My mother was a horrid woman
A DAUGHTER’S TABOO-SHATTERING CONFESSION
AGED just three, I decided enough was enough. I had to leave home. I gathered my favourite dress, patterned with Bambis and flowers, my potty and my doll. I vividly remember taking a deep breath, then telling my mother: ‘You’re not a nice mummy and I don’t want to live with you any more.’
I have no recollection what my mother said — just that she didn’t try to stop me.
It was not easy to reach the front door handle of our small flat in the East End, let alone open it. Being so tiny, I had to drag a heavy kitchen chair — I was that determined — up to the door, in order to do it.
Once I’d escaped, I walked purposefully up the stairs to the next floor, knocked on the door and asked our neighbour, Bella, who I liked, if I could live with her. She took me into the kitchen, lifted me up to sit on the work surface, and gave me some orange juice.
I have no idea whether I stayed hours or days, but at some point I ended up back at home.
This might sound like the kind of comical anecdote mothers and daughters laugh over as they remember childhood days. Instead, this is proof that even at such a young age, I was already aware that my now late mother, Florence, was a difficult, often horrid, parent who could be very cruel to me.
She often said she wished she’d called me ‘Devil’ rather than Angela because I had never given her ‘ a moment’s pleasure’.
Her moods changed like the wind. I never knew where I was with her, or how she would react.
Capricious and irrational, anything and nothing could trigger her temper. She endlessly tried to demean me and put me down, telling me I wouldn’t ever amount to anything — a comment, I was later to learn, commonly used by controlling parents.
When, years later, after I’d married, I told her I was pregnant with my son, who was to be her first grandchild, she instantly said: ‘I hope the baby is like you. Then you’ll appreciate what I had to put up with.’
For decades I barely told a soul how she treated me. And, indeed, my mother — beautiful, auburnhaired and with a sharp and instant wit — could be charming in company. But behind closed doors, she was very different.
As a child, I often cried into my pillow at night because I felt so alone and vulnerable.
Why was she like this? To this day, I have no idea. It remains a mystery what could have happened in her life to make her as she was.
I couldn’t find out, as not once did we have an intimate or personal conversation. There would have been huge ructions if I’d even had the temerity to ask her any such questions. ‘How dare you talk to me like that!’ she would have said.
MY CHILDHOOD, then, was a lonely and troubled time, without any siblings to turn to. I don’t know why I was an only child, but my mother would often grumble about how much work I was for her.
My father, a london- born businessman called Monte, was kind, but passive. If I sought his help, he would just say: ‘You know what she’s like.’
All this being said, luckily, from a very early age, I felt my mother was wrong about me — something I now put down to an innate obstinacy and determination. Through all those years of unhappiness, I kept telling myself that I might not be perfect but I was certainly OK.
Now happily married, with three grown- up sons and a fulfilling journalistic career, I believe I was right. More than that, I have even become grateful to my mother for providing me with a template for how I didn’t want to be.
However, having a horrid parent remains a taboo subject. After all, if all your friends have a lovely mother and/or father, or your difficult parent puts on a front in public, it can make you seem very disloyal if you disclose the truth.
Even fiction rarely has a mother as the baddy. Fairy stories and children’s books are filled with evil stepmothers, but not mothers.
Indeed, mothers from literature tend to be saintly creatures — from Oliver Twist’s poor angelic, doomed mother to lily Potter, Harry’s brave, protective and heroic mum.
The thought that the person who gave birth to you could then be intentionally horrid to you seems too awful, even for fiction.
It’s still difficult to talk about some of my mother’s worst moments. And there were many.
Take the incident when I was nine and, without any explanation, she forbade me to read books, despite knowing this was something I loved to do. Most mothers would encourage a bookworm daughter, but not mine.
Occasionally, I would manage to sneak a book to read under the bedclothes with a torch, but the scene when I was caught stopped it being worthwhile. So, instead, I read as much as I could in school.
Her ban lasted for six years, until I started my English literature GCE course.
Another particularly horrid incident came when I was ten, and she and my father gave me a puppy for my birthday, an adorable labrador Retriever I called Sally.
I was overjoyed and lavished Sally with attention, taking her for walks before and after school.
Then, six weeks later, I came home from school only to find that Sally was gone. My mother told me she had sent her away to a new home in the country because I didn’t look after her properly. I lay on the floor and cried my heart out.
My mother’s horrid behaviour continued into my teenage years. Perhaps it was her way of maintaining control. Boyfriends were a particular problem. She tried to insist any young man would pick me up from home for our date, where there would be an elaborate, crushingly embarrassing introduction.
Then, when I returned from my evening out, she would give her verdict, which was often as unpredictable as her moods.
One chap I was keen on was banned from the house because his upper lip was too thin — a sign, she said, of meanness. Instead, he and I would meet up the road.
But even this gave my mother an opportunity to try to demean me. Noticing boyfriends had stopped coming to call at the house, she said: ‘You see, I told you no one would want to marry you.’
Until six months ago, I rarely talked about how I lived on edge at home, and how I always felt I was walking on eggshells.
THAT
changed when a clinical psychologist called Alyson Corner — one of the few friends who knew in general terms that I didn’t have an easy relationship with my mother — told me having a difficult parent was one of the most common situations in many of the family issues she dealt with
She said there must be countless numbers of children, teenagers and young adults who suffer in silence and have no idea how to cope.
We decided to work together to build a website — which we called
myhorridparent.com — to offer support, coping strategies and help for anyone in a similar situation; not least to help them understand that you are unlikely to change either your mother or father’s behaviour, but that you can learn to cope with it in a better way.
It’s also important to remember that having a difficult parent is unfortunate, but it’s not your fault. We also felt that this was a subject that was long overdue for more open discussion.
Initially, when we started working on the website, I wondered whether all the pain I had kept inside me would explode like a volcano, and whether I’d fall apart. But I didn’t.
Having a horrid mother leaves you feeling terribly conflicted. It’s natural to love your mother, however cruel or horrible she is, not least because you need her so much.
But at the same time, you become aware of not liking the way she behaves, particularly the older you get. Perhaps younger children don’t realise this.
My mother was a stay-at-home housewife, and I rarely had friends round because she would hover over us. Then, once the friend had
gone, she would criticise her or me, often brutally. I remember when I was 15, a friend popped in. As she was leaving, she realised she had come out without any money and asked if I could lend her £5.
My mother overheard, and despite the money being returned to me the next day at school, she told me for years afterwards — and anyone who came to visit — that I had to buy my friends, otherwise no one would want to know me.
Occasionally there were shafts of hope, but they didn’t last long. Aged 17, I was given driving lessons as a present. I hoped beyond hope this was a sign of a turnaround in her attitude to me, that perhaps at last we could bond.
Despite passing my test first time, I was never allowed to drive the family car even to the top of the road — even though this meant I had to walk past a churchyard on my way home, where two murders had recently taken place.
Instead, my mother said I should come home before dark, which in winter made absolutely no sense. So I ran past the churchyard as fast as I could, my heart pounding and my night out ruined.
Like most offspring, I have of course inherited some of my mother’s characteristics. It’s important to acknowledge that.
I believe it’s what you do with those characteristics that counts. One of mine is over-reacting, and I have become better at handling it.
Largely, however, I have learned to treat these negative characteristics like muscles: if you don’t use them, they just get weaker.
My childhood also made me adept at dealing with bullies. I vowed from a very early age that I wouldn’t allow anyone else to talk to me the way my mother had done. Today, I avoid any individual who verbally tries to demean me.
I try to mix only with people who bring out the best in me. And I believe my mother’s behaviour has made me far more resilient.
Over these past six months, I have even been able to laugh at some of the ridiculous things my mother would say to me.
For example, when I telephoned her five minutes after the agreed time, she’d say: ‘Other daughters phone their mother on time. But you’re giving me a nervous breakdown. Is that what you want?’
In some ways, I credit my mother for my choice of career.
She told me so many times I wouldn’t cope at university — ‘just look at your bedroom’ — that I didn’t apply. But instead of fretting, I told myself that in those three years I would have been studying, I would find a career I wanted and perhaps my salary would enable me to leave home.
It wasn’t easy, but eventually I landed a researcher’s job on a national newspaper, later interviewing all sorts of people, from celebrities to those who have experienced terrible traumas.
I marvelled at some of the human qualities I discovered and tried to learn from them.
I also became finely tuned to the intricacies of people’s characters and, from an early age, observed how friends and strangers behaved with their parents and vice versa — hoping to find out that being part of a family didn’t always have to be so stressful.
When I saw good things, I would try to adopt the same habits myself. Today, I remain an avid people-watcher — another legacy of my mother’s difficult behaviour.
When I began working, I suggested I should move out, imagining my mother would be pleased to get rid of me.
Instead, she came out with phrases that, I have since learnt, many difficult parents use: ‘If you do, you will never set foot in this house again.’ Or: ‘You’re doing this deliberately to kill your father and me.’ And a classic bribe: ‘If you go, we will write you out of our will.’
I married very early to a stable, easy-going man who encouraged me to find myself. Although our relationship didn’t work out in the long run, my ex and I are still friends. Today, I have a long-lasting second marriage to an ideal partner who, as a bonus, had a wonderful mother I got on brilliantly with.
I didn’t initially want children for fear of becoming a mother like mine. But then thought it might be something I’d regret.
Sure enough, I fell in love instantly with my three sons, who have now grown up. Not for a second have I wanted to control their lives or belittle them — and indeed, I never have.
Our relationship is easy and strong. Because the truth is that if you have a horrid parent, you don’t have to turn into one yourself.
It can take a while, and needs introspection and courage, but it’s certainly worth it.