A safe place for people with crap mothers, in the run up to mothers day

[pocketsaviour]

Last year I remember feeling very conflicted on mumsnet around the whole mothers day deal.

Lots of threads inviting "Share the best lesson your mum has taught you!" and when I replied "how to take a punch from your dad" it was a bit of a mood killer :(

So this is a safe place for all of us with damaging mothers to freak the fuck out make plans for M-Day which will keep ourselves sane and healthy.

pocket , thank you. And thank you everyone who has been a support to me over the years, since 2007. You have given me the honesty and support/nurturing and understanding that I did not get from my mum.
for everyone at MN headquarters, too, thanks for keeping MN going.

My mum died when I was 18, back in 1980. I cried for 15 min. because my dad was sitting there crying so I thought I should too. There was no bond there. The emotional numbness from being treated as the invisible one was pretty well complete by that point.

I didn't really grieve her until I had my second child, a dd, 14 years later. I missed having help (and mil was 500 miles away-which turned out to be a blessing too) and I missed : well, sometimes you are not sure what you should be missing but there was a void there. Then it suddenly dawned on me that if she were around, she would make my life a pure misery. That was when I admitted to myself that I was glad she was gone.

She would purposely not tell me how to do things, then sit back and laugh as I struggled to figure it out. If humiliation were deadly, I have died a thousand deaths. You can only be stabbed in the heart so many times...

With young kids, my dh would make MD a day off for me. But now that I'm older, I like having my dc around me (24, 22 ,9) and we all get along really well, if I say so myself; we are on the same team.

For folks struggling with guilt: just don't. Guilt is tricky, but at the end of the day, we choose how we feel about something. It is a choice. Automatically feeling guilty suggests brainwashing (whether by society, clueless bystanders, or from mum/family dynamics). Break through that. Process, think for yourself, and decide if this really is your doing-we know it was not your doing. Just say no to guilt. And don't feel guilty for not feeling guilty!

Lovely post, AndTheBandPlayedOn

I wish I had a relationship with my mum but she doesn't want to know me or my son or the baby girl I am pregnant with, she is full contact with my sister and her daughter but doesn't want to know us, she even told me one Christmas that she wouldn't see us because Christmas is a family time...i don't understand it because my son is my absolute world as is the little wriggler growing inside of me.

She wasn't always this rubbish but she met a new man and I refuse to blame him 100% (even though hes a control freak) because nobody would stop me from having a relationship with my children

& for all

Joining but mostly to lurk I'm afraid. My mum is a total bitch but I'm not NC because she's a manipulative witch and I fear losing other family over it

Sent her some flowers. Boak. Will be spending MD with my kids and showing them real love

I'm still in contact with mine as we are the only two left in the family (actually not quite true, her sister, nephew and niece, but they have barely spoken really in my lifetime) but I do fantasise about going NC more or less daily.

I just buy a plain art gallery type card every year, no mother's day schmaltz. I struggle with what to write in it though.

I have not ever bothered with a Mother's day card for my mother and sure as hell am not going to start now. A woman who has continuously favoured my brother throughout life deserves no less. Relations, already not great, further declined last summer when she let me down yet again at short notice after agreeing to help and then to not acknowledge my birthday in any way. Fortunately for me she does not like mother's day anyway so this makes it somewhat easier. She has taught me valuable lessons in how not to behave.

I think many of you here are struggling with your own guilt through societal and family pressures and I would look at and or post on the Stately Homes thread. I would certainly concur with the last paragraph that AndTheBandPlayedOn wrote re guilt; it can be all encompassing and keeps people dependent. Break free from the guilt; you would not tolerate this from a friend let alone your own mother or father.

What a role of honour!
I'm going to add my name.
Not because I'll be thinking of my mother (if I can help it) she no longer deserves my headspace or my time. So I'm not even going to list why I qualify.

But because of all the people on here who have survived, thrived, and also those who tried really hard to do it better if they got to be a mother.
It's a 'club' no- one wants to be a member of, it totally sucks in fact. But I guess it's important to know it's just a different type of normal and that there are so many of us.

Thanks for running the thread Pocket really thoughtful.

Nice post 665
I am surprised there are so many people posting in this thread.
IRL, it feels lonely. But there are many of us...

Thanks for the thread.
Mine is a relapsed alcoholic and is another who treats me and my siblings oddly differently depending on which way the weather blows. I meet her now and then for coffee but my mental health cant take any more than that.
The hole in her parenting seems to get ever wider and more painful the older my dd gets. I wonder if she has ever looked at me the way I look at dd, or enjoyed me the way I enjoy dd company.
All I can do is try to be the mother my dd deserves.
to you all

As a double blow, since having a child of my own I've found out the person who brought me up is also not being terribly great. I keep getting introduced as 'glue, who we brought up from a baby due to difficult circumstances' and never their daughter. I hadn't realised how much that hurt.

Since realising this it makes me wonder should I write to 'mum' on the card? If they don't call me their daughter to others, should I call her mum? No doubt they love me in their own way, but cannot see how much they hurt me.

Deep down all I want is someone to really be my mother. (Is it wrong to be a tiny bit jealous of a baby who has a mother and every inch of her is loved?)

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if my parents had separated when I was small as my mother had a long standing affair which my father chose to put up with rather than leave her !! I think she then thought she could do what she liked and she has gone on to completely tear our family apart. How a mother can treat her children the way she did is beyond my comprehension and as a result we are all NC with her and each other and she still thinks she has done nothing wrong. She has thrown away all our photos ,birth certificates etc and tells everyone she has no family !! It's her loss she is missing out on my beautiful grandchildren but at least she won't be won't be near them with her poisonous attitude which is a blessing .

I was always seeking her approval, one Mother's Day my sis and I decided we would make a special Mother's Day lunch rather than just bringing her out. In our naïveté we thought this would be more special. I still lived at home at the time so we did it in my sister's house. Made all her favourite foods, decorated the table with her favourite flowers. She was okay on the day, not exactly thrilled but then it was always hard to tell. Afterwards we were treated to a couple of weeks of the silent treatment - eventually we learned (through my dad) how much we had upset her by not bringing her to a restaurant - she was embarrassed to tell people we had made lunch for her rather than paying for it.

TheChampagne its odd isn't it? I've never met anyone in my situation irl. I can't share with anyone but DH.

What a relief this thread is! I struggle every year to find a bog standard MD card that doesn't say how amazing my mum is. She's alcohol dependent, which made for an embarrassing teenage era. She is beyond words every evening, so I try to phone in the day. She thinks she is the world's greatest mum, I can't believe how deluded she is. I can't blame only her, my df has enabled her for decades for an easy life. He's an idiot, he's leading the most boring, shit life staring at her food smeared, drunken face night after night, listening to her barely able to speak. Horrible.

NC with my mother for quite a number of years, now she just seems like someone I used to know. I don't feel bitterness towards her, I don't agree with how she chooses to live her life or the way she tries to control people. I tried for years to be the peacekeeper, eventually, when I became a mother myself, I realised that I wasn't the problem, she was. She has not been there in times of crisis or need. I don't feel sadness, I don't miss her, I don't wish her harm, just relieved that she is now longer in my life or my children's, her choice btw. Just because someone is your biological mother doesn't give them the right to treat you badly or undermine your confidence, it took me too many years to realise you can't make your mother love you.

glue That is a truly horrible and dismissive way to talk about you, I'm so sorry.

My DS is not my biological son, he is my late H's son with his previous partner. She walked out when he was three. I came along when he was five. I have raised him as my own since that time, even through my separation from his dad and then his dad's death. He calls me mum, I am his mum, the fact we aren't blood relations doesn't ever come into things.

Except my mum... who stated at one point how disappointed she was that she would never be a grandparent. Ignoring my feelings around my own infertility, I said, "You have a grandson. DS." She wrinkled her nose and said "Yes but he's not really my grandson, is he?"

I've been talking to my sister tonight, who is also NC with our mother. It's really good just to connect to someone who knows how damaging it is to have contact with these people and who doesn't trot out the whole "But it's faaaaamly! You only get one mum!" cliche.

Evening all

Another NC here! 13 years. She has now moved and not told anybody where she has gone to. Which is just typical of her bullshit.

I will not allow her to hijack Mother's Day, like she did with mine and my db significant birthdays e.g. 'Attempted' hangings, getting committed etc..so MD is about how much me and my kids love/ mean to each other.

It took me a long time to get to this point, a lot of self discovery and self love.

It's strange as I know two ladies who I met in my late twenties with bad relationships with their mothers and they have lived similar lives as me.

Maybe Sigmond Freud was right!

user are you my Mil?

I think I should go NC with my mom as well. For some reason I always let her back in and I have had enough. Every MD, I get so depressed when trying to dig through the cards, searching for just one that doesn't say too much or go on about how "amazing" the mother is. In the process of searching for that one card among the dozens that say lovey dovey things about how great the other mums are, I am reminded of how mean and cruel she has been through the years. Hugs to all of you. It feels good to know I'm not alone, but I'm sad you have to go through this hell too. It can feel so isolating having a mother who hurts you when everyone around you seems to have a mother who treats them well.

I've been NC with my mother for about 18 months and it's been great. After years and years of pandering to her bullshit, I called time when she started trying to cause drama in my house, you know the way they cause a situation and then act all "oh poor me I was only trying to help" when they want the chance to fight with you? That, and then also saying that DD1 was her favourite because DD2 is dark like me, and she's "already had a dark one" (i.e. me). I just remember all of a sudden being completely - I hope you guys know this word - scunnered with the whole lot of it. Like, disgusted, and tired. Very tired. It was only as I made the decision to go NC that I realised it was actually really easy - the decision to stay in contact had been the one that had been taking all the effort. Just... never phoning her again. Never seeing her. Never having that guilty dread in your stomach as you realise it's been 6 months since she visited, you "ought" to invite her again. That job is over for me.
My mother I suspect has NPD and/or paranoid personality disorder and, you all know the drill. It's funny, because I knew quite early on in my life that it was a bullshit way to live - the control, the unpredictable rages, the double binds, the destruction of any friendships - but I believed that that was what a mother was and a mother should be. I just thought fuck this, I'm going to get a job as a scientist and buy a flat and play computer games and read science fiction. (I did do all those things!) It took me years to realise that motherhood (the word still makes me shudder) meant being nice to your kids and having a laugh with them, helping them learn stuff, giving them a place of safety. And looking back on it now I realise that there were women in my life who did that - I should have sent MD cards to my auntie and our upstairs neighbour and maybe a couple of my primary school teachers because those women were the nearest I ever got to knowing what a mother could be (and I draw on their examples every day in trying to look after my own kids).

User 1487

I could have written the exact same list

goodway I was just reading through the thread and this jumped out at me:
She spent my wedding day crying at my sister in her bridesmaid dress

Presumably because your sister, as the favourite, "should" have been married first. Imagine the rock-bottom self esteem behind that idea - marriage as a popularity contest, like you both would have been racing to find anyone to marry you, and you won. Her daughters' worth is so little that she thinks they can be grateful for any man basically - you know and as the scapegoats we're used to that, but she also thinks it about your golden child sister. They're all motivated by this - they have zero internal self esteem, they think they're worthless, their kids, their husband, anything about them - is worthless, unless someone outside has approved of it. It must be a terrible way to live.

I'm really struggling this morning !!
Bloody phone full of emails advertising mothers day !! I am trying so hard to block it all out but keep getting reminded every time I open phone .
I think it's a guilt thing because I'm a nice person and feel I should be doing the right thing by her !!
Then I remind myself she's never done the right thing by me once in her miserable life !
I know hate is a strong word but right at this moment I hate her and I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm the better person !!
At least reading all your posts let's me see I'm not the only one suffering just now !!
Three more days and it will all be over !!! Can't bloody wait !!

Jazz I wish mine would move and leave no forwarding address !!!
Unfortunately she lives directly across road from my son so I see her peering from behind curtains when I visit him so I limit my visits to when I'm feeling stronger !!
Maybe my son has got the best idea though he planted a tree in his front garden so when it comes into leaf she can't see into his house lol !

Wry smile that I am not alone searching for the M day card that isn't full of fawning mush. Has to be Mothering Sunday too, not Mother's Day.

Ended up doing a Moonpig one. Nice picture with no text on the front. On the inside printed a simple Happy Mothers Day from Huldra.