I grew up with a mother who didn’t love me. I know that now, but I didn’t entirely then. I always had hope that one day, she would. But people who love you do NOT break you down, piece by piece. They don’t swing between cruelty and control, leaving you unsure which version of them you’ll meet each day. They don’t gaslight you, manipulate you, or turn their own child into their personal punching bag — physically or emotionally.

But when you’re a child, you can’t accept that. To believe your own mother doesn’t love you is too painful, too final. So instead, you try to fix yourself, thinking, if I were just easier, quieter, better, she wouldn’t treat me this way.

As a teenager, her hatred of me was no longer subtle. She made it clear. She told me constantly how much she hated me, how she wished I had never been born, called me every horrible name under the sun. My crime? Existing. There was no pattern to her cruelty, no predictability — just sudden, explosive rage that could strike at any moment. Simply being near her was anxiety-inducing.

Growing up in that war zone, I developed an undiagnosed eating disorder, alongside spiralling mental health issues, including CPTSD. She knew. Of course, she knew. And she did nothing — because she knew I might say something. Worse, she enjoyed knowing I was breaking. She laughed about it when telling family members.

Once, in pure desperation, I wrote “HELP ME” and stuck it in my bedroom window. She laughed about that too. Told everyone. As if it were some kind of joke, rather than a child screaming in the only way they knew how. There was no help this side of my window.

There were much worse events, this post is basically the tip of the iceberg. If I went into everything I suffered as a child or even just a teenager, this post would be a novel of traumatic events that wouldn’t serve me or you a purpose. Just know, it was TERRIBLE. But I eventually became old enough where I could try and escape.

She saw my trying to escape as dangerous and she tightened her grip even more. I’d go to work, trying to build something of my own, and there she’d be — just sitting there, watching. Every single day. My coworkers whispered about how strange it was. I already knew. But I couldn’t break away.

Because leaving made me feel guilty.

She was my mother. The only one I would ever have. And if I left, if I cut her off, what did that say about me? Who leaves their own mother? I convinced myself that, no matter what she did to me, I must deserve it. That I was selfish for even thinking about leaving.

Then I had my son. My beautiful, perfect son. And suddenly, I was in an impossible position.

I told myself he deserved family. That I had to sacrifice myself so he could have a grandmother. And I was still convinced, after years of conditioning, that it was just me — that somehow, I was the problem. After all, she treated my brother completely differently.

At first, she seemed to be loving toward my son, but something about it felt off. She tried, more than once, to convince me to give her parental responsibility. She even said, “He has no dad, so I can be like the dad,” and I remember feeling deeply unsettled by how incestuous that sounded. Whenever I said, hell no, she had a complete meltdown.

But she was still appearing loving toward my son, so I swallowed her manipulation and the continued abuse she directed at me. Then, when my son turned two, it became obvious that he was unique. He didn’t have tantrums; he had full-blown meltdowns. My son is neurodivergent.

And then came the breaking point.

We were in Tesco, and my little toddler son had a meltdown. Bless him, he was always easily soothed by me — I had all the patience in the world for him. But my mother saw it, and instead of supporting us, she had a meltdown of her own.

Right there, in the middle of Tesco, she screamed at my son. She screamed abuse at him, abuse at me — because, in her mind, his meltdown was somehow about her. Because, in her mind, him “showing her up” in public meant I was a terrible mother. I stood there with a toddler in distress, while a 50-year-old toddler raged at both of us.

We abandoned our trolleys and went to the car. My son was still shaken, frightened of her after the way she had screamed in his face. And then, she turned to him and said, “I don’t love you anymore.”

My son screamed the car down. I was heartbroken. And I snapped.

I told her, if you EVER do anything like that to him again, you will NEVER see us again.

And suddenly, everything came tumbling down for me. Because now I was wondering — if she could do this to him, to a tiny innocent child, was it really just me? If I wouldn’t allow her to do this to him, then why had I spent my whole life allowing her to do it to me?

I gave her chances. Too many. She continued her abuse every chance she got. And her mask started slipping with my son. She tried to destroy his favourite plushie while laughing and smiling which really disturbed him. Stole some of his favourite items. Spat hateful things at him. The truth became undeniable.

She hated him too.

My son grew up and realised he is a part of the LGBT+ community, and she took every opportunity to say things that are legally defined as a hate crime. We had enough. We tried to separate ourselves, to put distance between us. We moved house. She moved right next to us. We changed our last name. She copied us and took the same last name.

It became clear that low contact wouldn’t work. We had to cut her off completely.

I knew I had to do it, but I was still frozen in the guilt and trauma she had embedded into me. Then, one day, my son looked at me and said, “I know you’re focused on what she did to me, but what she does to you every day is awful, and it really hurts me. That’s my mother she’s talking about.”

And that was the final push I needed. I cut her off.

Even now, it hasn’t been a clean break. She still lives nearby, still tries to manipulate and guilt-trip. She sends birthday cards filled with emotional barbs. She has called me at 3 am, probably just to make me think something was terribly wrong. She’s still who she’s always been.

But I am no longer hers to control. And my son will never be either.

This post is what I needed to hear as a teenager. If you tolerate this, this is your future. She does NOT love you. And she will not love your child either. None of this is your fault. There is no version of you that exists that she will love. Please leave and become your own person. She’s stopping you from being that person you know you are.

If you don’t leave, your children will be next.

My son wishes he had never met her, because now he knows that all the times she was “nice” were just manipulation tactics. If I had thought for even a second, as a teenager, that this is where I would end up — I would have made a clean break much sooner.

That is the responsibility I should have taken, and I feel guilty for not doing it sooner. My son would have never met her, and I wouldn’t have to live with the weight of knowing I allowed him to. He still struggles with what she did and said to him.

No family member is worth suffering trauma for. Especially one who is incapable of love. Hurting my son is unforgivable. If I had imagined, as a teenager, that one day she would do to my child what she had always done to me, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

After everything, after all the trauma, I would want teenage me to know that I still became a loving mother. I became the mother I always needed, the mother I always wanted. And that is enough. That is more than my mother ever gave me. I love my son in a way she can’t even fathom.

He is my everything, and I was her nothing.

**Thought I’d try a daily prompt. Usually my blog posts are much more thought out and take me much longer. I thought I’d challenge myself as part of grief therapy to just pick one and write it the same day with whatever feelings and thoughts came out.