I am trying to get my head round why my Mum is the way she is and why my Dad has never stood up to her. This is likely to be long and weird.
When we were little both me and my brother had persistent ear infections and lots of antibiotics. Mum started looking beyond the doctor?s surgery for answers and came across homeopathy. We started seeing a homeopath and the results were mixed ? I didn?t really respond to it but my brother did and suddenly Mum started treating the homeopath as a god. Whatever he said was gospel truth ? it was quite embarrassing really ? she was like a schoolgirl with a crush on a teacher (he was much much older). From there she started getting into what she called ?healthy eating? ? she went with whatever her new crowd of friends said was the latest thing: potatoes, pears and onions were off the menu for a while as ?they give you cancer?. We were veggie, then vegan, then all herbs and spices were off as ?plain food is better for you?, then everything was raw. Cakes were off the menu then reappeared without sugar or eggs. If friends came to tea Mum would give a long spiel about how the food was organic and untainted. A lot of what she produced was inedible but God help you if you didn?t eat it and say it was lovely. My Dad had a secret supply of biscuits at work and so I learnt that ?bad? food had to be hidden and consumed in secret. Mum was always right, any disagreement resulted in so much shouting and unpleasantness that we didn?t dare say anything but in all this my Dad never said a word and just let her do it. She made me feel so guilty for wanting to eat normal food.
Mum also got into yoga. Not a bad thing at all but like the homeopathy and alternative health thing it got out of control and became an obsession. We ended up moving our wedding date as it clashed with a yoga weekend she was going on. She advocates various odd cleansing practices such as drinking saltwater in the morning and then throwing it up. Through this she got into naturopathy and has now completely rejected conventional medicine to the degree that she thinks there is a herbal cure for cancer and that if someone has appendicitis they should just put olive oil on their tummy and wrap themselves in clingfilm to sweat it out. I tend towards alternative therapies but I do see the doctor but Mum shouts about it if she finds out.
The homeopath eventually passed away and Mum then found an acupuncturist who is the new God. She has restricted her diet still further on his advice (he?s not a nutritionist), takes 16 or more supplements a day, will only drink hot water, has taken my Dad off wheat and dairy for no good reason and still he lets her do it. She sees the acupuncturist once a fortnight and has my Dad doing the same. He doesn?t want to but he doesn?t seem able to stand up to her. When he saw the doctor to get his prostate checked she gave him grief.
What I?m not getting across here is the sheer unpleasantness of it all, the ?I am right?, the guilt-tripping. She is right and the rest of the world is wrong. If you could have been in the room over Christmas when DH dared to eat a mince pie you would understand what I?m trying to get across.
The first thing Mum comments on when meeting someone is their weight so there are clearly some deep body issues going on. My parents marriage is not happy and I don?t know if this is a reaction to that. I thought I had all this straight in my head but seeing Mum with my 2 children I feel I have to protect them from her, particularly DD as I don?t want her growing up with the food and health issues I had.
There are so many other things going round my head now ? her attitude to sex, her attitude to my choice of degree and job, what she says about my DH, what she said to me during pregnancy (?you will be a bad mother? etc). What is it all about? I don?t understand it. Not sure what I?m looking for here and I don?t know why it?s suddenly resurfaced. Thank you for reading.