Estranged Mothers and Daughters
Mother’s who couldn’t mother
Some of our mothers didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to look outside of themselves.
Some were hooked on pills, men, or alcohol.
Some were trying to survive themselves.
They’d been hurt or abused and had their depth of trauma to deal with.
A kid was too much.
When moms feel like they can’t help their kids, they in turn hurt them.
They feel helpless, and so they do what they know, which is running away or lashing out.
I have many friends who are estranged from their mothers. One friend in particular hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother for over ten years. She emancipated herself at 16, and although things looked normal from the outside, her mother had a mental illness that made her unpredictable and scary. Time and time again she tried to rectify things with her mother and things would be okay for a short time until her mom was flirting with her boyfriend, lashing out and crying about something, or being irrational and abusive.
My own mother was an alcoholic. She got pregnant at 22 with a man she hardly knew. He gave her money for an abortion as he was 19 and facing prison time. She went to the abortion clinic but didn’t follow through with it.
