The Day My Mom Exploded

Righteous Maternal Anger

“What the system cannot understand or control, it will eject and reject.”

-

Rebecca C Mandeville LMFT CCTP

, Why 'Healthy Boundaries' Can Make Scapegoat Abuse (FSA) Worse

A few weeks ago, I felt a force building inside of me that eventually erupted.

When I was done letting it out, I felt somewhat relieved and proud, but at the same time, kind of drained, and embarrassed for losing my composure. I questioned whether I had done the right thing.

Perhaps I could have dealt with the situation in a more stoic way. But it was as if the force was greater than myself; it was energetic, and it was deep. It was righteous anger. And the truth was begging to come out.

Shortly afterwards, it dawned on me: the scene that unfolded that day was an echo of one I had witnessed at a holiday gathering between my mother and her friend, 25 years ago.

It was New Year’s Eve, sometime in the early 2000s. As usual, we were at a large home gathering with a group of families who belonged to the same friend group. It was at my best friend Alexandra’s house.

Alexandra’s mother, Lucy, was an intimidating woman, at least to me. She was at once fascinating, subtly glamorous, and a little scary. My mother had been friends with her since the two of us girls were in preschool together, and our families were intertwined.

When I was older, it started to become apparent to me that her behaviour was hurtful, both to her daughter and my mother. Sometimes, I too, was a target for her sharp and undercutting comments; criticisms veiled covertly so you couldn’t quite pinpoint why you felt so uncomfortable after she said them.

When I would have dinner at my friend’s house, Alexandra would take a really long time to finish her food. Her mother, obsessed with her weight, dieting, and eating habits, would pick Alex apart, creating an anxiety around food and passing down some form of body dysmorphia. Alexandra was very thin, and I was a little bit chubby, so Lucy would make digs at both Alexandra and I for our relationship with food.

To girls who grew up with the heroine-thin models of the late 90s and early 2000s, disordered eating was to us what cutting off your breasts is to Gen-Z. It was a way to fit into some impossible distorted aesthetic, fit in socially, control our maturing bodies, and often, a symptom of mommy issues.

Kate Moss, 2000

This is a story for paid subscribers. It’s about maternal righteous anger, how narcissistic people push us until we snap, and how we can better understand these dynamics and protect ourselves. To continue reading, please update your subscription here:

---

My mother, dissolving the boundaries between daughter and confidante, began to share with me some of her problems with Lucy.

Lucy had put her pre-adolescent daughter into therapy, my mom told me, ostensibly for her alleged eating disorder. One day though, my mother came to me visibly upset, and shared with me that Lucy had suggested to her that Alexandra’s “psychological problems” were because of me. Because, according to her mother, I wasn’t a good enough friend.