Prose
Mother, Mother
How I became my mother
Lorelai: Stop saying “mother” like that.
Rory: Like what?
Lorelai: Like there’s supposed to be another word after it.
Gilmore Girls, Season 1, Episode 7: “Kiss and Tell”
The truth is, I was horrible to my mother before I stopped speaking to her. I wrote her emails that called her out in ways that, while from my perspective, were accurate, were also hostile and hateful. I’m not proud of having lashed out, but I understand now that I did so because I needed to in order to walk away. I went scorched earth, as they say, because it was the only way I knew how to let go of my childish dreams that, somehow, someday, we’d finally, truly figure out how to be in a healthy mother-daughter relationship, whatever that is.
In one of my last emails to her, I said I would call her by her first name from now on because she was not deserving of the word mother.
I had failed my mother with my mothering.
I always wanted to be a mother, but infertility robbed me of that chance. Maybe that’s for the best, because the truth is, I am the mother — and I haven’t been very good at it, either. I mothered my little brother. I was 8 the day I got us taken away from…
