Those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families – with mothers who were unable to mother us for whatever reason – all carried around a secret that we were desperate to keep from the world. We wanted everyone to think that our families were normal, that we were normal. To do this, we had to hide the fact that behind closed doors, everything was the opposite of normal.
I remember from a very young age feeling completely out of place around most other children, especially other girls when their mothers were present. Other mothers would run girl scout meetings or fix their daughter’s hair before ballet. I would observe their interactions in awe, feeling very much like I was watching a movie to which I could not relate. I so desperately wanted a mother like that. I felt different and completely alone, but I wasn’t exactly sure why.
Now I know that it’s because the relationship that I had with my own mother was nothing like those that I was observing with other girls and their mothers. At a young age, I was unable to recognize that there was something wrong with her, so I naturally came to the conclusion that the problem was with me.
Growing up as un-mothered girls, we wanted everything to be OK, so we pretended that it was. But to sustain the illusion, we had to put up walls to protect ourselves.
First, there is the outer wall, which is there to hide the bad things from the outside world so that everything appears normal. We could not let people know what was really going on. We could not let them know that there was something wrong with us. I didn’t want anyone to see my mother’s outbursts of rage in public, so I would do everything I could to be good and not make her mad when we were out. Of course, I always failed because it was an insurmountable task; her behavior really had nothing to do with me.
Then, there is the inner wall. Because of our mother’s lack of empathy, our outward displays of emotion were often met by anger, flippant responses, or the silent treatment. In order to survive, we needed to go into a kind of “grey-rock” mode with our mothers so as to avoid conflict. We became expert conflict avoiders. We learned to keep our emotions to ourselves. With no one to help us work through our emotions or to meet our emotional needs, we learned that it was just easier to suppress and ignore them. In doing this, we lost touch with our true inner selves.
Not only did we have to put up those walls, but we had to hold them up. As we grew up, those walls become so much a part of us that we forgot they existed. The only thing that lived between those walls was her and making sure her needs were met. On the outside, there was the rest of the world, from which we had to hide everything. On the inside, there was our true inner self, that was hidden even from us.
We can never expect our mothers to suddenly become what we needed them to be. But we can start taking down those inner walls and recover that true self, which starts with self-love. Once we do that, the outer walls will naturally start to come down, because we will realize that we no longer have anything to hide about ourselves.
As soon as we recognize that we are not the ones to blame for how our mothers were, the shame starts to retreat. You realize that that little voice inside your head saying, “Who do you think you are? You’re not good enough for that,” is just a stupid voice coming from between those walls you put up. Once those walls come down, you can start replacing that voice with other loving, nurturing voices. It is especially important to listen to the one that says, “Look what you have overcome! You can do anything!”