DISCLAIMER:
After breaking contact with my mother in November 2019 and spending hours and hours processing our relationship in therapy, I have written the apology I deserve from her, the apology she is incapable and unwilling to give to me.
I have chosen to share this letter on my blog, not to hurt or publicly shame anyone, but to honor myself, my story and my experience in my corner of the internet.
I will likely never receive the apology my mother owes me (and she does owe me one. Several, actually) so I wrote it myself.
And for the record, this writing exercise is one of the most cathartic an healing ones I’ve ever done.
Dear Erica,
Thank you for your patience in waiting for this letter. You’ve waited so, so long.
I’m ready to take the opportunity to make a thorough and sincere apology both in word and action.
First, I’m sorry i delivered a book to your door without first even reading it or considering its ideologies may not align with your values or complement any self-exploration you’ve been doing this past year we have not spoken.
I realize that giving someone, especially my daughter, a self-help book is both an insult and a lazy attempt at getting to know you or asking what matters most to you in this season of your life.
The truth is, I’ve painted a picture of who you are in my mind that suits my needs and supports the narrative I’ve created that you are the broken one; forever needing therapy to find out who you are.
I’ve made you out to be a lost woman, a lonely woman, a woman who longs for a partner and a family and doesn’t know who she is.
I’ve turned you into a weakling who just can’t let go of her childhood and I’ve used your body size and weight to further my belief that you’re just unhappy with yourself, when really I have always projected my own fat-phobic ideology onto you.
I’ve created this image of you so I don’t have to take a hard look at myself. If you are the broken one, I can be the cheerleading mom who passively supports your journey but doesn’t have to make any changes or sacrifices in my own life or in our relationship.
Short of going to therapy myself, I don’t know how to let go of this story I’ve made up about you. Most days it feels too big a risk.
Next, I want to apologize for the vicious words I said to you in your therapist’s office last Thanksgiving.
I can barely bring myself to recount what i said but i will.
I’m sorry I called you a liar. I’m sorry I accused you of lying about being sexually abused by your stepbrother, my husband’s son...for three years of your life.
I know you are not lying because although you did not tell me when it was happening, you did tell me about the abuse a few years ago and i believed you then.
But more than that, I know you are not lying because I knew it was happening all those years ago and I didn’t do anything to stop it.
I may say I just thought you two were smoking pot or something but I know better. I knew leaving my 13, 14 and 15 year old daughter alone in the living room late a night and in a hotel room in Palm Springs with a 20, 21 and 22 year old 6 foot 5 man was harmful, irresponsible and negligent.
I know this was child abuse.
I know this would have been grounds for Child Protective Services taking you from me, had you told another adult.
I also recognize my pattern of abuse in leaving you with unsafe people throughout your childhood, one of whom willfully burned you to the 3rd degree by refusing to put sunscreen on your extremely fair skin after you asked her nicely several times.
My eyes fill with tears when i imagine how painful it was for your little seven year-old body; how you screamed in agony when your dad gave you a cold shower — the water like needles to your blistered skin; the sting of the vinegar and solarcaine he rubbed on you as gently as possible.
Her name was Carol.
I will never forgive myself for leaving you with her.
I want to also acknowledge that when we ran into her several years later, I greeted her like she was an old friend.
That must have been so painful for you watching your mother embrace a child abuser, your abuser.
You must have felt so abandoned and unsafe.
You must have felt like your emotional and physical safety wasn’t even a thought to me.
You must have felt like you didn’t matter to me.
I betrayed you.
Before continuing my apology for other things i said to you in therapy last year, I’d like to acknowledge the role I played in my stepson’s abuse;
not only was he sexually abusing you, but I actively tried to win his favor during that time.
I felt uncomfortable that he didn’t like me—that his own mother portrayed me as trash to him.
I wanted him to like me and show him i was worthy of his love and his father’s love.
I did this at all costs— I even accused you of flirting with him so I didn’t have to be responsible for watching out for your safety.
I sexualized and adultified you.
Though i was not cognizant that that’s what I was doing, I now see the very real consequences of turning children into adults so that their safety becomes their own responsibility rather than their parents’.
After you told me about the abuse a few years ago, I hugged you and thanked you for telling me.
I also made the conscious choice to continue going to your stepbrother’s house for holidays and maintain a relationship with him...to this very day.
This is in part because I don’t want to lose my husband or create strain in my marriage and partly because your stepbrother is good with computers and i need him to help me where I am technologically inept.
I easily feel out of control and defeated when I don’t understand parts of the world around me and such people who excel in certain areas bring me comfort, even if it’s at the expense of my child’s feelings, her humanity, and my own integrity and moral compass.
Much like the way I greeted Carol all those years ago, my relationship with your stepbrother is an utter atrocity and I do not blame you for finally removing yourself completely from my toxic choices.
I’d like to return to the other hurtful
things I said to you in therapy:
I’m sorry I told you that if it was up to me, I would not have come to comfort you the night that your dad died.
I wish I could tell you I said that out of anger. But I meant it.
I recognize my acute lack of empathy, mixed with steadfast resentment and innate defiance results in my not doing the most basic of human functions, including rushing to my daughter’s side to wrap my arms around her in her moments of unspeakable shock, devastation and grief. I was ready to leave you broken and hysterical on the locker room floor of 24 Hour Fitness on that cold February night, until John stepped in and drove me to you.
I’m sorry I told you I never trusted you, as a result of a letter you wrote to me when you were 18 years old, at the behest of your father (your other abusive parent).
When I set aside my commitment to believing you’re a liar so I don’t have to be held accountable for your stepbrother’s abuse, I absolutely recognize that that letter was written under extreme duress and the threat of your car being taken away.
I know deep down that that car was a safety net for you and a way to find autonomy in a relationship that demanded your entire personhood.
Were I to remove my utter selfishness and desire for self preservation, I would in fact commend you on doing everything you could to protect yourself and survive, knowing that really neither of your parents were safe.
Erica, I’m sorry that I scoffed at you at the end of the therapy session when you told me you love me. I said, “your ‘I love you’ means nothing to me.“
Unfortunately you knew this sentence all too well. I cannot count how many times I uttered those words to you in your childhood.
You used to tell me you love me when I was really angry and I rejected it because I felt it was your way of manipulating me.
I now realize it was your way of self regulating, reaching out to feel safe again after your primary guardian on this earth had been screaming in your face for minutes on end, and often for the most frivolous reasons.
I’m sorry for all the years I rejected you.
I rejected your love for me.
I rejected your crying out.
I gaslit you.
I made everything your fault.
I weaponized your personality when it reminded me of your father, I dehumanized you.
I was cold and heartless and without any remorse for the damage it was causing you.
The truth is, you have more love in your left thumb than I have in my entire body. You are warm and kind and people love you because they know they can trust you. You are a safe harbor for the wounded, because your own wounds only deepen your capacity to really be there for people.
I admire this so much about you, that often I resent you.
Erica, I understand why you never trusted me— why you hid school papers from me, why you often lied about small and trivial things.
I can only imagine how confusing it was and how conflicted you must have felt when I would betray your trust over and over, while insisting i was a safe person to talk to.
I always used to tell you I can’t read your mind, that it’s your responsibility to speak up and tell me how you feel. Deep down I knew that wasn’t your nature, that your trust was to be earned, and that most of your childhood was spent in deep contemplation, trying to figure out how you could feel safe and who you could trust from one moment to the next.
Erica I know that I’ve tried to convince you I am someone who doesn’t care what people think of me. But this is not true. I care so much about what people think that I shy away from relationships of any substance or depth.
I’ve told you in the past I was never someone who wanted close friends because I didn’t want that responsibility. Being seen for who I really am and being held accountable is a responsibility I don’t know if I’m capable of.
I don’t know who I am without a man in my life, and you do. You have more of a sense of self than I ever could, that’s why you’re able to write the apology that you deserve.
That’s why you’re able to identify your value, and make no exceptions for anyone.
Part of why I don’t let myself reflect on what your stepbrother did to you is because I’m terrified of what it will do to my relationship with John. I can’t see a way to keep my marriage and repair the harm I’ve caused you. Perhaps if I am willing to see a therapist myself, I might be able to learn how.. but that will be my work, a choice only I can make.
Erica, I have never earned your trust.
I’ve taken your love and ability to forgive for granted for far too long.
I understand you will need to sever ties with me forever if I am unwilling to do my own work of self reflection and repair the harm in active, tangible ways, starting with hand writing this exact apology, WORD. FOR. WORD. signing my name to it and sending it back to you.
I understand that act alone will not guarantee a relationship with you.
I also understand you will need to send this letter to all the women in your family— that bridging the 3,000 mile gap between your aunts and cousins’ idea of where you come from and where you really come from will be a crucial step into reclaiming the fullness of you; to be wholly seen, unequivocally understood and most importantly, undoubtedly believed.
Erica, I can see how my most recent versions of an apology lack both specificity and true accountability.
I can see my attempt in glossing over an apology by saying I don’t really remember what’s happened and expect you to just accept some flowers, a self help book and a text message is an unacceptable and sloppy amends.
Erica, I want to thank you for your generosity in funding a therapy session for us last year, in addition to your regularly scheduled one that week.
Those sessions aren’t cheap and I appreciate not only the emotional gesture, but the financial one.
As hard as it is, and as much as I want to be a victim of that 50 minutes with you and your therapist, I recognize that I have a choice: I can look at that session as an last ditch effort to stand in my righteousness... or an important beginning in the work that I need to do, the work you’ve been doing for years and years.
I am so proud of you.
I want to show you that I want you in my life. And I want to earn my place in yours.
Lastly, I want you to know this apology will feel next to impossible to write myself.
In fact, I may very well throw it in the trash or put it down and shove it between piles and piles of paper on my dining room table or the trunk of my car. I will also convince myself this letter must have been dictated by a therapist or someone other than you.
But deep down, I will know that’s a lie.
Your gift with words and your ability to articulate your feelings so clearly is nothing short of God given magic, your magic. I will do my best to not take that from you this time.
I am ready and willing to look at myself, you, and our relationship with new eyes and I will get whatever help is needed to do that… because contrary to what I’ve said to you for decades, your ‘I love you’ means everything to me.
Love,
Mom