There's a picture of me sitting on my mother's lap when I'm about nine months old. I'm smiling. My mother is smiling. If you only saw this photo, you would imagine a typical childhood: normal ups and downs, normal lives, hard times perhaps, but a loving relationship nonetheless.
You need to imagine harder. Darker. Wider. Outside your own experience, if your experience was good.
This is the true story of my relationship with my mother: behind the photo is her mental illness. A mental illness in hiding. It's hidden in the gin she has when she gets home from work. It's hidden in the jobs she doesn't get, the friends she can't keep, the relatives she won't talk to. It's hidden in all the events that go on at home that we're not supposed to tell anyone about. But most of all, it is hidden from her. She can't see it in herself, and thinks it's everyone else.
I loved being around my mother in public. Out there, she was like the other mothers I saw. She said the right things. She smiled. She was kind. If it was a day when we were going to be out a lot, I would wake up relaxed, knowing that nothing scary would happen.
In private, though, the other mother came out. The one I was afraid of. While this mother could be relied on for basic sustenance, the other things crucial to raising children - unconditional love, appropriate responses, support - were largely absent. She had a line we could not cross - and if we did, we became her enemies rather than her children.
When I was 18 I started crossing the line, and our relationship did not recover. I naively brought up the past and questioned why things had happened as they did. She told me coldly that I was making everything up and was crazy, and I felt a trickle of terror wrinkle down my spine. I never brought it up again, but the past remains there between us.
Now I have enough distance to see her as a profoundly damaged person - like her parents. I am not the first daughter to go through this in my mother's line. I am the fourth. My great-grandmother hated my grandmother. My grandmother emigrated to New Zealand. My mother hated my grandmother. She cut her off completely, severing any ties she had to me, her granddaughter.
Now it's my turn, and I too have a daughter. Between us, we could be the fourth and fifth, and if my daughter has a daughter, the sixth, unless we are able to change the pattern. Currently my daughter is in contact with my parents, albeit at a distance because we live far away.
I know the pattern will repeat if I'm not careful. I sometimes don't know what appropriate boundaries are regarding what to tell my daughter and what to keep back, and this reminds me of my mother who made me her confidante at 11 years old. All I can do is try to do better.
Some believe that adult children who cut off, or are distant from, their parents are selfish, or ungrateful. I reject this. I don't think we owe our parents a relationship if they were cruel to us.
But at the same time, I wonder if I have to follow the pain of generations of estrangement. Is there such a thing as fate? Is fate genetics? Perhaps my mother shouldn't have had children. Perhaps the women in my family just aren't capable of being good mothers.
I look at the pattern and I know it's my choice. I feel as if I've been given a superhuman task but without any of the superpowers: it's incredibly hard not to repeat the actions of past generations and cut off my mother completely.
I have been left damaged by my childhood, with mild PTSD among other things. Being around my mother brings on panic attacks. My past experiences have led to my own issues with mental health, but unlike my mother I can acknowledge this and seek support. I live in a culture and time in which it is safe to do so.
I look at my daughter and I know the action I take is something that she will always remember.
And I don't know. I really don't know what to do.
Guest posts
Guest post: "It's hard not to cut my mother off completely"
MumsnetGuestPosts · 23/05/2016 12:45
So many sad stories, so much pain. 
I want to hug all your little inner children, to give you what you so badly missed out on.
Love and strength to you all.
I spent many years willing my mum to love me like it seemed other mums loved their children. I have gone through times of having no contact with her for many years. Usually because she disproves of something I've done - she intensely dispises my boyfriend despite never having met him in over 10 years, she blames him solely for the mental health difficulties I have (I have borderline personality disorder) failing to recognise maybe she has played a part in my difficulties (it's thought personality disorders develop due to experiences in childhood) and she cut off contact with me when I had my daughter six years ago. But still I almost craved her love and I guess approval. We got back in touch when I split from my boyfriend but she walked away again when I got back together with him. It has taken me many years of riding my mother's emotional roller coaster and enduring the effects of her temperamental contact to realise that it won't make me a 'bad' daughter to turn my back on her and say enough is enough. Just because we share genetics does not mean you can have such a negative impact on my life and get away with it. No more. I had to work through the end of my 'relationship' with her. It's not what society tells us we should do - cut off family members. But I wasn't the 'bad' party here. I echo the comments above - others do not understand fully that not every parent/child relationship is healthy and loving. If you are lucky enough to have a mum who is a best friend, that's great. But please don't judge the actions of those of us that have had to endure the turmoil of chaotic, cruel relationships with our parents. All Light In A Piece Of Dark I wholeheartedly support you in stopping the relationship with your mother, particularly to protect your daughter from enduring the experiences you have endured at the hands of your mother. Be strong and follow happiness 
Yes it is Pritti. Must be nice to have a name which sounds like pretty
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