Why did my mother cut me out of her life?
For almost a decade, Hannah Betts was ostracised by her mother. Now, she only wishes that her ‘beloved tormentor’ was still alive
‘That most primal human equation – mother plus child equals love – fails to add up’
Yesterday, the longest day, was the two-year anniversary of my mother’s death. Time makes the loss less vicious, but does not take away the pain. I miss her with a physical ache, longing to hold my face next to her skin. But then, I am used to missing my mother because she chose to have no contact with me for almost a decade, a quarter of my then life.
You may have missed the recent revelation that Sir Elton John and his mother are “back in touch”, after an almost nine-year interlude of not being on speaking terms. Sir Elton is not the first celebrity to fall out with the woman who gave birth to him. In 2001, Jennifer Aniston referred to her mother as the “last chunk of disease” in her life. Miranda Kerr, Meg Ryan, Drew Barrymore and Courtney Love have all spoken about similar estrangements.
Mother troubles are among our most ancient and fundamental narratives. And, while it is not quite true that, in literature, the only good mother is a dead one, for every Marmee in Little Women, we have a Lady Macbeth, Cersei Lannister or Mrs Bennet. Greek tragedy would be nowhere without its matriarchs, be it Medea, Hecuba or Clytemnestra.
A friend – fearless in the face of all but the woman who raised her – recently almost died rather than ask her mother to take her to casualty. She explained her decision thus: “You know the Wicked Stepmother in Snow White? In the original tale, the real mother doesn’t die: she prays for her daughter, gives birth to her, then tries to kill her.”
If you think this sounds selfdramatising, I’m delighted for you. There are those of us who understand this dynamic all too well.
My mother’s decision to cut me out of her life was the blight of my early thirties to early forties. There were eight years of refusal to have any relationship, two years of largely theoretical contact, followed by a cancer diagnosis, six months after which she was dead. She refused to listen to my account of the events that had angered her and attempted to persuade the rest of my (previously close) family to cut me off; a situation that continues to have ramifications.
Both my parents had form with ostracising family members for years, decades. My mother liked to describe this behaviour as “operatic”; I choose to view it as “emotionally incontinent”. The whys and wherefores of her motivation are irrelevant, suffice to say that her grounds were inaccurate. What I can tell you is how it felt.
A year in, it occurred to me that she would be prepared to shun me indefinitely, and I found myself seizing up. One day, I was struck by the sensation that I could no longer put one foot in front of the other. I sought therapy, my psychologist using hypnosis to teach me to “detach with love” so that I might stop feeling so lacerated. And it helped, in that her absence became not a gaping, but a festering wound. A mark of adulthood is to stop blaming one’s parents for everything. However, rejection by a mother is a consumingly corrosive thing, undermining the recipient at their very core. That most primal human
equation – mother plus child equals love – fails to add up. Instead, the person who should want all good things for you actively wishes you harm. And, if your own mother doesn’t love you, how can you expect it from anyone else? For the first few years, I didn’t tell people – my lack of mother love a secret shame. Even a decade and a half after her boycott started, writing this feels crippling. A friend who lost her mother at the same time argues that her fate was kinder: “At least she loved me.”
Mother’s Day was an irritation; Christmas Day – with questions about one’s destination commencing in October – an annual hell. Mostly, I did it on my own: other people’s families were a reminder of what I was missing. With fairy-tale sadism, the longer she spurned me, the more I grew to resemble her, my encounters with the mirror a daily haunting. Meanwhile, I strove to be her opposite. She was a teetotal mother of five, in a long, but sparring, marriage, with an obsessive focus on family. I remained a childless party animal, enjoying a series of camaraderiefilled relationships, with an army of friends. Neither extreme was particularly positive.
Natasha Fennell and Roisin Ingle are the authors of The Daughterhood: The Good, the Bad and the Guilty of Mother-daughter
Relationships. Why, I once demanded of Natasha, can the mother/ daughter bond prove so impossible? “There are few universals,” she explained, “but the mother/daughter relationship is one of them. It’s one of the most long-standing relationships of our lives. Twenty-first century daughters are spending longer with our mothers than any in history, and the involvement of two females means that things are very emotionally charged.”
The goal is “transitioning” to some adult relationship. And for those that can’t? I adopted the strategy the pair recommend, namely keeping the doors open, but not masochistically exposing yourself to repeated rejection; “detaching with love”, as my therapist counselled. I would add: ignore those who bleat: “But, it’s your mother.” Having once shared an umbilical cord is no reason to let it become a noose.
In my case, one year became two, and, before we knew it, my mother had missed my thirties. She kept my articles, but refused contact, occasionally making it known via my father that she would sue (for what?) if I even referred in print to having a mother.
At my sister’s wedding, she ignored me. Vague communication resumed when my father faced an operation, and she decreed that I should be allowed back into the family home. Perhaps she was looking for an excuse. She brooked no discussion of the last few years, nor would she. For, during my first Christmas with her in more than a decade, she was diagnosed with a savage cancer. Six months’ nursing her felt redemptive. However, there was no deathbed apology, no regret expressed. I tell myself I didn’t need it, without conviction.
Fennell and Ingle wanted to call their book: Ten Things to Do With Your
Mother Before She Dies, until their publisher protested. Nevertheless, they urge readers to imagine that their mothers have 30 days left on earth to address that constant factor in all mother/daughter relationships – guilt; specifically, the guilt you will feel when your beloved tormentor is dead, regardless of the details of the situation.
Broken, torturous as our relationship became, I never stopped loving my mother, and I don’t think she stopped loving me – she could just be incredibly careless in her expression of it.
I would give anything for her to be alive, even if it meant a return to those desolate years. And, when I visited her dead body, all I could say was: “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” – sorry for not being able to save her, from herself as much as the disease.
‘A year in, it occurred to me that she would be prepared to shun me indefinitely’
‘Having once shared an umbilical cord is no reason to let it become a noose’