Midwinter Meditations of an Estranged Daughter

It’s finally the end of the year, that dark time (literally dark in upstate NY) of year when everyone reflects on the past year and where the future might take them. There has been much buzz on social media lately about whether or not people going ‘no-contact’ with their families is a generational trend, with apparently Oprah and Mel Robbins weighing in, telling people who have done this to ‘make up’ with their families before it’s ‘too late.’ This is no different than those well-meaning family members that all who have gone no-contact have who told us “well that’s your mother” or “you’ll regret this one day,” once again putting the blame and responsibility for reconciliation squarely on the child’s shoulders, thereby expiating the parents’ responsibility in causing the desire to go no-contact in the first place.

Here’s the thing: people have been estranged from their families since humans have existed. Siblings have gone off to make their way in the world, women have run off and gotten married to escape home; people have left enmeshed families to strike out on their own. Maybe not everyone in these situations has become completely estranged, maybe they’ve maintained an illusion of contact with their families, sending letters or making occasional calls, but still never bodily returning to visit once they’ve left. This is not a ‘trend’ or a ‘Gen-X’ thing, it’s part of life for many. We are just hearing about it more now because of social media and widespread therapy.

Personally, I don’t think adhering to the nuclear or extended family well into adulthood is healthy or natural. Animals don’t do this, and what are we but animals? Your parents are supposed to nuture you into adulthood, to give you that unconditional love and security you need to become a resposible adult and member of society. If you’re like my husband, and you were lucky enough to have good parents who did this more or less successfully, you grow up and move out and build your own family. It’s the circle of life. There are no perfect parents; there is instead a job to be done, and ‘doing right’ by your kids really is nothing more than nuturing, putting the kids first by making them feel loved and cared for, so that they can develop identities of their own and eventually seek their own way in the world. Healthy parents have a sense of their own identify and individuality, and want the same for their kids.

It is when parents abdicate this responsibility–whether because of their own developmental issues or a personality disorder–parents who jealously hold onto their kids and try to dominate and control every aspect of their lives, and in extreme cases, abuse them–that, if they’re lucky, the children eventually grow tired of this and break away from the parents in order to live. There are those of us who had a ‘failure to launch’ situation where our needs weren’t properly met as kids, so we keep trying to please our parents well past the expiration date.

I went no-contact in May 2023 when I moved out of Louisiana and back to New York with my husband and daughter, without saying a formal goodbye to my birth family. They knew we were leaving, they didn’t know when exactly, but they knew. I’d informed my mother and sister that we were leaving the previous June. The for-sale sign went up in our yard in April, the POD was outside of our home for 30 days, then we closed on May 23rd and started driving to New York immediately afterwards. I was 47 years old when I left ‘home’ again for the second and final time. I haven’t spoken to anyone in my family since. It was finally an end to what I now see was a lifelong effort to gain my mother’s love and acceptance. Time and reflection have shown me that she likely never loved me, and that is not an easy thing to admit to yourself, that you weren’t loved by your parent. I had plenty of other family (now dead) who did love me, but for my mother, I think that I was something that happened to her (pregnant at 18), not someone she loved.

Why did I move back to Louisiana after 15 years away? I still beat myself up over this life-altering and nearly marriage-ending decision. All I can say is, such is the power that a withholding parent’s approval can wield over a child who has always been seeking that approval, I guess. The even bigger mystery is how quickly my mother’s desire for me to move home evaporated once I got there. Her best friend told me once off-handedly that, before we moved back, my mother used to wax on about how us moving back would make her ‘so happy.’ A couple of months of me and my 4-year old living with her (the situation was supposed to be temporary until my husband came down to join us after selling the house), that quickly turned into selfish rage and cruelty, directed at me.

My sweet four-year old daughter, who would gleefully run out to greet her grandmother as she arrived home from work every day, and me, contributing to the household groceries and cleaning, we were suddenly a burden to my mother, something to complain about. She absolutely would not help me with my daughter, would never even give her a bath, and had no sympathy for the fact that I was missing my husband and partner, while also working a new job and taking my daughter to and from daycare daily. I rarely went out, and I remember her watching my daughter exactly once when I had a company Christmas party to attend. (It became such an ordeal to get her to watch her own granddaughter that I just stopped asking.) I gave my mother a pass for a long time about her changed attitude towards us being there, ascribing it to her being stressed about having too many people in her house. Other than the two of us there was my grandmother with Alzheimer’s, plus my younger sister going through a separation that often landed her on my mom’s couch during that time. It wasn’t until a few years later, after my mother breezily said to me, TWICE, to make sure I didn’t miss it, “Well I guess I’m not close to your daughter because I didn’t really know her as a baby,” deftly blaming me for her lack of relationship with my daughter because we lived in New York, I finally saw more clearly than ever that my mother was never going to change. Not only was she not going to change, she was in fact going to perpetrate her disdain for me into the next generation with my daughter, that’s when the scales fell off my eyes and I knew I had made the wrong decision to move back to Louisiana. That decision will haunt me for the rest of my life.

These things are on my mind again this time of year. I have made a clean break at this point, and I no longer have any feelings of guilt about it. Taking my sister’s lead, I no longer send Christmas presents to my nieces; why do I need to keep up the pretense if she’s not? So for someone like Oprah (who apparently was estranged from her own family) to tell people they need to suck it up and make amends with their families, it’s really a slap in the face. The cycle was never going to break for me, and at some point, you have to choose yourself and your own family, if for no other reason than simple self-preservation. I see now that I internalized a lot of things growing up as being ‘my fault’ when I shouldn’t have. My mom wasn’t all bad, I wasn’t physically abused (except for those few years when she let her boyfriend beat the shit out of me with a belt as a kid–a story for another time), but that doesn’t mean I owe her a relationship after all of the hurt she has caused me, intentional or not. She will never change, will never accept responsibility for her actions. She doesn’t think she has done anything wrong, ever. I am 100% sure she has made all of this my fault in how she explains it to my extended family back home. The nasty words she spoke to me back in September 2022 still sometimes haunt me: “No one cares what you think.” Ok then, I’m out. And this time, I mean it.

They know where to find you.

A meme crossed my path this week that said something to this effect. It was about healing from toxic relationships; the ‘they’ is of course the people who hurt you, and whom you have cut off. I realize now that taken out of context it sounds a tad threatening, but the sense behind it was something like, Don’t feel bad for continuing to be in No Contact, because they know where to find you if they were interested. But they’re not.

I officially went no-contact with my mother (and subsequently my entire family) back in May 2023 when we left Louisiana for a second and final time. I blocked her number as we were driving out of state, and haven’t looked back. These last couple of years I still bought gifts for my three nieces, and I texted my sister happy 40th birthday this year. But we don’t ‘talk.’

I have zero idea of what has befallen my mother or family since, have no idea what she says about me, or how she rationalizes my leaving to anyone who will listen. I can only imagine based on her past behavior. I realized about a year ago that I had forgotten to block her number on my daughter’s phone–and she left a message on her phone out of the blue, emphatically demanding that my then 12-year old daughter call her. Blocked. She will still send the occasional guilt-induced birthday or Christmas card my daughter’s way. Last year she sent her a check for Christmas, which I promptly tore up and threw away. We don’t need your guilty conscience money, lady, and we don’t need your stupid cards either.

The degree to which I am DONE with this woman shocks even me sometimes. But what this meme made me realize was, this isn’t all my fault, it was NEVER my fault, I made a choice going on three years ago now, and I haven’t looked back. Is it hard to explain to people who don’t know my past (and even to some who do)? Yes, of course it can be hard. Do I feel guilt, even a little bit, for shutting her out so completely? Actually, no, no I really don’t. It was a long time coming, and I am still healing and reeling from realizing that this shit was going on my entire life. Does that make me heartless? Maybe? But only when it comes to her.

Implicit in the meme was the following wisdom: If they wanted to, they would. Full stop. Stop waiting on people to make amends, to show interest, to reach out, because if they wanted to, they would. Thing is, I haven’t been waiting for anything, I have zero expectations when it comes to her, but the meme made me realize, she has my email address, my sister isn’t blocked by me. There are ways to reach out and apologize for her behavior. If she wanted to, she would.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning

There was a ‘last straw’ incident with my NMom back on her birthday, in September. Here is the email I wrote to my MIL about it:

‘Yes Saturday night/Sunday morning was not a great time. I keep kicking myself for not leaving sooner than I did–we all drank a lot, and after dinner at the restaurant, we sat on mom’s patio and drank more. I kept my head, so I recall a lot of what was said…it’s possible that my sister does not (she has never been able to hold liquor well). I should have had an exit plan going in, to skip the patio drinks, or to leave after an hour–there were multiple times I could have left, but I didn’t.

We had fun for a couple hours, listening to music and talking, but then they started asking questions, challenging me again about moving back to NY. It was like a continuation of the previous weekend’s “discussion.” I finally mentioned something about wanting to move to a state that protect’s women’s rights, and so then we got onto abortion, and I think my mom said something like, ‘well I didn’t have an abortion’ like she deserves some kind of award for having me, and then it escalated from there. I said something about most abortions being done to save the life of the mother, or when the baby dies in utero, and that politicians are not doctors and have no business inserting themselves into that decision, blah blah blah, and then it ended with my mom looking me DEAD in the eyes, with the most vile look of hatred, “No one cares what you think.” No effort to understand or even hear my point of view, period, discussion over.

I never get really, out of control mad, but the few times I have, it is always at my mother–and this was one of those times, I think it’s been 4 times total since moving back here. I told her she was in a cult, and in my haste to get out of there, the wineglass fell and broke on the iron table, I threw it away, got my stuff, wished her a ‘happy fucking birthday’ and walked out.

That’s it. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I got home and started sobbing uncontrollably. As I said we’ve had other fights in the last 6 years, but this time was different. It reminded me way too much of fights we’d had when I was a teenager still living at home. There has been no progression, we basically have the same relationship we did when I was 17/18 years old. It confirmed to me that there is no hope, I was/am better off AWAY from her, away from her nasty comments and judgments about me and my life choices, her cruel lack of empathy, her complete disinterest in understanding me at all.‘

That incident was two months ago now, and since that time, I have seen my mother twice, once on Halloween, and most recently on Thanksgiving day. She does not call me, I do not call her, I am cordial to her at these social events, but there is zero relationship between us now. My husband has flat-out stopped greeting her, he cannot stand the sight of her at this point. He knows better than anyone the emotional mindgames that woman has put me through over the years, and he’s had enough.

Something inside me died that day, and I cannot go back to pretending it didn’t happen. The day after the incident I texted my sister that I would not be going to mom’s again for a long time. She has a habit of dropping in to visit my mom with her two kids and staying the weekend, and texts me to come down and visit, so I wanted to be clear that I would not be doing that any longer. So then my mom texted me ‘what did I do? I don’t remember, I’d like to know what I did’ all innocent like. I replied that we would have to talk about it sometime, that I wasn’t going to text about it. Then later, since my sister didn’t recall any of it, my mom joined in, saying she also ‘didn’t remember what happened,’ to which I replied, ‘that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.’ She has always tried to gaslight my injured feelings, saying I’m too sensitive, or that I remember things that didn’t happen, so I felt like she was doing it again BECAUSE SHE FUCKING REMEMBERS WHAT SHE SAID. When I left in a rage that night, I heard her shouting on the patio, ‘Are we just going to let your sister leave like that??’ all frantic; she remembers. And she has not once reached out to discuss it with me, so here we are.

Living with the choice to go low-contact is hard, but it does get easier over time. Moving out of state again will definitely help the situation for me. Living six doors down from her was certainly a mistake; perhaps things would not have gotten so dire so quickly if we’d lived further out. But the fact remains that the woman is a large child, and has never treated me well, has always resented me, has never been a mother to me, will never be the type of mother I wish I’d had all these years. It’s time for me to give up on her and live my life surrounded by people who love me and don’t treat me like garbage. I’m too old for this crap, and I have my own daughter to focus on.

Inevitably I’m the scapegoat for it all, I’m sure now she has compartmentalized her lack of relationship with me as my fault, because I’m choosing to be stubborn, besides she doesn’t even remember what she said, so I’m just too sensitive, blah blah blah. She has to come out the winner in every circumstance. That’s fine, she can spin whatever lies she needs to, but ultimately I will win when I leave this god-awful state in 6 months, never to return.

Going Low-Contact

I have decided this week that I am officially going low-contact with my N-Mom. The last time I saw her was Monday July 5th. We were off work and on our way home from the park with our daughter, so we stopped by to say hello. My daughter asked to stop by, and I only agreed because I’d missed several calls from N-Mom over the weekend, and thought it would be less painful to do the quick in-person visit. Also did I mention that I live 6 doors down from N-Mom? We’ll get to that later.

July 5th is also my half-sister’s birthday. One of the first things out of N-Mom’s mouth was, ‘well did you call your sister for her birthday?’ Which of course I did not. Because she doesn’t call me for my birthday, or recognize it in any way other than the obligatory Facebook post. And so I do the same with her. This has been the case for at least 2 years now.

Let me back up a bit to a year ago, when my N-Mom was apparently so mad that I don’t “call them” (as if she and my sister are a unit? I didn’t really understand this at the time and still don’t), and was sitting on the news that my sister was pregnant, that one day in a fit of rage, my mom broke that news to me–news that wasn’t hers to share–apparently to punish me for not calling “them.” Meanwhile, my sister and I had been texting, she was going to drop off a piece of heirloom furniture to me that had been in her storage facility–so she knew she was going to see me that very weekend, to break the news to me in person about her pregnancy. Mind you, this is her SECOND, not her first, but still, this was her news to share, not my mom’s.

After that incident, my sister was furious with my mom, and of course my mom refused to apologize for her actions. Eventually, we all just “got over it” like always. My sister spent New Year’s eve here with us because her husband was out of town hunting, and we talked about N-Mom a bit. We cleared the air, I told my sister I am not a phone talker, so I’m not just going to call people out of the blue to chat. That is what N-Mom does. My sister was fine with it, agreeing that the only person she talks to with regularity is N-Mom because she calls all the time. So my mom trying to say that “they” were mad at “me” for not calling “them” was complete insanity and manipulation. When called out on it, N-Mom didn’t back down, insisting I was to blame for the entire mess.

N-Mom seems to have this delusion that I need to do whatever she says I need to do. She calls my sister all the time, therefore so should I. Nevermind that my sister and I are 10 years apart and have not really ever been ‘close’, and that’s ok. Last month, in the presence of my sister, N-Mom also tried to guilt me into visiting my grandmother in the nursing home weekly, you know since I live so close (she is 10 minutes from both mine and N-Mom’s houses). My sister was literally sitting right there and got no such guilt trip. My sister did speak up for me and point out that it was completely unfair, but N-Mom does not care. I honestly think it’s some messed up way of offloading her responsibilities to me. I love my grandmother, but her mind is completely gone; also she’s my grandmother, not my mother. Going forward I will visit my grandmother as frequently as I see fit, without N-Mom’s input.

Back to the current time. My daughter went to sleepaway camp for the first time at the end of June. Since we never get free babysitting from N-Mom (because N-Mom cannot be bothered and is always too busy), we made a few plans that week do go out to dinner, drinks, to a movie, and I scheduled a couple of happy hours at work that same week because I knew I would be more available. Well, N-Mom must have been unhappy that I didn’t dedicate my free time to HER, because she called me out of the blue on on Wednesday June 30th, to tell me that she wasn’t going to be at home because she decided to go visit my sister (“I just can’t help it”), and was sorry she wouldn’t be there “for your entertainment.” I was dumbfounded. “I didn’t ask you to be available for my entertainment, thanks?” was my reply. I’m pretty certain she only called to tell me all of that to make me feel bad that she was choosing to spend HER time with my sister and her kids, boo-hoo for me, didn’t that make me feel like shit? It was simultaneously insulting, because she was implying that I would be lost without her, and guilt-inducing, because I chose to plan events that did not center around her, therefore she chose my sister over me, yet again.

Back to the in-person visit on July 5th. She went on to tell my daughter that ‘your mom had all kinds of fun while you were away’–something which I did NOT tell my daughter, and I hardly call overdue night out with my husband, and a couple of work happy hours ‘all kinds of fun’. You’re not supposed to tell them that you’re going to have fun while they’re away; you’re supposed to not really say anything, that you’ll miss them, etc, to make it easier on them when they’re away. My daughter was like, ‘who did?’ and N-Mom goes, ‘your MOM did.’ Thanks, bitch.

N-Mom also said she was going to cook something this weekend for my sister to celebrate her birthday…and that was the last straw. When I didn’t take the bait, she said, ‘well don’t you want to come over and eat?’ and I said ‘No, I don’t really need to celebrate her birthday, we don’t really do that, furthermore no one celebrates my birthday, we’re all adults now.’ Also, it’s our anniversary this weekend (today in fact), so there was no way I was getting cornered into attending some bogus birthday dinner that was really just an elaborate way to spite me. I’m sorry, but we are all adults now with our own families, birthdays are no longer our parents’ responsibility! We celebrate with our husbands and children, and that’s it. Your mother might give you a gift, or join you for dinner (my mom tagged along on my birthday dinner), but they by no means need to cook you some dinner and make a big production nearly a week after the fact.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t said the thing about not celebrating my sister’s birthday, because it gives N-Mom power to say shit to my sister about my selfishness or whatever, but it was amazing how much shit that woman can unload in a 5 minute visit. If not talking to N-Mom means that I miss out on so-called ‘family’ hang-outs, well then so be it. If my sister cared to include us, she would. N-Mom is making a big deal out of nothing in order to make me feel bad, as usual.

Low-contact has got to happen. That woman causes me so much grief in such a short span of time, I have to limit my exposure to her or I will go insane. This week already I feel freer than I’ve felt in a while. When I start feeling guilty, I am getting better at compartmentalizing it and ignoring it. I have nothing to feel guilty for! I’m just over here, living my life, hurting no one; if they wanted to spend time with us, they could invite us. I’m not going to spin my wheels wondering if I’m being left out; I truly do not care anymore. My sister had her baby back in March, I’ve seen the baby 3 times since then, I think that’s enough. Because N-Mom has been spending all of her free time at my sister’s helping with the baby, she for some reason thinks I need to be doing that, too. I’m guessing she’s guilting me selfishly to relieve her of “having to do it all the time,” so purely selfish reasons. She’s the grandmother, she SHOULD be spending time. She sure as hell didn’t spend that kind of time with my daughter, so she can suck it as far as I’m concerned.

Gray Rocking It

A huge part of my disgust with being back home has to do with my troubled relationship with my mother. I am angry that I was somehow duped by her into returning home after living away for 15 years. We have a history, which I will go into in future posts, but somehow I thought we had gotten past that time. I’m realizing that actually what happened was, I forgave her for what she did to me, but she did not change, and will never apologize. And so here I am, living in South Louisiana again and hating it.

I need a place where I can vent my experiences and frustrations WITHOUT resorting to Facebook or Reddit threads. I do not want my NMom to find these posts or to see that I’ve liked some post, this education is for me only, to help me heal, and hopefully to share my experiences in the hopes that I can help others avoid the same fate.

Since I returned to this godforsaken place that is South Louisiana, I have been learning the fine art of ‘gray rocking,’ or not reacting to my narcissistic mother (N-Mom)’s cutting remarks. She will say something in the course of a conversation that I will miss in the moment, but it will come back to haunt me later and incite full rage. It looks like passivity, yes, but it is a tactic I have learned in order to avoid blow ups. In the past when I have blown up at her or taken her to task for something she says, I lose every time because I’m the one being ‘unreasonable.’ The best way I have found for dealing with her, is not to deal with her. That’s gray rock.

I’m working on going low-contact. My husband and I want to move out of this state, but cannot for another 2 years or so. In the meantime, I need to better regulate my exposure to my mother, and conquer any feelings of guilt that I have from being low contact (inflicted by her of course). It is also time for me to deal with and process all of the past hurts that she’s caused me, all of which lead up to now. She would have me believe it was all my fault, but I am now seeing that, as the child, I was the victim all along, not her. She is not the star of my story, she doesn’t get to steal the limelight from me any more.

Middle-Aged White Woman Proves You Can’t Go Home Again When Home is South Louisiana

Image result for louisiana crossed out

I need a do-over. I started this blog on the wrong foot, so I deleted my original post and am reclaiming the right to start over.

As my profile states, I recently moved back to South Louisiana after living in upstate NY for 15 years. What’s that like? You might ask, and many have. I have no good answer for that anymore. At least, not without cursing. What’s that like, indeed. It is literally THE SUBJECT of this blog, so stay fucking tuned and hold onto your fucking hat.

Consider this your warning: this isn’t going to be some feel-good mommy blog with puppies and crock pot recipes, hell naw. Since moving back “home”, I have felt increasingly cut off, isolated, ostracized, and SILENT, nay, SILENCED by everyone around me. Here at “home” I am not free to be myself, I have to hide who I am because who I am is DIFFERENT. You see I have always been different, I just left and went someplace where my difference was closer to the norm for 15 years. I am not gay or black or punk or anything interesting–I am a plain, 42-year old, married, college-educated white woman with one child. On paper, you can’t get much more boring than that.

Why am I having so much trouble adjusting to the Land of my Birth? Well you see, I’m not a red-blooded racist, I’m a pro-choice feminist, I have been married to the same man for 15+ years, I’m not religious, and I identify as a moderate Democrat. By upstate New York standards, that’s a pretty typical description; it’s when you add ‘and currently living in South Louisiana’ that it gets…interesting.

“And now the state line felt like the Berlin Wall”

Yes I’m quoting lines from “Crooked Teeth” by Death Cab for Cutie for dramatic effect. I hadn’t listened to this particular song in oh, maybe 10 years, and the line inspired me to restart this blog tonight. I’m not punk but I am into indie rock. Maybe I should have mentioned. Moving on.

Why am I silenced? When you find yourself living among people you spent most of your adult life defining yourself against, when you find yourself surrounded by self-righteous and hypocritical religiosity at every turn, when you find yourself surrounded by secret racism in your family and community, and you realize that southern charm is a simple cover for assholery, and you meet almost no one who self-identifies as a free-thinker, or is even capable of having a connected thought of their own much less participating in a reasoned argument, somewhere along the way you just stop talking and engaging and yes it’s like I’m in hiding now.

My husband and I find the situation we’re in strangely bonding. We feel like we are a secret society of two, forced into hiding because if They find us, They will make our lives a living hell. Because in Trump’s America, reasonable people who want to live and let live are anathema, we are an Enemy of the People down here. And I prize nothing more than peace in my life. It’s definitely an ‘us against them’ vibe. I had tons of friends in New York; here I’ve managed to make maybe two friends I see eye to eye with on things and trust generally. It’s not as easy to assume affinity with people here, because they can be perfectly lovely and then suddenly say some racist bullshit and I’m like NOOOOOO it’s over.

“You can’t find nothing at all if there was nothing there all along”

Why did you move back? you’re surely wondering. Didn’t you realize what South Louisiana was and how different it was going to be from Upstate NY? The answer is, yes and no. I left my hometown of Baton Rouge when I was 14 and ended up finishing high school in New Orleans and went on to college there as well. So I finished out my ‘time’ in Louisiana in New Orleans, a very metropolitan city, especially as compared to where I live now (Baton Rouge). I did visit home when I lived away, and I somehow got hoodwinked by nostalgia for family interactions I was missing out on (extreme #familyfomo). Kids would grow up in a blink to me; a baby cousin would suddenly be in elementary school over the course of 5 or 6 well-spaced visits. Then when I had a child of my own, the longing to move home grew stronger: I wanted her to know of my people. I was growing disenchanted with my then-career of 12 years in NY, and then there was a job offer here and BOOM–we moved back.

The biggest joke of all? The family togetherness I moved back for doesn’t exist, at least not the way that I thought it did. Time and circumstance has created a distance between my mom and her brother and his family that I never thought possible. I moved back and discovered that the family togetherness I was missing all those years was gone, just like that. Maybe it did exist, maybe it didn’t; but even if it did, it’s unattainable to me now.

But you have your mother right? Oh, bless your heart, kind reader, that will have to wait for a future post. If you stick around.