My Mother Berated me for Saying No to Abuse
My mother’s love is a confusing brand of love. I don’t want it. I don’t want to pass it on.
This essay is a response to my mother’s email after I informed her what’s going on with my marriage.
It was about her and others, not me.
My mother’s email started with how my action would impact others, especially her, and not one sentence asking how I was feeling. Nothing about how hard it must have been for me to have endured any of the mistreatment to finally make the decision to end the relationship. She criticised me for speaking up, for doing so I was being selfish, thoughtless, uncaring. The rest of it was about her relationship with my father. And how it has been bad timing for me to inform her because they were in the middle of a fight and I added to that burden. Of course, she signed it off with, “It’s only because I care about you that I’m saying all this. I love you.”
Love should not be transactional.
I suppose we all now know where my attachment issues came from. I do not agree with this kind of behaviour. Being negatively judged for speaking up is what conditioned me to stay silent for so long: to think that it’s okay for my partner to call me useless if I didn’t do things according to their standards; that people criticising and devaluing me are only because they care about me; and to feel guilty for speaking up against verbal and emotional abuse.
It’s not my fault for not giving her what she wanted.
Just because she has the intention doesn’t mean that her behaviour is acceptable or has the intended effect. Yes, true, she took the time to write all that. However, she did not provide the support I needed from her. I have to acknowledge the impact she has had on me and that’s not positive.
The cycle ends here.
I am not going to propagate this brand of love. To me, this is not love. It is confusing. I matter. I am a human being. My feelings are valid. My experience is real.
With my child, I will strive to be non-judgemental, and listen first. I will keep speaking up against the use of insults, humiliation and ridicule as acceptable loving behaviours.
Here’s to a kinder, safer, healthier world.
