I’ve mentioned previously my choice to go no contact with my Mum. This one came from a place of anger and sadness at feeling misunderstood about why I was no contact with my mum. I guess you could say, a lifetime of feeling shunned and ashamed, scared and unloved can’t be explained in a sentence to someone who doesn’t really know you, and doesn’t know your mum. So the typical response from well-meaning people is ‘Ahhh, it’s your mum, course she loves ya!’ etc, but truthfully, love is a complicated thing. It always is a feeling. If you don’t feel loved, whether it’s a blood relative or not, then surely it isn’t love?
Poems like this help us realise that how we treat our children will directly influence how they feel we felt about them. How they feel we felt about them can directly influence their feelings about us in return. I like to keep in the forefront of my mind how I feel about my Mum, because it is an extra motivation that emotionally void, toxic and controlling parenting can lead to an adult child choosing to break free from you. This motivates us through the hardest times to try to be as gentle as possible. And if that fails, to apologise and repair the relationship.
Poem: The Fairy Tale Mother
I don’t love my own mother
I don’t care for her at all
She never held me tight and loved me no matter what
Like all those fairy tale films and tunes
My mother was my main abuser
Picking times of my flailing life and pushing me out deeper
She’d leave me to drown where most mothers would grab and hold on tight
I’m sure she’d hold me under
She’d shout hurtful messages at me all day, every day
If not out loud those screams would be inside my head, knowing what she truly felt
Beyond the fake smiles and doting mother looks in public
But between me and her, behind our 4 walls, it was unstable and painful
A mother should be someone who fills you with love and trust
My mother filled me with anxiety, hate and anguish
I don’t miss running far away from my Mum
I feel surprised to be an eagle soaring and swooping without her near
Because all my moments with her had me filled with complete dread
Fear my mother, if I do something imperfect she could actually kill me
That was what she raised me to believe and feel
And it made me feel the same about all other women out there
I never gelled with female teachers, or friends-in-the-making
They all let me down in just the same way as my first carer
My dad held her on a pedestal and loved her endlessly
But he died young for the toxic painting she made our family be
He couldn’t cope with everything she made us be and literally couldn’t see it
… The screaming, the smacking, the hatred, the put-down comments, the belittlement
But without her in my life, I’m no longer misunderstood. I’m loved, for who I am regardless of mistakes I make
Nobody is here to rub salt in my wounds anymore, now I’ve said farewell to my mother
So when I tell you I’m not in contact with my mother
Don’t assume it was a fairy tale gone wrong
Don’t imagine we can be repaired if we just sit and talk
You’d be wrong to think there must be love there, ‘because she’s your Mum… ‘
For it was never a fairy tale at all
I am no contact with my mother because I had no other choice
With her guiding me, the paths she led me to were toxic and deadly
When she was around I was not the person I am today
Gentle Parent 