The Meaning of Mum

When you hear the word Mum, what do you think of? Love, care, warmth, affection? The stereotypical image of unconditional love and attachment that we see everywhere? “A mother’s love is like nothing else in the world”. But what if that isn’t what you’ve experienced from your own Mum?

It certainly wasn’t for me. My Mum was an alcoholic, her and my Dad separated when I was around 18 months old, and he ensured that I was able to live and stay with him afterwards to keep me safe. After that point, aside from a couple of visits initially, she cut contact with me. Nothing on Birthdays or Christmas. No letters. No visits. Simply nothing.

I know now that she was an alcoholic and must have been struggling but at the time, I wasn’t told anything about it. I grew up with no idea where she was or why she wasn’t a part of my life. My young mind told me she must be somewhere exotic, doing something really important because why else would she not be there for me? Why would she not want to see her daughter growing up? I imagined that I was in the ‘The Parent Trap’, the Lindsay Lohan film where she accidently bumps into her identical twin, and one is living with the Dad and the other with the Mum. Everywhere I went I would keep a look out for the carbon copy of myself and wait for the glorious re-uniting of my family...

Well, a re-uniting happened but there was no twin and it didn’t come with a happy ending. When I was 11, my Dad and Step-Mum made the decision to move to France and this meant that we needed my Mum’s permission for me to be able to leave the country. Following this, she asked to have some contact with me and for 10 months or so we wrote back and forth and met up once and went shopping. It wasn’t a typical Mother-Daughter bond, we were ultimately strangers, but it was better than nothing and I was so happy to have this connection with her.

As the date we were moving to France came closer, the letters had become less frequent, she had my mobile number and on one occasion she phoned me and appeared to be drunk. Her words were slurred, and she was rambling and not making a lot of sense. By the time we moved, the contact was virtually non-existent and there was only one occasion after leaving that I spoke to her on the phone. No more letters, no more interest for what I was getting up to, no desire to see how life in a new country was going for me. For the second time in my life she had made the decision to walk away and this time the rejection stung even more.

This time I understood that she had her own problems to face but I also knew that she had lived 20 minutes away from me my whole life. I knew that she was capable of writing me letters. I knew that, even if only some of the time, she was able to show affection and yet she had walked away. She had made a choice and that choice was to not remain a part of my life. It made the declarations of love and care from her letters impossible for me to believe.

As a teenager, this amplified the usual feelings of insecurity that everyone experiences and left me believing that if my own Mother didn’t want to be around me then why would anyone else. I felt rejected, abandoned, unloved and angry. Angry that no-one ever acknowledged the situation. No-one around me offered any sympathy. I felt that I had to keep quiet and just move on. I know that my family didn’t intend to hurt me and that they believed that by not talking about it they were allowing me to move forward and not keep reliving what had happened, but in reality it made me feel ignored and ashamed. That my experiences were something to bury deep and never speak about again.

Now, things are changing for me and slowly I’m beginning to see these experiences for what they really are with understanding and acceptance. But it has taken many counselling sessions and huge levels of support from my Husband to even begin talking about how I’ve felt and to start re-building my self-esteem. I hope that in writing this I can begin to feel less ashamed of my story and that those reading it can hear an experience that they may be able to resonate with and feel less alone.

With love, Un-Mothered x