When Your Mom Is The Groomer

I was in my therapist’s office, recalling an incident that happened when I was around eleven years old. My mother used to take me to visit her mom weekly and on this occasion, I had a bad cold. I couldn’t stop sneezing or coughing and my nose was stuffed up and runny. I remember my mother distinctly telling me not to sneeze or cough while we went to visit my grandmother. I was to act like I was perfectly healthy.

I took this at face value and did what she asked. I held it together and sat stiffly on the couch while my grandmother looked at me off and on as she had a conversations with my mom in her native Ukrainian. My creepy uncle popped in and out of the room as he normally does. I dutifully waited the visit out until it was over so I could let out all the sneezes and coughs that my body was craving.

I remember the look on my therapists face as she asked me “ How could you have not ended up marrying your ex? You were groomed to be with someone like him. There was a one in a million chance that you wouldn’t have ended up with him. You weren’t allowed to have a voice. You weren’t taken care of”.

The reason this incident resonants with me is because at forty six my mother tried to do it again. I was sick with a cold as were both of my children. We were supposed to head over to my mother’s house for dinner with my parents, my brother and his son to celebrate my brother’s birthday. I had phoned her to cancel due to us being unwell. Her reply was that we should still come and just sit away from everyone. My response was “No. I am not driving forty five minutes each way when I feel like this. We can come another time when we feel better.”

The cold incident was one of many times that my mother wanted me to pretend that things were fine when they weren’t. I remember other incidents that were more traumatic and had more impact on my life.

One of them was being molested at a water park when I was twelve. In that situation, my mom took myself and a few of my friends to the waterslides. I had decided to take a break and head to the hot tub while my friends went together to take another run down a slide. The hot tub had a lot of foam which was a good cover for the pedophile. I still remember his face when he slid up next to me and put his hands between my thighs and laughed as he did so. It only took me a few seconds to get away but he seemed satisfied with what he did. I remember shaking and not going down any more slides. I told my mom that night what happened and her response was “Whatever you do, don’t tell your father”. There was no call to the police. No referral to counselling. That was her only response. I asked her as an adult why that was all she did. He reply was that she didn’t know and it was probably because my dad would get mad. I think my dad getting mad would have made me feel better as that would have been an appropriate response. It’s interesting that something that had such a huge impact on me, barely made a blip in her life.

Another incident that sticks out for me is when I left home halfway through grade twelve, at the age of seventeen, my mother pretended that I still lived there until I graduated high school. She didn’t tell anyone. The only people that knew in her world was because I lived with them. My aunt and uncle that I stayed with for two weeks and the family friends that I lived with for several months. With everyone else, she acted liked I was still in the house. She couldn’t handle the fact that I would rather live anywhere else than with my biological family.

Everything for my mom was about appearances, not about taking care of me, not about my feelings and not about what I needed or wanted. It was all about how we looked as a family.

I am working on healing from what happened to me as a child and what happened in my marriage. I have discovered that my mother is a needy person who wants me to take care of her emotional needs. I am getting better at asserting boundaries and keeping her at a distance. She is not able to give me what I need and I am fortunate to have found a good group of friends that I can call when I do need support. I am very grateful for this.

I have been going through the hardest time in my life these past few years and because of this I have been unable to keep up my own appearances as much as I would like to. My house used to be cleaner. I used to be skinner. I used to cook healthier. I have had to give up a lot of things in order to survive and I do the bare minimum. It has been hard accepting this but I have no choice.

My mom dropped by unexpectedly, last week and made a few comments that shouldn’t have surprised me but they did. I noticed her looking around the house and I commented “I know the house is a bit disorganized”. Her response was “A bit? I would say so. Wow! I am surprised. You have a lot of work to do”.

My response was something I have never done before. I took both of my hands and placed them on my mom’s shoulders. I looked her squarely in the eyes and said “Do you not know what I have been through this last while? How do you expect my house to look like what it used to?”.

I felt justified in doing this because since September 2018, I have been a single mom who has had their kids 100% of the time while putting myself through school with barely any financial support. My children are ten and thirteen, which means they are too old for a babysitter, but too young to do a lot for themselves. I barely go out and when I do, I need be home early and it needs to be inexpensive. My ex is doing everything wrong legally, emotionally and financially which makes everything more difficult. As I said before, I am just surviving.

I may not be able to change the past and have my mom take care of me like she should have, but I can take care of myself and my own children. I do not have to pretend that we are ok when we are not. If people don’t understand that, it’s their problem, not ours.