The Story of My Mom
My mom has been unhappy all of my life. That isn’t hyperbole. It’s facts. I don’t remember her in many sustained, long periods of happiness. It was difficult and lonely growing up under her depression. Our relationship was strained for many years when I moved in with her after she had an ocular stroke.
This is how my mom looked most of my childhood.
A couple of months after my children and I took my mom to New York City for her 70th birthday, she called me one afternoon at work, saying she heard something pop in her head. My son and I rushed to her home and took her to the emergency room. It turned out that she had a small aneurysm at the base of her brain, and it caused a blockage that created the stroke.
She just got her haircut but didn’t think she looked pretty.
The stroke didn’t cause paralysis or other physical issues, but it did cause her the ability to see clearly. There’s a darkness over her eyesight. I liken it to wearing sunglasses at night in a dark room. She can see, but she has difficulty distinguishing certain objects.
After this episode, she spiraled into a deep depression again. When I was a preteen, she was distant or despondent, but we didn’t have the right language for it. She often stayed in bed, barely smiled, rarely attended my school functions, and limited her engagement in family activities.
After her stroke, she had nurses, aides, and occupational therapists coming to the house to give her care and tips on how to adjust to her new situation. One of the caregivers took advantage of her and stole clothing, medication, jewelry, and other items from her home. My mom chose not to report her, but she was extremely fearful. I ended a lease on a house that I was renting and moved in with her about six months after her stroke.
Difficult is not the right word to describe our living situation. It was my childhood all over again, except my mom would tell me she was “blind” and wanted to die. We fought, and early on, I said I was leaving. I felt heavy living with her. My sibling refused to assist in the care of our mother, and the pressure was all on me. My mom isolated herself from her friends and living relatives. She was pitiful and sad.
My mom photographed with Sydney Poitier in the 1970s.
I felt trapped.
I need therapy to help me find balance in my relationship with my mother. My best friend suggested a therapist she had used because the one I was seeing wasn’t the right fit for me. After several sessions, one day, Ms. Janice suggested I ask my mother when she was happy. She felt this could help me understand my mom more and get her to engage with me.
The story my mom told me was of regret and bitterness.
My dad wasn’t ready to be a husband, but his parents strongly encouraged him to marry my mother after conceiving his second child outside of marriage while he was in college. My half-sibling’s mom didn’t skip a beat or seem to be phased by his behavior like my mom was. My half-sibling’s mom returned to the university they all attended and graduated. My dad never graduated, and my mom finally did several years later when we lived in Cleveland, Ohio.
A rare moment of my mom smiling.
My mom married my dad, moved in with her parents, had my sibling, and my dad went “back to college” but only to pledge a fraternity. While he was away from their home, my mom was pregnant with me and heard rumors he was having affairs with other women.
She was hurt and wanted him to choose her and his new family over all the outside distractions. My mom loved my dad, but she tried to make him her husband by enforcing an ultimatum to get him to come back. This action backfired and broke my mom’s heart.
My dad was my grandparents’ only child, and my loving grandmother tried to get my mom to stay with them. She told my mom it would be okay and to be patient because they loved her like their own daughter. And my dad’s childless aunt and uncle, who lived the street over from them, loved my mom and sibling dearly. This new family insulated my mom and tried convincing her it would eventually work out.
That is when my mom told me she was happiest because my grandparents loved her unconditionally. Her mom, my maternal grandmother, lived through a traumatic and tragic ordeal that affected how she raised my mom and her two brothers. Their relationship was extremely arduous and fraught with hardships.
My mom lost hope and, with a broken heart, moved home to live with her mother. I was born there. She grieved the loss of her marriage, and by the time I was two, she was divorced and a single mother. Even though a few years later, she met and married my stepfather, their relationship didn’t become stable until I was in my teenage years. After his death, she told me how she regretted many things, including not having children with him.
She was young and beautiful but sad and unhappy.
My mom was sad most of her life, and for almost 20 years, I lived an unhappy life as well. My examples were from women who lived through abuse, poverty, and struggle. But the cycle had to be broken. My upcoming book will explain how I broke the cycle and created a framework for a happy, whole, and free life. I call it The Path to the Awakened Woman.
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