It has been 11 years since I talked to my mother, and more than 12 years since we spent time together. That’s a long time. Before that, I tried many times to talk to her about the way she treated me. We tried counseling together and I was very plain-spoken about the issues.

She refused to take any responsibility and could not engage with any level of understanding. She was not able to show any awareness that her husband had abused me while she ignored it. There was no curiosity about the harm caused by her husband sexually abusing his own daughter, my friends, and my mother’s friends. There was no self-awareness that she treated me in all the same ways that she complained about her mother treating her. There was no acknowledgement of her financial abuse, her constant lies, and her manipulations of everyone around us.

She continued to believe that I would be there for her no matter what. The generational cycle was that damaging and that strong of a force. It was unshakeable. For them. That’s why they are all still participating in that dynamic and I am not.

After several months of no contact and intensive therapy, I decided it was good for my healing process to make a boundary statement to my mother. I wrote down what I wanted to say, I prepared myself for her potentially argumentative or hurtful responses, and I reached out. I said, “I don’t like the way you treat me. I don’t like the way you treat other people, and I don’t like the way you treat yourself.”

After a brief pause, she said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

That was it. I had a few things written down just in case she dodged or blamed or deflected in some way, but she didn’t. She just made it seem completely unimportant to her and not up for further discussion.

I was not surprised at that point. I already knew what she was not capable of. She was not capable of love, caring, understanding, or compassion. She had no empathy and no capacity to care about anyone else other than herself. She had become the victim of her own life. Just like her mother, who had always told us to make sure and let her know before she turned into HER own mother.

The curse lives on. My grandmother has been acting like her mother (negative, cynical, and hysterical) for my entire life. If you try to say anything to her about anything of importance, she will threaten to have a major stroke and die on the spot. She turns 90 next year.

When my wound was fresh, it seemed like it would never heal. It was a gaping hole of unimaginable pain. Over time, it has been healed and filled with therapy, tools, and nourishing relationships. I’ve had so much EMDR that what was once a tangible ache is now a flat, smooth space where I am the person that I am and she is the person that she has chosen to be.

I will not say that holidays have been easy but I can say that they are much easier now than they used to be. By the time I got married (on the day before Mother’s Day seven years ago), the holiday was barely a blip on my radar. I can watch other people celebrate their wonderful mothers without breaking down. I can acknowledge my mother was not available for me as a fact of life instead of a devastating personality flaw of mine.

This is the work of taking my own life back and moving forward.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the bad mothers out there, and I mean that in every iteration possible.