm, titled “Do not send me any letter”. This one was long, made very hurtful attacks, and had personal things I do not wish to share with you all, but the highlights were: 

“I couldn’t afford to come there nor stay with you and your CATS.” 

“I’m sorry you’re so fricken hateful of me.”

“You have no right at all to treat me the way that you do and if you feel so ill about me I suggest you stay away from me.”

“These are people that cared enough to open their home to me as awkward and hard as it was I didn’t want to be alone and so what is it to you???????????”

“You should be happy I’m not alone, not selfishly thinking only about you.”

“I know how much you’ve lied I know it all.” 

I hadn’t done anything at this point except send that text and block her number. I had shared with my husband and a couple of close family members what had happened that night, and that was it. I did respond to one email, where she ‘threatened’ to tell my husband things that she knew about my past. Out of emotion, I said “If you are talking about XXXX you should know TJ and I have already had many deep, emotional conversations about everything that happened. The people in my life know who I am, and there is nothing you could tell them to make them question that.” Of course, I was met with another angry, volatile response, and I decided to not reply to anymore emails. 

A few days later, when I made an Instagram post on New Years Eve about ‘letting go’ and ‘moving on’ and stepping into a new stage of me, I was then bombarded with direct messages from her calling me horrible names and threatening to call CPS on me for using medical marijuana. I blocked her on all of my social media accounts, and spent the rest of that New Years Eve on the couch shaking with anxiety, waiting for the police to knock on my door. They didn’t.

The picture I posted on Instagram that sparked my mother's
threats. I was inspired by the snow fall in Arizona, the last 
time it had snowed on New Year's Eve was during a very hard
time in my life, this photo symbolozied letting a lot of those things
go. The last snow was also around a previous visit with my mother
that ended with volatile remarks similar to the ones in this story.

I received emails for months, I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t block her emails until March. After several weeks of putting myself into anxious breakdowns over her words, I sent her emails to the Spam folder, so at least I didn’t have to see them in my inbox. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking at them, periodically I would check that folder and read their contents. They ranged from victimhood apologies, to cold and sharp remarks about how I was ignoring her, to random photos of what she was doing that day, to more personal attacks about who I was as a person, to quotes from books she knew I liked, to promises to forgive me despite the things I’d said, and on and on. In one email she called me an “unconditionally loving phony fake” and in another she said that I had hated her since I was 3 years old. Despite the way these things made me feel, I continued to read them, continued to look for a genuine apology, a small glimmer of a sign of my mother’s authentic love. It never came. 

When I finally took myself to therapy the first time, my therapist at the time asked me why I hadn’t blocked her emails. I said that I was worried that if something happened to her or she needed me, that she wouldn’t be able to get in contact with me because I had her information blocked on everything else. After everything, I still felt responsible for her. I still felt like I needed to be available to rescue her at a moment’s notice. It’s how I’ve felt about her throughout our relationship. My therapist looked at me and said that while I had my mother’s emails unblocked, I was still allowing her into my life. I was still walking on eggshells, I was preventing myself from moving on. I was preventing myself from healing and letting go. 

I went home and cried in my husband’s arms. Then we sat down together and figured out how to block an email address on Yahoo. Let me tell ya, Yahoo doesn’t make this easy for you to do. I had to revert my desktop Yahoo mailbox back to an older version so I could access a particular button that would take me to the screen that would allow me to type in email addresses I wanted to block. It was a whole process, but one that also was so mentally consuming that it almost distracted me from the very heavy thing I was doing. Maybe that was God intervening, I don’t know. 

I blocked her emails in March of 2019, and we have not spoken since.  

I wish I could say this type of blow up was a one time occurrence, but my mother and I have had a fractured relationship for as long as I can remember. This wasn’t the first time she’d said horrible things to me, or tried to make me feel that I was this horrible human being who had hurt her in an insidious way. This was, however, the first time I didn’t believe her. This was the first time I did not come groveling back to her, apologizing for things I hadn’t done wrong, and begging for her forgiveness. 

When I first made the decision to block her number, I did not know what narcissism was. I knew that I had lived what I would call a ‘hard life’, that my mother and I had never really gotten along, and that it felt like she’d hated me for as long as I could remember. I was treated like a nuisance in my household, someone whose feelings and very existence were a problem for those around me. When I lied as a young child, no one asked me why I lied, instead I was called a dirty rotten liar. When she found out I was cutting my wrists in middle school, she didn’t console me or try to figure out why I was doing it, instead she called me selfish for making everything about me. When I was getting bullied and had almost no friends, she didn’t comfort me and tell me I was wonderful the way I was, instead she said that maybe if I wasn’t so socially awkward I would actually have a decent friend worth something. And I will most certainly never forget the day she sat across the table from me at The Egg and I and told me that if I didn’t change my boys like I change my underwear, I wouldn’t have been raped. 

I could fill an entire novel with all of the memories I have of words my mother spoke and actions she took that made me feel alone, unwanted, unloved, and unworthy. I always knew deep down that our relationship was not the best, but as the years went by, and I felt isolated more and more from everyone around me, I began to believe all of the nasty things she told me. I believed that I really was a horrible, rotten, evil, liar of a person who nobody really liked or wanted. I believed that I was the problem, that there was something wrong with me that followed me from my relationship with her into every other relationship in my life. What I didn’t realize was that that problem was enmeshed codependency, something that was born in my relationship with my mother and her emotional and psychological reliance on me. 

Many of my younger years were spent in insanely codependent, self sabotaging behaviors; some that I have a hard time completely remembering because of how often I would disassociate. I was an abused child who didn’t realize she was an abused child boomeranging from one toxic situation to the next with no real knowledge of how to fix it or hold myself accountable. I’ve been open about the mental breakdown I experienced at the end of 2016, and it was this process of self responsibility and discovery that ultimately put me on the path to, what we call in the healing community, ‘going no contact’ with my mother. 

After my breakdown, I started acknowledging my own issues with alcohol, anxiety, depression, and codependency. I made the commitment to be a healthier me so that I could be a better partner and mother. I began creating an honest relationship with myself for one of the first times in my life. I appreciated my family, and the life I was building in a way I hadn’t before. It felt like all of the puzzle pieces of my life were coming together, and my mother was the one piece I could not get to fit. 

I couldn’t engage with my mother without violating my own boundaries. I couldn’t ignore the things in our relationship that I had been making excuses for, because I had learned to recognize them within myself. For months I tried to speak from a place of truth and love that my mother refused to meet me in. I felt that I was left with no other choice but to end our relationship, and it was the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. 

Shortly after the confrontation with my mother, a family member told me to look into Narcissism. According to the Mayo Clinic, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a Cluster B mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism. When I had thought of Narcissism before, the picture that would come to mind would be that of Narcissus from the Disney movie Hercules, blowing kisses to and checking out his own reflection in the gleaming pool. I had never for a second thought that narcissism was present in any other form, especially in my own life. 

There were not very many videos on YouTube discussing the topic at the time, but the first videos I found were those by Nu Mindframe. The first video I clicked on was titled “You’re Not Crazy, Its Your Mother. Signs Your Parents are Narcissists”. She talked about how narcissism starts in childhood, how it’s routed in a deep shame that was born in abuse, and because of this shame, the narcissist will emotionally manipulate those around them to gain ‘narcissistic supply’. Because narcissists are so embroiled in shame and a lack of self worth, their main goal is to validate and protect themselves, at all costs. They are unable to feel empathy because nothing comes before them and their needs in the moment to feel safe and good. They build their self worth off of what they gain from others (the supply), whether that’s attention, compliments, feeling powerful, feeling in control, addictive substances, and on. The person the narcissist gains this supply from is almost always codependent; someone who is willing to push aside their identity to appease and fill the narcissist’s supply and self worth. They are an extension of the narcissist, an endless source of validation, and the narcissist is incapable of seeing them as their own person with their own actions, thoughts, and feelings. Sound familiar? It sure did to me. 

If you or someone you know is healing from this type of abuse,
Lisa A. Romano is a great resource on Instagram and Facebook
@lisaaromano

The speaker ran through the tell tale signs; the guilt trip a narcissist will give you about everything in life they had to give up to have you when you disagree with them or tell them no, the conditional love that is based on how happy you are making the narcissistic parent in that moment, the jealousy you feel from the narcissistic parent (specifically mothers and daughters) and the ways they try to compete with you when it comes to clothes or boys or accomplishments, the ways they infantilize their children to keep them dependent on the narcissist so that they never leave or stop providing them with supply, the way they never apologize or take responsibility when they do something wrong, and further when they gaslight you and tell you that the action they took that hurt you didn’t really happen, making you question your own perception of reality.

I was free falling through a rabbit hole of memories as she listed sign after sign. Flashbacks of my mother telling me over and over how she gave up her career in Radiology with the Air Force when she found out she was pregnant with me, her being the first to point out when I was overweight but then making me wear a size too big in jeans in high school when I had lost weight, flirting with every boyfriend I ever brought over to the house and liking my friends that complimented her and brutally name calling the ones who didn’t go out of their way to appease her, refusing to teach me how to drive a car (I was taught by a family friend) or how to open a bank account or even how to brush my hair. My mother cut my food for me up until I was a teenager, and I distinctly remember my stepfather making comments about how strange it was. 

I checked every single box, and that’s pretty much how every questionnaire has gone about my mother being a narcissist. After watching this first video that started the years long journey of identifying and healing the abuse I endured, I felt intensely validated and shatteringly heartbroken in the same swoop. The things that had left me confused, foggy minded, and lost were starting to make sense. I began to see my life and experiences clearly, and the more I read and discovered about narcissism, the more angry I became. Blood boiling rage at the psychological and emotional abuse that had morphed into a self hatred I carried within me from my childhood into adulthood. Fury at the woman who knowingly put me down and made me question every morsel of myself and then blamed me for it. Pure outrage at all of the years I had spent taking care of her in ways a child should never have to take care of their parent, and finally figuring out that that was her plan all along. Angry isn’t even a big enough word. I felt betrayed, robbed, exasperated at all of the ways her and the people in my life had belittled me and how I had taken it over and over again, convinced that it was my fault, convinced that I deserved it. 20+ years of pent up emotions were bubbling to the surface, and I thought I would be angry forever. And I was angry for a long time. But anger at the injustice of it all was just one stop on the grief train. 

My husband had a near death experience in June of 2019, and that changed all of my focus. I had been stressing up until this point about my mother’s birthday which was just around the corner. Do I send her a card? Do I not send her a card? Does it make me a bad person if I don’t send a card? What if I don’t want to send a card? Is that even allowed? All of these loud thoughts that were deafeningly silenced when I almost lost my husband, and were replaced by one: “This is where your attention is needed now, this is your family.”. After 3 days in the hospital, I signed his discharge papers the day after her birthday. I almost couldn’t believe it, but then again I’ve really come to a place in my life where I’ve stopped believing in coincidences. 

Throughout my husbands healing and rehabilitation, I thought of my mother few and far between. As much anger as I felt learning about narcissism, I also felt deep release. The more I understood why my mother is the way that she is, the more I felt my anger fall away. How could I expect someone to love me who couldn’t love herself? How could I expect her to provide care and comfort for me in ways she couldn’t even provide it for herself? And the more I built my self love, the more I began to understand the true gifts my experiences have given me. My resilience, my strength, my compassion, my hope. All things I wouldn’t trade in a thousand lifetimes if I had the chance to do it differently. 

A beautiful poem by one of my favorite poets on Instagram,
Dhiman (@poetryofdhiman)

The first Christmas was excruciating, and gave me the first gut punch of the grief I still had yet to process. I couldn’t get myself in the holiday spirit to save my life and I did my best to put on a smile and bake cookies and sing songs for my daughter, but most days were ended with me laying in my bed in solitude, blasting the same punk music through my headphones that I loved as a preteen to drown out and validate the angry, hurt thoughts at the same time. But then Christmas was over, and it was time to look forward to all of the exciting things that were about to happen in my life. A new year, my elopement to my love, our honeymoon and vacation trips planned, so many exciting things to look forward to! The anger continued to dissipate as I realized that my life was growing in a direction for the better. As my best friend always says to me, I was done letting her steal my joy. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was subconsciously skipping the hardest part of the grief, the part that I later learned most people who go through abuse like I have want to skip. 

The COVID pandemic hit a few months later and everything changed for everyone. I truly felt so geared for it and the challenges we all knew it would bring. My whole healing process up until this point had been about accepting things that were out of my control, understanding my triggers and anxiety, growing my self compassion, and the importance of self soothing; all things that I felt the world was in desperate need of. I began blogging on my Instagram every day, inspiring those around me to get through the hard times. I was meditating, doing yoga every morning, cooking almost every night, connecting with new people every week, I felt like I was hitting my stride. A confidence was flourishing in me that I had never felt before. I even sent in an application for the Netflix show The Circle, and was surprised to get a callback for more information about me! I truly felt like I was stepping into my power. Then Mother’s Day hit. 

I felt the tremors of it the week before. All of the advertisements and posts on social media about mothers and daughters were triggering on their own. But I would get random reminders that would take me back to those feelings constantly, a song would play on the radio I hadn’t listened to in ages, I would be scrolling through the channels and a movie we used to watch would be on. Little signs that broke through the confident wall I was building.

The night before Mother’s Day, we went over to a friend’s house for darts and pool. I met our friend’s 19 year old daughter for the first time, and she was about 6 months pregnant. She was sweet and bubbly and had a sense of humor that was right up my alley. We were throwing darts and cracking jokes and laughing the whole time. Before long we were talking deep, life things. She said that she wasn’t on good terms with the father of her baby, and that she had a knack for picking men who were emotionally unavailable and abusive. She reminded me a lot of young me, and I told her as much. Before I even realized what I was going to say, I asked her if she had a good relationship with her mother. The look on her face said that she almost couldn’t believe I’d pinned that, and she said no as a matter of fact, the way men have treated me in my life is the same way my mother has treated me my whole life. We talked for an hour after that, swapping stories and sharing battle scars. I told her about what the last year of my life had been like, and the freedom I felt in the ways I was healing and releasing. She said she was inspired, and we gave each other a big bear hug before we said our goodbyes and Thomas and I headed home. In the car, I couldn’t shake the heavy feeling in my chest. My husband asked me what was bothering me and I said I had felt my mother’s presence heavy around me the past few days. He hugged me, we smoked a bowl, and I went inside and went to bed. 

The next morning I woke up feeling like there was a heavy blanket of depression sitting all over me. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to get dressed. I didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything, nothing. I felt immobilized, and stuck, with the same heavy feeling in my chest. 

I opened my phone to scroll through social media, a very bad habit of mine that I do when I want to distract myself from unpleasant thoughts or moments. Within two minutes the photos and tributes from daughters to their mothers was just too much, I put down my phone and couldn’t stop crying. Deep in my bones, guttural crying. 

I know my husband tried his best to make me feel special, and my daughter poured her sweet little heart into a beautiful handmade card. They went above and beyond for me and I am so grateful to be surrounded by so much love. We went to go see Detective Pikachu in theaters and then over to my dad and stepmom’s house. We had a fun evening. But I couldn’t shake the blanket. I felt like I was on the verge of tears the entire day. The slightest thing would push me over. And to be honest, the whole day felt like a blur. 

The fog lasted for months. I stopped working out, I stopped mediating, I stopped reading, I stopped cooking, I stopped kind of everything. I laid in bed, a lot. I cried a lot. I snuggled on my couch with Madison and watched movies, a lot. I knew in my intuition that I needed to allow myself this space to grieve, but the sadness that was arising were emotions that I had pushed away for so long. I was afraid they would gobble me right up, and I would disappear into the abyss. And for a while, I kind of did. Summer came and went, and by August I decided it was time to take myself back to therapy. 

I live in a very small town and there was only one therapist who specialized in NPD that didn’t require a 2 hour drive there and back. She also had a 3+ month waiting list. I tried to look for someone else, but to no avail. And something in me told me this was going to be the right person. So I reached out to her, told her how interested I was, and asked her to please place me on the waiting list. 

Months passed, I went back to work and continued to navigate the rough seas of grief on my own. I read books, watched informational videos, read articles, connected with support groups, you name it. Every little piece that I found that aligned with my experience was comforting in a way that I can’t explain. Growing up, I thought no one understood what I was going through. Now as an adult, I realize this type of abuse is the boogeymen that lurks behind every shadow. And no one talks about it. 

Another great therapist on Instagram and Facebook, 
Dr. Mariel Buque (@dr.marielbuque)

It’s complicated grieving someone who is still alive, and it’s not necessarily her that I am grieving for. I’ve really come to a place where I understand who my mother is, and I thought that was acceptance, but its only a part of it. 

I am grieving for the mother I always wanted but that I never got to have. Someone that would brush my hair out of my face when I was sad and make me soup when I was sick and be over the moon to spend time with me. Someone who would be there to catch me if I fell or pump me up when I needed it or simply hold my hand without complaining about how clammy they are. Someone who would love to go get brunch with me wherever I wanted or who I could curl up in her lap at any age to feel her tender love. Someone who would be there to offer a helping hand with my own daughter, and reassure me of all the right things I’m doing. Someone that I effortlessly and eternally belonged to with no conditions. Someone who would teach me all of the things that it meant to be a woman. Instead, I had to figure those things out on my own, most of the time by messing them up first and finding solutions along the way.

I’m grieving for the child who felt so suffocated and trapped for so long. Who had been trying since she was 6 years old to figure out what was the right and wrong way to deal with her mother and avoid her wrath, but that she failed at every time. The child who lied in the 1st grade about another child bullying her because she was too scared to tell her mother she got sand in her own hair. The child who would skip recesses in the 3rd grade to scrub the grass stains out of her pants with her teacher so mom wouldn’t rage. The child who shit her pants in the back of her mom’s car a year later because she was too scared to tell her to pull over and that she needed to go. The child who was grounded over and over again for things she didn’t do, and would have things like sunlight and bathroom freedoms taken away from her. The child who felt like she couldn’t really love her dad, or his new wife, because if she so much as showed an inch of love towards them it was treated like the ultimate betrayal. The child who wrote in her diary to try and find a safe place to express her emotions freely, only to come home from school one day and find that same diary splayed out on the kitchen counter. The child who would cry and complain about the burning of the bleach on her arms and upper lip that her mother would apply to make her hair blonde. The child who would endure teasing and taunts from her classmates who said she looked like her mother was dressing a doll. The child who was writing self harm poems in the 6th grade, but still was so confused and didn’t completely understand why she felt so alone. The child who became a preteen who used to cry herself to sleep and beg God to kill her because she just couldn’t take the resentment and hate anymore. The preteen who grew into a teenager and began to chase boys to try and feel even a small crumb of love and affection. The teenager who failed almost every one of her AP Honors classes because she would come home, mom would rage, she would be too anxious to do her homework, and too anxious to sleep which meant being up all hours of the night with the TV on and falling asleep in class the next day. The teenager who worked after high school classes to pay for her own cheerleading fees, while no one ever showed up to any of her events and her tip money was stolen out of her room while she was at school. I grieve for the teenager whose parent promised her to finally come watch her cheer at a JV Football game, who stared at the stands in agony as the minutes of the game ticked by. It started to snow, no one came, and she went home to find her parent on the couch on her laptop with a glass of wine in hand. I grieve for the child I never got to be, the unconditional love that was absolutely foreign to me. I grieve for all of the baggage she internalized that was never hers to carry. 

One of the hardest parts of this journey has been coming to a true understanding that everything my mother did and said was a projection of how she felt about herself. She didn’t love me unconditionally, because she couldn’t love herself unconditionally. She couldn’t forgive me for my ‘wrongdoings’, because she didn’t even have the strength to face hers, let alone forgive herself. She was so encapsulated in her own misery and shame, that she didn’t see all of the toxicity she was pouring into my cup. She never saw me, she never knew me. It was that understanding that made me feel like acceptance was in reach. I’m not there yet, in fact I’m right smack dab in the middle of the road. But I know I’ll get there eventually, I trust deeply that I will. And despite everything, I still love her. I know in my heart that I always will. She is my mother, and not having her or my core family in that sense in my life leaves a void in my soul that I have no choice but to accept. A void that no one else can fill; not my daughter and husband, not my dad and his family, not my in laws, not my friends, no one. All wonderful, beautiful people, who love me deeply and I love them right back. But for years, I didn’t fully appreciate their love. I would feel irrational jealously in certain moments, extra needy for their attention, distrustful at the drop of a hat. I was subconsciously trying to get them to fill the roles that they were never meant to fill.

My absolute favorite blog to date about narcissistic parents, 
The Undone Mama, primarily on Facebook, but also on Instagram

I tell my husband all of the time that I am the happiest and the saddest I have ever been, and it’s a feeling he has a hard time understanding. On one hand, by releasing those in my life from the parameters in my own mind, I’m able to appreciate them each individually in a way I was never able to before. On the other hand, I am taking all of the wishes and hopes and dreams that my inner child had for a family to belong to, and I am laying them to rest. I let her cry when she needs to cry, scream when she needs to scream, feel all the feels she needs to. I am being the mother to myself that I never received. 

Finally October came around and my therapist texted me letting me know she had an opening. Hooray! From day one I knew she was different. She cursed, told me it was okay to lose my shit all over her couch, called me out on the stuff she needed to and comforted me in other ways. She heard and understood me, in a way I’ve never felt with a therapist. It was a month or so after my sessions started when we began Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), and it has started to completely change my life. EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment where you are asked to bring up distressing images or memories, and through eye movement therapies, your therapist works with you to change the way you view those events. I’m only a few months in, and I still have a long way to go, but for the first time in my life, the idea of moving on feels real. I will never leave it all behind me, because the things I have experienced will always be a part of me. But rather than wearing the abuse like a Scarlet Letter that condemns me for life, I wear those battle scars as badges of honor of the things I have lived through.

I did not write this piece to shame my mother, or to make you all believe she is a horrible person, because she isn’t. She has done horrible things, and has said horrible things, but they are all born out of a soul who just wants to be loved and accepted in the same ways I do. I often use this analogy: My mother likes to start fires in her own home. She will leave something on the stove for too long or forget to blow a candle out before taking a nap, a mistake any one of us are capable of making. But the difference is that when my mother wakes up to the staunch smell of smoke, her first thought is not “How can I put this fire out?” Her first thought is “How can I deny that this is my fault?”. She does not have the strength, confidence, or security to simply pick up the phone and call the fire department. That would mean admitting how the fire started. So instead, she runs to her second story window, throws it open and is screaming bloody murder that she is in danger. “Please someone come help! I am going to die! My house will burn down!” And for 26 years, I lived right across the street, and each time I would hear my mother’s shrill cries drift into my home, I wouldn’t hesitate. I would drop everything, I would sprint into the burning building across the street, intent on saving her, but never succeeding. Instead, I condemned myself as well as her to burn beneath the ashes of the fire she started. Every little part of me would cinder to a crisp, and then just like I was stuck in the movie Groundhog’s Day, I would wake up the next day, and do the same thing all over again. Until one day came, when I heard her theatrical pleas, and I understood them for what they were, and I did nothing but let my heart break as I watched my mother burn down her own home. 

I wrote this piece for every girl and child out there who has felt like I do, including me. Who has hid in the shadows behind a wall of insecurity and confusion and misery not of your own making. Who got to this point in the post and had one person on their mind the whole time, either because the truths of my experiences ring a bell close to home for you, or because you simply know the grief of not having your parent in your life, alive or passed on. You are not alone, have never been alone, and will never be alone. You are loved. The way you feel matters, what you love matters, what brings you joy matters, YOU MATTER. I want to be a shining example to every person out there who has felt hopeless in this way to keep going. You get to decide the life that you want today. You get to decide what you will and will not tolerate today. You deserve boundaries, you deserve healing, you deserve independence, you deserve to feel heard and valued, you deserve to celebrate yourself on the good days and the hard days and every day in between. You deserve love. 

An amazing mental health artist on Instagram, @stormygailart

The healing path is not easy, in fact its very messy, its not linear, and it is excruciating to realize you’ve been living an inauthentic life. 2 years later and it was just last week I had an over the top, crying anxiety attack in my therapist’s office simply because she asked me to not put my shoes on her couch. There is a part of this grief that will stay with us always. Hand in hand with that, this healing journey has opened me up to places of happiness that I truly never thought possible for myself. Moments of clarity and true presence and appreciation for the moment I’m in. A gratitude for the eyes through which I view the world, my own rose colored glasses built by my life. My dear soulful beings, by enduring what we have, we have already trudged through the very fires of Hell. We have stormed the gates of Mordor. We are the bloody, bruised, and broken heroes of our own story. Peace is within our reach, if we only rise to the challenge.