Birthdays Were One of the Earliest Signs of Child Abuse in My Home

Sometimes it’s the subtle signs that reveal the corruption underneath the parent-child relationship.

As we talk about our abusive childhood homes, there are certain expectations that remain. People are looking for horror stories. Even those who are trauma-informed often struggle to recognize the true face of childhood abuse because it’s often more subtle than we expect.

That was certainly the case in my home, where birthdays were one of the first (subtle) signs that my mother was an abusive, emotionally immature, and manipulative person.

There were no beatings, no drunken brawls. My mother, a true narcissist until the end, never did any of that. For her, it was a slower and more insidious process. She didn’t need to leave bruises when she could leave a lifetime of emotional scars.

Had the adults around me looked a little more carefully, they would have seen her behaviors escalating. Had anyone bothered to pay real attention, they would have seen the harm that was angled into the way my mother celebrated her children’s birthdays.

Why My Birthdays Were Miserable As a Child

When I think about my first 18 birthdays, it’s with a sense of dread in my belly. Typing this now, I’m struggling with a sense of nausea. I can feel the bile rising in my throat. Is that a normal response? Of course not, but that’s the response that most children of narcissists have any time they think of any major childhood milestone.

Birthdays fall squarely into this category for me.

My mother hated my birthday and made sure it was as miserable as possible most of the time. Now, don’t get me wrong. She could put on a good show, but the day always, always, always, ended up being about her, her feelings, and her misery.

The simplest example of this was in the “rules” she set around my birthday. Yes, you read that correctly. There were “rules” that dictated my birthday. A few of my mother’s birthday rules (just for me) included:

1. No celebrations until the time recorded on my birth certificate
2. The celebrations had to be a family meal at a restaurant she approved
3. No one was allowed to wish me “happy birthday” until the birth certificate time

If that sounds awful, that’s because it was.

Imagine waking up on your birthday when you’re 8 or 9. Your father has left the house within the previous year, and your mother has sunk into depression and bad health. The house around you is disintegrating into waste, but you’re excited because it’s your birthday.

It’s the one day of the day when you get to celebrate you! Not just that, but you know that you get out of the dirty house for the night, to eat a hot meal (your mother doesn’t cook).

But, uh-oh! You wake up excited and realize that your mother isn’t excited. In fact, when she sees you, she asks what you’re smiling about. When you tell her, “It’s my birthday!” she smirks and says, “It’s not 7 PM. It’s not your birthday yet.”

That is a soul-crushing moment that I replay in my head every single birthday, for the last 33 years.

Because that was my reality.

My mother packed every one of my birthdays with drama, meltdowns, negativity, and all kinds of limitations that were created to make the day as miserable as possible for me (and everyone around me).

That’s what it means to be raised by a narcissistic woman.

Nothing in my life was truly mine. Not my person. Not my mind. Not my future. Not even my birthday was allowed to be entirely mine. My mother, as a malignant narcissist, had to suck up all the joy around her and turn it into darkness. And she did that well by denying her daughter a normal, joyful birthday. (Or even the memory of one.)

Why Did My Birthday Trigger My Mother’s Abuse?

If you’re a sane person, you’re probably asking yourself “how,” at this moment. Once you get beyond that, you’re probably wondering, “Why?”

There’s not a lot of logical “why” behind what a narcissist does. At the same time, in their absurdity, there is a world of explanation and insight into why they do the cruel things that they do.

Despite my mother’s belief that she was superior to everyone at all times, she remains a stereotypical example of this behavior. A textbook narcissist, her jealousy, resentment, need for control, and power all peer clearly from the folds of her pathetic birthday behaviors.

Extreme jealousy

Looking back now, as an adult, I recognize that (many times) my mother was hugely jealous of me. It seems silly to say, but that is the absolute absurdity of narcissism. She was a grown woman in constant competition with a child, and she was jealous of any good or positive thing that happened in my life. No happiness for me could be faked for long.

That jealousy was clearly on display in her behavior toward my birthday.

My mother greatly disliked celebrations about me. Pick any memory out of my head and play it on a screen. You would see the same thing across graduations, proms, award days, relationships, and the spread.

If things were going well for me, if I was happy, then she was going to throw a fit. She was going to melt down.

Take my 12th birthday as a prime example.

After being pressured to be more flexible about my birthday, my mother agreed to let me pick *any* restaurant I wanted for a family meal. Excited, I chose Red Lobster. It was the wrong decision to make.

Within 20 minutes of my choice, my mother (purple-faced) was turned around in the car screaming at me about what a selfish and ungrateful brat I was.

“I can’t eat there! I don’t like seafood! But I have to f*cking pay for it!”

At the end of her tirade, she called me (again, turning 12 years old) a whore. She also made remarks that referred to me as something along the lines of a “gold-digger like my sister-in-law”.

We went to Red Lobster in the end and she made the meal so uncomfortable that I went to the toilets alone to vomit halfway through the meal.

At the heart of these violent reactions was jealousy. My mother was jealous of the spotlight that my birthday placed on me. She was jealous of the youth it reminded her of and the days passed when she had no one to celebrate her.

That was the real rub for her, I think. Because her birthdays as a girl had been miserable and thin, she wanted mine to be the same. Like any true narcissistic parent, she was incensed at the fact that I had a shot at a better life than her.

Sharing the stage

Strange things happen between a narcissistic mother and her daughter. Even on the healthiest days, that relationship is fraught with a lot of complicated dynamics and themes. Society. Aging. Beauty. Connection. Throughout the ups and downs of the narcissistic mother-daughter relationship, there is a landslide of conflict and resentment.

More than anything else, the narcissistic mother hates sharing the stage with her daughter. That daughter cannot help but be a mirror of the past, a source of competition.

My mother hated my birthday because she hated sharing the stage with her child. She resented me for having a whole day that was supposed to be about me. In everything, the attention was supposed to be on her. She couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight with her daughter.

Watching people smile, laugh, give me presents, tell me how good I was…that was intolerable to my mother. She had to limit it and limit it hard. A few hours was all she could stand, so my birthday became something exclusively done at night when she got off of work and felt like it.

(Compare that to the experience one of my brothers had, in which it was no problem to drop a whole day and drive hours away to eat breakfast on his big day.)

Sense of power

The narcissist is nothing if not a moth to the flame. When it comes to power, they almost can’t resist the allure. They crave having power over other people. It gives them a sense of gratification and a sense of justification for all the manipulative and cruel things that they do. Power also provides them with the ability to hide and silence their victims.

My mother loved using my birthday as a means to prove her power, to me, to the family, and to everyone outside of the home.

I still remember the kind of pride she would brag about her power with.

“We don’t celebrate her birthday until 7 PM. Mm-hmm. That’s right. It’s not her birthday until the clock strikes 7 o’clock and she knows better!”

She thought she was making herself look grand to other parents. I even control birthdays, no one tells me what to do with my child. It was a soapbox moment and a way for my mother to prove how “important” she was somehow.

Meanwhile, that little eight-year-old went to school and wondered why she wasn’t allowed to tell her friends it was her birthday.

Need for control

Control looms large in the needs of a selfish person. Because they are deeply insecure (and convinced of their worthlessness) they create high-control environments around them. The logic follows something like this, “If I’m in control, then I’m the best and beyond question. If I’m the best, and always in control, no one will see my shadows.”

It works for a lot of narcissists. Crushing their victims in their tightening fists, they create a world of confusion and total destruction of the “true self”. For my mother, control was one of her top desires and her top techniques.

She was a control freak, and my birthday (as her child) fell squarely in the realm of her control. That means showing the world that she owns me. That the day did not belong to me, but to her — to celebrate in any way she saw fit.

That’s why I only had 2 birthday parties in my entire childhood (one of which was thrown by my brother and his wife). Both of which, my mother spent sulking in the corner and avoiding me and all of the other parents and children in attendance.

That’s also why my mother took such glee in denying my ability to celebrate my birthday until late in the evening.

She wanted to control how other people wished me a happy birthday. She wanted to control how I felt about it, and how excited I was able to be. It was suppression. It was resentment. It was squeezing my little child’s heart until all the joy was nearly stripped out of it.

To prove to the world that her ego was as powerful as she said it was, my mother denied me the ability to celebrate my birthday as a child.

Limited happiness

My mother was nothing if not miserable, for the entirety of her life. She never once made a choice that was authentic to her. She never did anything with herself that really filled her up or validated her. That’s what narcissists do. They spend their lives going after what everyone else wants. They make themselves miserable trying to snatch up other people’s happiness.

My mother spent her life chasing her own misery and it swallowed her up. It limited her ability to be happy, and because of that she wanted to limit everyone else around her.

The birthday of her youngest child was the most opportune time to flex that muscle. Who was going to stop her after all? The child with no language and no autonomy? The other narcissists and enablers watching it all unfold?

No. My mother got to spend the day making sure to limit my happiness as much as possible. That was a big part behind the game of “It’s not your birthday until your birth time.” It was her taking the chance to deny me something that was mine, something that brought me joy and excitement.

Because she was a miserable person, she wanted to raise me to be a miserable person. It almost worked.

How Birthdays Look Now…

Despite all of that, I remain grateful. How? Because somehow, despite the pain my mother put me through, I have remained in healthy communion with birthdays and the idea of getting older year by year. Not everyone can do that. Some people with my experience have a turbulent relationship with their birthdays, but I saw early on that I had to do things differently.

For a long time, birthdays were tough for me. As soon as I was out of the house, I wanted to go all out. “Carnivale!” was a phrase that was often heard shouted by me in the week leading up to my birthday. I wanted days and days of celebrations. Everything you could imagine. Hiking. Camping. Beach days. Nights out. All of it culminated in cake and a movie night.

The pattern is pretty obvious (to me, anyway).

Because my birthday was such a source of controversy and shame, I wanted to treat it with joy light, and celebration. It was a 180 shift. The best way I knew how to transmute all the pain that had been thrust on me was by a woman with less emotional intelligence than a broom handle.

Nowadays it’s not so “big”.

In the days since COVID-19, I’ve done a lot of growing up. In that growing up, I’ve recovered from the trauma of my birthdays and now enjoy a quieter celebration of things.

The joy is still there but I no longer need to spend all my energy reassuring that little girl who was denied her birthday. While I used to need the big celebrations and dozens of well-wishers, I take peace now in a comfy dinner with friends and loved ones. Chosen family who never shy away from holding me close or lifting me up — birthday or not.

I like to think that it would aggravate my mother to no end, how I’ve taken back control of something she tried so fiercely to pry from me. In a way, that’s really the theme of my life. Holding tight to my magic and transmuting her darkness and the shadows she sent to follow me.

© E.B. Johnson 2023

I am an author, NLPMP, and podcaster who helps women create their ideal lives after a lifetime of trauma. Join my mailing list for free weekly advice, or click the link below to learn more about me.