Does the Mother Wound Ever Go Away?

The impact of a traumatic mother-daughter relationship

I’m forty-five and I still struggle with my childhood.

My childhood doesn’t need another article. Just another story about ultra-religious immigrant parents while raised in North America. Sprinkle an emotionally-absent mother and some physical violence.

Sometimes, I’m indifferent. Being in another country means I barely communicate with them. I occasionally Skype with the kids and I’m not in view of the camera. We get along better since I had children because I believe my kids need to know their grandparents.

My parents suck as parents but they’re moderately decent grandparents.

My dad sends an email once a month when he wants to forward another religious article I’ll reply with an enthusiastic “Thanks!” as I delete it. He’s mellowed out in his old age, morphing from a terrifying father to a jolly grandfather my kids adore.

Recently, I’ve made an effort to engage in my mother’s online text messages (she doesn’t have a cell phone). She’s still insufferable and judgemental. I force myself to reply because I don’t want the karma of my kids one day ignoring me. Her health is pure garbage, most likely from a lifetime of extreme obesity; it’s shocking she’s still alive in her seventies. She typically messages my brother and me together, which is a relief because he takes the brunt of replying to her constant questions about the weather.

I long for those days of indifference. For the past few weeks, I’ve been sucked into the vortex of depression always present in me. I dwell on things, like my Disorganized Attachment and upbringing with only scraps of affection.

I try my best to tell my kids that I love them, even when I’m angry at them. My son gives a “moh-ohmmmm, we knooooowww” irritated answer every time. I need them to feel it in their hearts as they grow up. I need them to have a childhood without any doubt they were loved.

In my depression dwelling, I go down rabbit holes trying to gain clarity or magical insight. Instead, I get more explanations about my mental and emotional catastrophe.

Every day is a battle to not hate myself. I get the self-love bullshit, I do. But it’s not like you decide to stop the self-loathing and all is well. Eventually, when the Depression Beast inside of you gains hold, the boatload of inadequacy takes over.

What is it like to have a mother who praised you and loved you? What is it like to feel safe around your parents? Do you feel whole inside? What is it like to walk around not feeling “less than” others?

They (the overlords of life) say that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. That’s insanity. I love everyone else except myself.

My inadequacies are like chains inside of me. They drag me down and remind me of all the ways that I’m failing. They make up things that are inconsequential to add to the list.

I ache for praise from others. The validation is a band-aid.

I told myself that divorce was part of breaking the cycle. No longer would I be a martyr like my mom, miserable with her life waiting to die for the sake of raising kids.

My parents showed zero affection for each other. My ex-husband and I weren’t as bad (we at least hung out as a family on weekends) but there wasn’t any sign of a healthy relationship. I don’t know if that impacts children but I sure as hell didn’t want to model it for their future relationships as I did.

But is it any better when they don’t see me with another husband? I don’t plan on getting married again or living with someone. If they never see me with a love interest, will they still think that good relationships are like my awful marriage?

While I know not all that glitters is gold, it can’t possibly be true that over half of my friends’ seemingly happy marriages are secretly garbage. My friends thought the lack of closeness between Joseph and me when we hung out was “just how you guys are, like that’s just normal and fine for you both”.

I looked at their marriages with the same lens I use for everything else: I’m not destined to have nice things. It’s not a pity party, “wah wah I don’t deserve nice things”. It goes beyond that.

Nice things, like happy marriages, aren’t for people like me. What is like me? For people who believe to their core that they are less than others. It’s not that I don’t deserve nice things. It’s simply not an option.

I know that I’m lucky that I’ve got a job and a house. Those were things I worked towards. I couldn’t work towards getting a good marriage despite how much we tried because the marriage itself shouldn’t have happened. I couldn’t work towards not having a child with a chromosome disorder whose early years of therapies left me with nothing to give anyone (yes, I love my son, and I wouldn’t trade him in for the world, but if I could take away his disorder I’d do it in a heartbeat).

I can’t work towards changing my childhood. Rules of perception say otherwise. But this is deep-rooted in my core and my best days are simply stuffing it down to not cry all day. I can change my perception to think, “It’s not like they starved and raped me so my upbringing was darn nifty”. But changing my perception doesn’t help when something spontaneously triggers me.

Not dealing with my marital woes daily has shifted my focus to my childhood trauma that I kept on the back burner. I’m in my forties. I’m struggling more now than I did a decade ago when I was in the thick of my son’s therapies and a shitty marriage.

Who knew that my bad marriage was the ultimate distraction from my childhood trauma?

Watching my children at different ages highlights the difference in my mind of myself at those milestones. Why do I feel like at five years old I was an awful human and yet I look at my kids and think, “They don’t know whether they’re good or bad…but they do know the Easter Bunny is amazing”.

I struggle to reconcile the potential truth (note the word “potential”) that all my wrongdoings decades ago didn’t make me a bad child. Unlike my friends’ healthy marriages that contrasted against my own, I didn’t have another set of parents to compare with mine until I became a teenager. I didn’t know there was a whole other way of parenting that gave neverending love and safety.

You’d think as a teenager, when I clued in on how other parents raised kids, I gained perspective and saw that I wasn’t the problem. Instead, I became part of the deep, dark secret of our dysfunctional family.

“I bet you run and tell all your friends how awful we are!” my mother would yell. It’s a great manipulation tactic because it automatically makes the target want to do the opposite behavior to prove them wrong. I wouldn’t have told my friends anyway. Teenagers want to fit in seamlessly with their peers and my secrets didn’t mesh with that philosophy.

As a child, I didn’t know what I was missing from my caretakers. As a teenager, I believed the differences were my fault.

As an adult (which I use the word loosely), I mourn for the younger versions like I’m grieving a death. I want to hug the three-year-old version of myself that got hit when I cried over a splinter in my toe. I want to tell her she’s fucking amazing, smart, a good person, and worthy of every wonderful thing life can offer.

I want to sit with my teenage self and bombard her with praise for her intelligence. I’d tell her she’s smart enough to do anything. “You’re not in a situation right now where you’re getting your emotional needs met,” I’d say. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t get it later. Don’t ever, ever make the mistake of thinking a bad relationship is the best you can do. And don’t take scraps because it’s more than you’re getting now.”

What would my seventy-year-old self say to me now? I need her wisdom and guidance. I can’t even fathom what she’d say. Whatever it is, she better thank me for my obsession with sunblock and Botox.

I hope she’d say, “Your mother was wrong about you. While she wished you were never born, everyone in your life is grateful for you.”