Mother’s day reopened the motherwound.

I hesitated to post this, because I think a lot of people would look at me and think “get over it already”. But I’m not over it, and the whole purpose of this blog was to be shamelessly me. So here it is…

Dear Dominique,

Six months ago I chose to end our relationship, because despite my placing a clear boundary several times, you cannot help yourself but cross it. You are incapable of having a conversation with me, let alone a conflict, without implying, insinuating or directly saying that I need to heal myself.

As I am not a person who can easily let things go, I have thought about you every day since that day. I hurt deeply that my own mother would rather attack me, belittle me and perceive me in a negative light instead of try to understand me, explore me with curiosity and try to work with me to meet me in the middle. I hurt even more when I read your blog proclaiming that it is my duty not to need validation, or as I interpret it, it is my duty not to be hurt by your attacks, and not your duty to stop attacking me.

Thorough my life, you’ve taught me to hate myself, to be ashamed of who I am, to feel like I deserve any pain I encounter because I’m not like you… I’m not clean, organized, eating well and budgeting. In reality, I am a classic ADHD case with CPTSD from a traumatic childhood. In other words, you’ve taught me to hate myself for having a neurodivergence I did not choose and childhood trauma I did not inflict on myself.

During these last 6 months of ending our relationship, I have been on a path opposite to what you’ve always taught me. I have been on a path of self acceptance. Instead of trying to change who I am, I learn who I am. Instead of perceiving my emotions as an illness to cure myself from, I listen to the message my feelings have for me, even when those feelings don’t make sense to anyone but me, even when my sadness could devour entire worlds, I don’t run away from it anymore, I listen, I let it flow through.

On this journey, for the very first time in my life, I am no longer merely surviving, but actually living. I meet people who immediately see me because I am finally ME, shamelessly, and it feels amazing. Things haven’t changed that much… only how I look at things. Sometimes, I still get so sad that I can’t move, but I don’t say I’m depressed anymore, because depression is an illness and I’m not ill, I’m just sad. And most importantly, when I’m sad, I don’t want to die anymore.

I have reflected deeply on all the times I have dreamed of ending my life. Within the peace I have acquired, something became clear. My entire life, I have tried to be the person you convinced me I should be. I would get in cycles of grinding and grinding and crashing and crashing. It’s always in those crashes that I wanted to cease to exist. See Dominique, when the person that brought you into this world tells you enough times that who you are is incorrect, that you must change, you must become the correct person… and you fail, you end up believing you’re a mistake. If the person that made me, says who I am is wrong then let me rectify my mistakes by disappearing.

This entire time… it was your attempts at healing me that were poisoning me.

How is it, Dominique, that in 41 years on this planet, I have never, EVER, witnessed any empathy from you? Not even once, not even as a child? That is not normal. This tells me that maybe, I am not the problem…

You have victimized yourself of my existence for as far as I can remember. Telling me to my face that you cried yourself to sleep, not knowing what to do with me. Did you ever … talk to me? Did you ever ask me a god damn question? Did you ever ask me WHY I’m sad? No, because you didn’t care about the why. The only thing that you saw was a daughter that didn’t fit in the daughter box you had planned for her, and that was a slight on YOU. You’ve never tried to help me out of empathy, you tried to “heal” me so I could become someone you can like.

You’ll never read this letter, because there is no point in sending it to you. Your eyes would glaze over the words, but the only message that would play on loop in your head is “She needs to heal herself”. Because as long as you believe that I can heal myself of wounds you’ll never take accountability for, while remaining poised as you reopen these wounds with each conversation, you can put all the blame on me. You can tell anyone who asks that you don’t talk to your daughter because she’s ill and refuses to heal herself. You can live in your delusion that you’ve done nothing wrong and only tried to help all this time.

In the last email you’ve sent me, you’ve told me that if I wanted a relationship with you, I needed to heal my wounds once and for all, but what you mean by that, is that I am not allowed to criticize you. What a joke. Imagine having an ego so massive, that you’ve caused considerable trauma to your child and you try to prevent them from holding you accountable by telling them that it’s their job to never bring it up and behave as though it never happened. When you say things like that, it truly makes me see how I’m not the one who has healing to do.

The truth Dominique, is you prefer not to have me in your life because nothing matters more to you than your perfectionism and when you look at me, what you see is a reflection of your greatest failure in this life; being a parent.