For the first time on Mother’s Day I was physically motherless. My mother wasn’t in my life prior to her death, which only further complicates how I feel about Mother’s Day. The reasons we weren’t in contact are painful and numerous. However, today on Mother’s Day, I want to describe and in some way - honor my mother for what and who she was - and also for what and who she wasn’t as a way to show her humanness. She was a person who raised me. She was a person who was deeply flawed, hurting, and emotionally unstable. She loved her children, conditionally.
I wanted so desperately for her to change and just be a mom I needed. Someone to look up to as a woman. I hoped “one day” she would be this person. Maybe, when I grew up. When that day never came, I thought maybe when I became a mom. When that day never came, I truly understood she didn’t have the capability to be the mom or woman I needed and oh-so desperately wanted her to be. The truth was devastating. So very deeply. I knew in my heart I had to let go of the vision of my mother, and also the reality of my mother.
This meant physically and emotionally separating until I could unpack the pain and hurt of realizing she was toxic. And the pain of realizing she would never change.
Today I want to say this to you, mom, wherever you are:
I loved you. This is why I couldn’t bear to continue hurting myself. Years of manipulation, toxicity, parentification, and role reversal wore me down. I was your scapegoat, and only daughter as were you to your mother. I needed you to show me how to be a woman, and a mom. I needed you to teach me, and love me but you couldn’t. Instead I had to figure out being a mom and woman mostly on my own, alone, with very little guidance or support.
I see parts of you in me. I recognize and understand how incredibly difficult it is to raise human beings. How exhausting, difficult, and amazing being a mother is. And what a huge responsibility it is. In motherhood, I’ve learned more about you then I ever knew about you before I became a mother. Life was hard for you. You didn’t have a good start, and your own mother couldn’t love you the way you needed. I understand what that does to a little girl trying to figure out a way to MAKE her mother love her.
I understand the generational traumas that filtered down to me. I understand you were still desperate for your mother’s love even in adulthood. Having your own children didn’t change this, but compounded your insecurities.
But my own children changed me. They were the catalyst to put an end to the generational trauma. It stops with me. It ends here. My daughter and sons will only know how much their mother UNCONDITIONALLY loves and supports them. Unconditionally. This is what you never had, and what I never had in our mother’s love.
I am angry, hurt, sad, and envious. I’m so envious of others who have a loving, caring, and supportive mother. It isn’t fair. It’s so beyond unfair.
In the end, I had to choose between my mother and myself. And I chose myself.
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