I Broke Up With My Mother part one
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I have a story to tell, one that’s been a source of pain, fear, guilt, and shame. It’s hard to know where to begin, but a good place to start is the end, and then we’ll see where we go from there.
For over nineteen years, I’ve explored healthy and shady relationships, self-esteem, and recovering from trauma, including abandonment and abuse, mainly through writing and podcasting. People often wonder how I know so much about the intricacies of human relationships and the patterns and drivers behind them. They ask how I put a name to and describe things they’d believed were in their imagination and their fault. They say it feels as if I were in their heads or even in the room with them.
Sure, I had a pattern of being with emotionally unavailable and sometimes downright shady romantic partners, but there’s another reason: I lived much of it with my mother.
What I’m going to share is very difficult in parts. Not because of where things ended up but more because of everything I’ve been through. You’re getting a little window into how I’ve been treated and regarded by the person who carried and birthed me into this world and how it shaped what I thought I knew about myself.
It’s been two-hundred-and-sixty-eight days since I ended our relationship. While it had its ‘good times’, its ‘good stretches’, it wasn’t healthy like the rest of my relationships, and there’s no hiding from the fact that it was still abusive. It wasn’t physical like in childhood. The frequency and intensity of the verbal and emotional assaults were also significantly lower. Still, each time she lashed out, embarrassed, betrayed, attempted to play mind games or emotionally blackmail me, the clock ticked on our relationship.
This isn’t our first time apart. My brother (5) and I (7) lived with our paternal grandparents for several months in 1984; she was in Nigeria pursuing her new relationship with the man who would become our stepfather. From age twenty, she cut me off several times, ranging from three to fourteen months, later attempting to press the reset button as if nothing happened.
You might think, Jaysus, Natalie, what did you do that led to these estrangements?
It’s okay. I get why you’re thinking this. We’re socialised and conditioned to believe that when people do not-so-great or even terrible things, it’s because we’ve ‘provoked’ them. Somehow, we’ve failed to be ‘good’ or ‘worthy enough’ of better treatment.
Many folks also regard family estrangement as the absolute last resort. Like something heinous has to go down. There’s been a similar attitude about breakups and divorce. “Are they cheating on you, beating you up?” as if these are the only reasons anyone would exchange being in a relationship for being single. Even then, some folks still think it’s better to stick it out.
Cutting me off was my mother’s response to trashing my boundaries.
Think the likes of…
Fighting my mother-in-law and having to be dragged off her on one occasion.
Rowing with my friends at my and my daughters’ birthday parties, my hen party, my wedding, and other occasions.
Calling my husband at work and cussing him out because he’d offended her by asking about a family member a few days before.
On each occasion, despite my lack of involvement in these mortifying shenanigans beyond my connection to those involved, my mother blamed and attacked me for her behaviour. Sometimes, I wasn’t in the country, never mind in the room! She’d accuse me of clearly conveying something to these people that made them feel as if they could speak up when she overstepped their boundaries.
An early memory is of her berating me for smiling at the woman who’d stroked my hair, held my face, and called me a “pretty baby” while out shopping. Three-year-old me didn’t understand why she was in trouble and being called a “traitor” and “disloyal”. Especially because my mother acted like they were friends. That incident is the template, though, for many of my failures as a daughter. For years, she’d bring it and other confusing, often nonsensical ‘transgressions’ up, pummelling me into a fatigue that said I wasn’t good enough and never would be.
The reason I didn’t know myself and often doubted what I knew is that I wasn’t allowed to have an identity of my own without being accused of rejecting, failing, or betraying my mother.