It Took Me Years To Quiet the Echo of My Mother’s Sneering Voice

Her cruel words kept me small and silent far too long

Image created by author in openart.ai

I was in my 30s before I had any inkling that I wasn’t worthless. That I might have some value. The concept had never crossed my mind. Not until I was in the office of a psychologist who was helping me unravel the incredible mess I’d made of my life. And why.

As he probed gently for information about my background, the memories began to surface. Softly at first, a whisper, a hint, a snippet that I could face. He must have guessed the moment at which I was could handle his quiet question. “You know you’ve been abused your whole life, don’t you?”

I’ve been — what? No. I didn’t know that at all. I thought all families were like that. With one word, everything I’d known was blown to smithereens.

I was more than a little fragile. And completely unprepared for the onslaught of acid memories that would erupt without warning.

***

Intending to keep me, my 15-year-old birth mother looked after me for a while before I was taken from her and put into foster care. I would have bonded with at least one foster mother before being adopted months later. Already having had “mother bonds” broken twice (or more), I imagine that I felt unloved and unwanted. I would receive a further blow of rejection when I was adopted by a woman who didn’t like me from the start.

“She’s so fat and ugly!” she whined at my father, who disagreed with her. “Look at that rash on her cheeks! Why couldn’t they have given us a pretty baby? I don’t want to tell anyone about her until she looks better!”

Throughout my life, she delighted in telling me this story, laughing every time.

I was an embarrassment. I didn’t deserve to be her child.

I didn’t deserve to be loved.

***

I am little. My mother squeezes my upper arm till it stings. She reaches up under my dress with her other hand and roughly yanks off my panties. I am crying. I know what happens next.

“Please, Mummy! Don’t!” I plead with her as she lifts me and slams me down on my back across her lap.

“Get those legs up!” she demands.

“No! No!” I try to fight. She grabs my ankles in one hand and raises my feet till they are almost over my head. I do my best to push her hands away but she pulls my legs apart.

Smack! The slap stings my bare bottom.

“Stop fighting! Spread your legs!”

“No, Mummy! Please!” I am sobbing.

She pulls my legs as wide apart as they’ll go. My bottom is facing the open door. Oh, no! My dad or my brother might walk by and see!

“You’re hurting me!” I am helpless. There is no point in fighting. It’s like every other time, and it will be this way for several more years. She will not stop until she is good and ready.

I feel like I’m going to throw up.

I deserve to be violated.

***

There would be others who violated me, others who physically assaulted me. My pleas for protection fell on deaf ears. I learned early on that my body had no value. What I needed and how I felt had no value. Although I had no words for it, I believed in the deepest parts of my soul that I was not worth protecting. I was not worth respecting. I was not worth anything.

As I grew, so did my mother’s unkind opinions about me. “Why can’t you be like the Vickers girls?” (Or any of her other friends’ daughters) Or “Shame on you!” Or “You don’t deserve (fill in the blank with anything good)!”

The first real lesson I had about my value as it related to money was when I was 13. One day after school, I babysat for a lady down the alley. She gave me 50¢ an hour, the going rate at that time. My mother was livid.

“You don’t deserve that! You shouldn’t get more than 35¢! You march right back there and give her the extra!”

She was scary when she was angry. Which was most of the time.

The lady wouldn’t take it back. I was terrified. My mother was going to rip my head off. I had no choice but to go home and face the music. I felt horribly guilty about having that money. It added yet another layer to the shame I already felt by virtue of the fact that I was breathing.

I deserved less than other people.

***

Once I began having relationships, this deep-seated lack of value or self-worth would have an adverse impact on every one of them. Desperate for any crumbs of attention I could get, ultimately I would settle for situations that were far from healthy. How could I do anything else, given the foundation upon which they were built?

I left home and quit school at 16, married at 17, had a baby at 18, and was a divorced single parent at 19, living in my parents’ basement while I tried to sort myself out. There were a few occasions on which I met a “nice guy” and would invite him over. My parents would meet each one and after they left, my mother would invariably say, “You don’t deserve him! What would a nice guy like that see in someone like you?”

I always wondered that, too.

***

While I was growing up, my mother made it clear that I was responsible for the happiness of others. Or their unhappiness. Their bad days. For example, if I happened to be talking to her while she was baking and she accidentally measured something incorrectly, she would erupt. “Damn it all! Now look what you made me do! It’s ruined and it’s all your fault!”

And heaven forbid I should disappoint anyone. What I wanted or needed or felt was of no consequence. I’d just bloody well keep everyone happy.

***

It was the night before one of my (ultimately six) weddings. My “intended” and I been fighting for some time. I’d left our home 2 weeks earlier and had gone to stay with my parents. He and I had barely spoken since. I didn’t even know if he still wanted to get married. Tearfully, I told my mother I couldn’t go through with the wedding the following day.

She ripped my head off. “I’ve got food in the fridge for 25 guests! Two people have paid for flights to be here! Everyone has gone to the trouble of buying gifts! They’re all expecting a wedding tomorrow and you’re damned well going to get married.”

I didn’t dare defy her. Besides, I didn’t deserve to be happy. I had no right to disappoint all those people. I was responsible for keeping everyone happy.

There would be other weddings that felt wrong as they drew nearer. I wanted to back out. But on those occasions, my mother’s opinions would make me go through with it. Even though it felt wrong, wrong, wrong. Even after she was dead. Her words echoed deep within my soul.

I was in the midst of a divorce. My mother was raving about how wonderful my soon-to-be-ex-husband was. She said how lucky I had been that he’d married me and I had no right to leave him. I reminded her that I was leaving because of his abuse.

“Don’t you think you deserve all that abuse?” she snapped. “You and your kids are pretty hard to take!” She wasn’t much of a fan of children.

I remember thinking my children most certainly did not deserve to be abused. But it never occurred to me that I didn’t.

Over the years, I walked away from all my marriages, taking only child support where children were involved, but never any marital assets or spousal support. “You’d better not!” my mother would say. “You just stayed home all day with the kids. He had to work! It’s his money and you don’t deserve one penny of it!”

I know. I know. I don’t deserve to breathe.

***

Each time I got divorced, I crossed my fingers and trusted that somehow I’d figure out the money. Not easy as a high school dropout. But I got by.

And each time I got divorced, I became less employable and had less financial security than I’d had prior to those marriages. Tough luck. You don’t deserve stability.

After all, there was no value in my contributions to raising our children. I had no value as a wife. No value as a mother. No value for having made a warm and inviting home for “Daddy” to enjoy at the end of a hard day.

Nothing you did during all those years was worth anything. You are not worth anything.

I’d always been a dismal disappointment and a huge embarrassment to my mother in so many ways — high school dropout, unwed pregnancy, divorces. And during my single parenting struggles, she took every opportunity to rub my nose in my lack of education. So when I was 30 and needing to support myself and my children, I thought she’d be thrilled when I decided to go to college. Finally, I would make her proud.

Instead, I got, “You can’t do that!”

My heart fell into my shoes. “Why not?”

“How will you support yourself? And who’s going to look after your kids?”

“I can get student loans, and there’s school and day care.”

“Oh, so you think you should get to quit school and then live on government money when it suits you? You don’t deserve that!”

She was positively seething. I didn’t deserve a chance to do better.

***

I had no value as a daughter. But my extremely abusive older brother (also adopted) had plenty of value as a son. Ever the Golden Child, his experience in our family was as opposite mine as was possible.

I was 42 when my mother told me that she and my dad had redone their Wills. My brother would get the house and I would get all other assets. I was gobsmacked. I hadn’t expected anything at all. I’d only ever had glimpses at her possibly thinking of me as her daughter. This was the first time I’d ever actually felt it. That was far more important than the money.

As it turned out, my dad died first so everything went to her. And when she died — well, let’s just say that she had lied about that supposed Will. The lawyer said he had been acting for my parents for many years and there had never been any such Will as the one I described. My brother got everything.

My mother had reached out from beyond the grave and got in one final parting shot. You don’t deserve … A swift sucker punch where it would hurt the most. It wasn’t about the money; I had no value as a daughter.

Apparently, she lied in an effort to ensure I would continue helping her and my dad as they aged, as I’d been doing for some time. I’d have done it anyway. In spite of everything, I loved them.

***

The psychologist I’d seen in my 30s had set me down a path of healing that would take many years. At first, I had to understand — and absorb — the dynamics of the dysfunction and abuse that had permeated my childhood and laid the groundwork for every choice I would make and every relationship I would have into adulthood.

That was only the beginning. I would also have to figure out what to do about it.

I will never forget one of the most significant moments in that journey.

I was in my early 40s. I had recently begun painting. I didn’t trust the praise of family and friends. My daughter convinced me to join an art review website where I would get unbiased feedback from strangers. I was stunned by the 5-star reviews and glowing comments I received, but was even more shocked when just 6 weeks after joining, I was ranked as #1 in the traditional art category.

My first art exhibition, at the medieval Chichele College, England (author’s photo)

My mother was livid. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Oh, sure! You just pick up a brush and start painting,” she sneered. “You’ve never even taken a lesson! What about all those people who have studied for years and they never get anywhere? You don’t deserve all those accolades!”

Something clicked inside me. It was the first time I’d ever actually seen evidence to contradict her. I said, “Apparently, I do or this wouldn’t have happened.”

This only served to further infuriate her. And I didn’t care.

Finally, I understood. For decades, I had believed I was worthless. That I would “never amount to anything,” that I was “stupid,” that I “didn’t deserve anything good.” I had believed all the awful things she had said to me throughout my childhood and beyond.

I remembered that when I studied social work at college, my GPA was a perfect 4.0. And later, I aced a 4-year homeopathy practitioner’s program and got straight “A” grades there, as well. Clearly, I was not stupid. I was, in fact, quite smart. I deserved those grades.

Until that moment, I had always thought the terrible things she said about me were true. That they were facts. Suddenly, I realised that they were only her opinions. They were her beliefs. They had no basis in fact at all. And because she had been cramming them down my throat throughout my life, I believed them, too. I had accepted them as the truth.

In reality, they were only her truth, her beliefs. And they didn’t have to be mine any longer.

This was a powerful turning point. It would take time — and lots of it — but I would dismantle my entire belief system, heal the damage that she had caused, and eventually restructure the very foundation upon which I would build my future.

***

Years later, I sat at my altar one night. My thoughts drifted to my mother. She’d been dead a long time. Because of her cruel lie and the time it had taken to heal that last sting, I hadn’t missed her. Not until that night.

I thought of the hurtful things she’d said about many events in my life, like when she was so angry that I was going to college. Then I remembered her having told me years earlier that she’d desperately wanted to go to university, but growing up during the Depression and graduating in the middle of WW2, there had been no money for it.

It occurred to me that she said I didn’t deserve to go to college because she was jealous. I was a shameful high school dropout but I’d been given an opportunity she’d never had. She was choking on her own bitter thoughts of inadequacy and lack of self-worth that had been woven into the very fabric of her being after growing up in scarcity and fear.

She didn’t deserve to go to university.

I thought about her being jealous that I’d left unhappy marriages, as her marriage to my dad was certainly anything but good. He had his own troubles; he loved her to bits but he drank. And when he drank, he raged. She cried. She wouldn’t dare get a divorce. It just wasn’t done.

She didn’t deserve to be happy.

She was jealous that I got pregnant just for thinking about it. But she couldn’t have her own babies. A bitter pill she’d been forced to swallow.

She didn’t deserve to bear children.

I thought about her frequent jealous comments about friends with beautiful homes, pretty things, exciting trips to faraway places, friends who didn’t have to work because their husbands had good jobs. I thought of my father’s sporadic part-time work, her demanding job, the long hours. The financial burden she bore. The housework. The gardening. All of it.

She didn’t deserve a good life.

I remembered her telling me how much agony she endured every month, right from her first period. She recalled being a young girl, sobbing in excruciating pain while milking the cow before school in brutal -40°F prairie winters.

She didn’t deserve an easy life.

I contemplated how hard I’d worked to accept — to believe — that I deserved a good life and happiness. It had taken decades, and as I sat at my altar that night, I realised she’d never had that chance. She was from a different generation, one in which self-help was foreign. Ridiculous. Impossible.

I realised that every time she’d spat her venom at me, she had been speaking to herself, to her own perceived shortcomings and lack of value, to her insecurities and failings. To her belief that she didn’t deserve anything good. No one had ever told her otherwise. Because no one knew.

I wept for my mother then, for all she had endured, for all she had lost or never had, including unconditional love. I recognised that our journeys had been more similar than I’d ever realised. I wept in guilt, slammed with regret about the decades I ached for her to see me, to see my value and I didn’t notice that she couldn’t see her own.

I had to put it right, best I could.

It had taken years of healing to understand that I had value and deserved a good life. I deserved to be happy. I deserved to be loved.

And as I sat at my altar that night, tearfully gazing at the candle that I had lit for her, and seeing her for the first time, I whispered to my mother’s spirit, “And you deserved them, too.”

***

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