Late afternoon and the rain is bucketing down, cold winter rains that smack down into red clay.
The housemate is having tea next door with the neighbours and I have finished my writing and editing for the day. I’m sitting thinking about something that has been on my mind all week.
I know three women in recovery, some sober for years, some for months, whose adult daughters no longer speak with them, who have cut off all communication with their mothers. This estrangement causes the mothers unbearable grief, anguish, yearning. Unfinished business.
Their daughters move to other cities, other countries, and the mothers do not know how to reach them. They hear their daughters are pregnant, but they will never see their grandchildren. One of them goes downtown to shop for bedlinen and she sees her daughter, older and with ash-blonde hair, walking down the street towards her. The daughter looks up and sees her white-faced trembling mother — she glances away, crosses the street and coolly walks on. The distraught mother remembers the small baby daughter clinging to her skirt, smiling at her, blowing kisses. Who is this stranger who will not give her mother another chance, will not call home?
I was a daughter like that. I left home to go to university and did not answer my mother’s letters, did not speak to her on the phone if I could avoid it, went for years without telling her where I was living or what I was doing. She did not try to stay in touch with me and I knew that was because she was drinking. The drinking made her indifferent to my absence. She was ashamed of her drinking and did not dare invite closeness. Her own mother had been a harsh and cold woman who did not care as much for her daughters as her sons.
From early childhood I felt unloved by her and my mother’s presence was erratic in my life. She came and went. She did not protect me from my father’s predatory violence, had no way to protect herself. She was a volatile, chaotic alcoholic and would insist she loved me, would scream in the same breath that she hated me, would tell me about her own sufferings and humiliations at the hands of men, while I sat solemnly beside her and cringed within, a six-year -old exposed to confessions and indiscretions that felt like another physical intrusion, ants crawling on my skin. She could not help herself: drunk or sober, she blurted out her discomfort, her rage, her disappointment and terror. I learned to go away when she was speaking, to go into a frozen and unfeeling place where I could not be hurt or manipulated, terrorized by her.
That horror of my mother’s presence would persist into adulthood. The smell of gin on her breath in the mid-afternoon, the spots of liquor staining her blouse,that flushed face and unfocused gaze, the radio turned up too loud, her weepiness and the surreptitious noise of her glass being topped up in the pantry, the face-powdering and extra smear of lipstick, stink of perfume, the incoherent maudlin stories that would give way to rages and threats. And I would sit there, unmoving while inwardly I would go away to the frozen north, the vast icy wasteland where there were no people, no human messiness. I abandoned my mother years before I left home.
My friend Damian said to me when I was 25, as we sat eating pasta together in a dingy but lively trattoria:
‘You’re there in front of me, but it is as if you have left the room.’
I did not know what to say. I was my mother’s daughter, I had no other way to be in the world.
Then too, I was the adult to her childishness for so long, the nurse for her invalidism. I could not save her from herself, no matter how I mothered her. And so I chose to save my own life and went away. She never forgave that betrayal, complained bitterly to my sisters, called only at the end to tell me how badly she wanted to die. And then I could not reach her, my pleas and tearfulness could not touch that destructive madness.
And afterwards, the daughter of a suicide, she haunted me, my own life taking on the same distorted shape, my alcoholism so similar to hers. It was a narrative like a closed corridor without windows, no beginning and no ending, the same dead-end space, the same pacing and despair in a cul-de-sac.
My heart aches for her now. I often wish we could have met somewhere on neutral ground. So that she might have known, for once and for all, that it was all forgiven, all forgotten, that despite everything the love would continue.
Would she have heard me? And what might she have said? I shall never know and that silence will persist. The compassion and tenderness I feel now for her and cannot show her. And that she never found for herself in that brokenness.
Wow. I am sending you major good energy; you seem to have achieved a peace with this, and yet, it still sounds so hard.
Hard yes, but not impossible to achieve peace — if only it could have been sooner.
Thank you for your honesty with this post. My mother and I have been estranged for 35 years.
I was her sounding post her secrets were left with me. They were adult problems left on a ten year olds mind. My mother never drank but she is a raging ACA.
When I left home at eighteen for the university I never heard much from her again. She ended up divorcing my father and marrying one of her lovers who turned out to also be an alcoholic.
Our lack of relationship is a great sadness. I try my best to create a bud but there is much work to be done for the flowering to happen for me.
She talks often of birds so maybe there needs to be more conversations around these winged creatures.
So hard Dee — and unless a mother had sobers up or gets therapy, I don’t know if any conversation is possible. I hear in your lovely words — the budding, the winged birds — a longing for reconciliation and hope your mother might come to a place where she is able to listen.
My relationship with my perfectionist daughter, the PhD, is so much more complicated than the one with addict son. We dance in circles around each other. Sometimes I see the worst of myself in her, and it saddens me that is what she absorbed. Other days, I see the best of the universe in her. I long for a easy warmth, a sharing, but we are not there. Maybe some day…
I cannot imagine withholding grandchildren. The ultimate weapon…a truly fierce need to hurt if that card is played.
This is one of your most beautiful posts.
Lou, I hear you, that complexity of what goes on between mothers and adult daughters. Again I do want to say that the situation I describe was desperate and chaotic and is primarily about unchecked alcoholism, not just a difficult mother. If my mother had been sober, we might have fought or distanced from one another but the alcoholism was catastrophic for our relationship.
Amazing post — I’m in awe. I believe most of us do the best we can with ourselves and our children (and our parents) and oh there’s so much more room for improvement.
Allyson, I wanted to avoid blaming mothers — but I’m only talking about alcoholism, not a difficult or struggling mother doing her best. My mother could not do her best, could not mother at all because alcoholism swept the ground from under her feet.
I read your whole post and didnt realize until the end that I wasn’t breathing. You described my childhood with my alcoholic mother so vividly. I see her frequently but still go to my own frozen place when I’m with her. Some habits are almost impossible to break. I’m sorry that you could not make peace with your mother before she died. I can see (when looking at other people) how getting to a place of forgiveness and peace would be beneficial but when it comes to my own mother-I cannot get there. I’m not sure I ever will. Thank you for this powerful and moving post.
Ann, I understand so well what you are saying and I know there are many of us who live with such traumatic and terrifying memories. I don’t know that resolution is fully possible. I was afraid of my mother until the day she died and only then could I begin to let her into my heart, once she could no longer hurt or scare me. Time, that is the greatest help in this kind of situation. Thanks so much for commenting.
I have a friend who gave up drinking several years ago. I’ve only recently resumed contact. She wrote to me and my husband in the hope that we might act as conduits between her and her estranged children. She lives outside of the city now in a large country town. She does not know where her children are. I managed to track two of them – the daughters – down, and through one of them have arranged to pass on correspondence from the mother, my friend without disclosing the children whereabouts.
her son, an alcoholic lives over seas and has nothing to do with any of his family. They do not want to see her. My heart breaks for this mother, now sober, whose children want nothing from her given her behaviour when they were little. It’s similar to the sad story you tell here. And maybe only after she’s dead and it’s too late will these children relent.
As I once said to Syd I found it very hard with an alcoholic father but when I was young and went off to Al-a-teen where I met other kids whose mothers were alcoholics, i thought myself fortunate in that it was my father and not my mother who drank. To me an alcoholic mother seemed a worse nightmare than the nightmare of an alcoholic father, but it’s all relative I suppose.
Thanks again for your beautiful writing,. it transforms the painful aspects of your experience into poetry and makes it more bearable.
That Alateen experience sounds so helpful, I loved hearing that.
Elisabeth, I can recall my hard-heartedness in my 30s — once when I was out in the city, I saw an older women, drunk, come out of a bottle store and stumble, fall on the pavement. She was too drunk to get up and she reminded me — her unkempt hair and swollen face — of my mother, so I walked right past her with my face averted, feeling such hated and contempt I could not believe it. I had no understanding of alcoholism at all, no idea that my mother or this woman might be unable to help themselves. that I was going along the same road.
And women are so pathologised and criticised as not-good-enough mothers, no matter what they do. That is the other aspect of such a narrative.
Thank you for sharing these painful and poignant memories. My heart is wrenched for anyone with such palpable pain in relationship to their Mother. I, too, had a strained relationship with my Mother, though she was not alcoholic. I know what you describe – that going away while still present. The Buddha would say, “Just let it be what it is (or was). Just let it pass on through.” But that’s easier said than done when it’s as important as our relationship with the most important person ever in our lives. Thanks for sharing so much that is personal to you. It does help to know that others have had strained relationships with their Mothers. Your writing amazes me. K.
Thanks for this Kathleen — I do think that daughters often face challenges with their mothers quite different to any other relationship and as women we resist identifying with our mothers, battle to get past our upbringings and the mistakes they made, mistakes i think may be repeated from generation to generation. There are such high expectations of mothering and for women who are alcoholic or mentally ill or were not mothered themselves, the pressure is huge.
Beautiful and poignant. I’ve lived in that frozen north you reference, and I lost my mom last year. This one really resonated with me, thank you.
I’m sorry to hear about your loss Runningonsober and grateful you posted. It takes a long time to unravel the different memories and associations and work through them. That frozen wasteland may always be a part of us. Thanks so much for commenting.
Mothers and daughters, such very, very difficult territory, I think, even without the alcoholism/depression/incipient madness thrown in. Sisters have much the same flavour for me, something rather unpredictable and dangerous.
I don’t know if it is possible to change the dynamic of a relationship before its time, before the necessary healing takes place. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
It is only urgent necessity and seeing her vulnerability that slakes my anger and renders me sufficiently compassionate and kinder than I am.
Of course when I squint I can almost discern myself in her, which is probably part of the problem.
Be well, dear heart.
Invisigal, the identifying with a an ill mother may be unbearable for us when young and we don’t want to become our mothers. You’re right too about the complexities and tensions of sibling relationships, the stuckness with my sisters is an ongoing source of grief to me. But as adult women, they make their choice and I make mine, I cannot force them to come together or acknowledge our shared past — it may change in the future but the discord goes deep, back into that unmothered childhood.
So much here -in your post and in the comments, too.
As you know, my son was taken from me 13 years ag o. We found each other again -on different continents, but the story has a better ending, so far, than I ever thought I deserved.
It’s almost Samhain.
Just (as Hecate says) sayin’.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Terri, I have followed your story through the years and rejoice to know what has become possible. Your early posts were so heart-wrenching, the severing of that mother/son bond, part of the dismemberment you endured.
And yes, Samhain, the wheel turning!
Thank you for writing about your mother this way. I hear the pain, but not judgment of either of you.
No judgment, Mary Christine — alcoholism blasts through our lives like a hurricane and should never be minimised, but if she had not been trapped in addiction, my mother would have done her best and it might have been different.
In the late 1960s, she tried to join AA in then-Rhodesia , in Salisbury, and was informed in a letter that AA was no place for respectable women. It had a membership almost entirely of white men, except for ‘reformed prostitutes’. I often think about that rejection She kept the letter in her writing desk for years.
This is what I know my friend. When my oldest daughter left home at 14 to live with my Mother, I felt such awe and pride that she seemed to know instinctively how to take care of herself. I could not figure out self care to save my life. In reading your post this morning, I could not help but think that perhaps your Mother had that sense of “thank God” about you too…..that you had the instinct to escape and keep your own sanity while she watched hers slip away. In the end it’s just plain old simple madness.
Your Mother did produce a survivor even if she wasn’t and I’ll bet she was able to take some pride and comfort in that.
I wish you comfort today.
You are an awesome woman.
Pam, I do think my mother was relieved when her children got away from home and I think she felt we got away unscathed.
She could not figure out self-care to save her life and I was the same. Alcoholism just blasted us to pieces.
You understand so much and I love you for that.
I feel so for you and others who are estranged from parents because I believe that we want them to love us and that we love them. It is because we are of the same blood, carry the genetic material, and it seems that blood is deeper and more binding than anything else. When people tell me that they have not made amends with their parents or siblings, I hope that they will and ask them to consider that each of us has faults with most of us not knowing how to have a relationship with others. Is it not possible to forgive the sick and the diseased? One may never condone the hurtful actions of others, but reaching out in forgiveness is a powerful thing. Thanks for such a touching post.