I Grew up With a Mum Who Disliked What She Saw in the Mirror
And that effected the way I saw myself
CW: This article will be discussing eating disorders and disordered eating habits.
Growing up with a mum who always made us aware of the parts of herself that she didn’t like was always going to affect me. I just never realized how bad it could get.
Mum was never afraid of telling me what parts of herself she thought needed changing, how her “wobbly bits” would show through some of her clothes, or that the top she bought online last week was skin tight which meant she couldn’t possibly wear it. She’d come home telling us all about how she hadn’t had lunch and that dinner was about to be her first meal of the day, or that she ate a whole easter egg and is now fat but it’s okay because it was “one of the small ones”.
Harmless, right? Wrong.
In my eyes, no one was more perfect than my mum but why couldn’t she see herself like I did? Hearing her talk in such a demeaning manner affected not only the way I viewed myself but also my relationship with food.
At 11 when I started high school, I became more aware of what I looked like compared to my peers, but not because of comments they made.
Mum never audibly compared herself to others and I think that’s part of the reason she never noticed what she was doing. By high school, I had spent the majority of my childhood hearing how her stomach showed too much in certain clothing, which heightened my awareness of what my body looked like.
Some part of me knew that nitpicking my appearance in this way was a recipe for disaster but at this point, it had been drummed into me.
She’d comment on foods that wouldn’t help her in future, or how she’d missed dinner and only had pudding. This made me hyperaware of the food I was putting into my body, which was when the bingeing started.
I’d get home from school and raid the snack boxes for anything I could eat, sometimes going as far as to make a second lunch. I felt so ashamed of not only the daily binges but also the meals I was eating. So much so that I’d cut some out on weekends. But even so, I still binged, so I still felt guilty.
This went on from 2016–2020 when covid hit and we went into lockdown. During this time, Mum noticed there was something wrong with my eating, but nothing happened past a couple of empty threats to take me to the doctor for my lack of appetite. My disordered eating never made me sick enough to require medical attention or to become underweight, so it was always brushed off.
Throughout lockdown, my mum would continuously make comments about her appearance (negative) and the type of food she was consuming constantly (junk).
When school reopened, I stopped eating lunch and binged significantly less than before, but the feeling of hunger was so gratifying. I started losing weight then too. Not significant amounts, but enough for people to notice. She’d tell me that “it’s because you’re not eating much” and end the conversation like she wasn’t the one to bring it up in the first place.
She unknowingly encouraged my behaviors.
Her comments never stopped either.
When I moved to university, I broke. I’d escaped the constant comments she’d make about herself, but the freedom of eating what I want when I want got to me. I started bingeing again.
No matter what I tried, I wasn’t getting better but I’d left the place that was essentially the root of my problems. I realized soon after that listening to my mum call herself fat didn’t fuel my disordered eating anymore, because the mindset was already cemented in my mind. A constant voice in my ear.
And now I’m back home after finishing my first year at university, listening to Mum tell me how her new dress showed all her lumps and bumps but would look better on me because I lost weight. Would the dress look better on me because I’m smaller than her anyway, or because of the weight loss?
I’ve grown numb to the majority of her comments now, yet I’d be lying if I said the ones about my weight loss didn’t light the disordered eating bonfire in the back of my brain, and I know it’s going to be a while until I can recover fully.
I am now 18, turning 19 soon, and my mum might not be an almond mum, but she has involuntarily been a cause of my disordered eating.
The moral of the story is to watch what you say around children.
