No-Mum's Day 2025

[GoodPesto]

Creating this thread for everyone who struggles with mother's day. Feel free to come here around the day when society rub's into your face a very idolized version of motherhood, that is more often celebrated than experienced, because so many peopel wish it would be true.
The caring, nurturing, attentive, loving person, that protects you and teaches you to navigate this world. The save haven, so many only know from the price they have to pay because they were lacking it, when they were young.
This is also to all the scapegoats, who suffer from not being part of a family, who are not being invited to any fiesta the family holds, and who know or suspect that mother's day is also the day of the person, who in her unique ways makes sure it stays that way.
Bring your raw emotion, bring your darkest poems, bring your cynism, bring a sinister joke or whatever helps you through this time.

[Tribe16]

I'll bite Good Pesto!

This is going to be the first Mother's Day in my life I won't acknowledge for her. I am not proud, I am not punishing - I just finally realized that by giving her the attention she withholds from me, I am in essence, giving her narcissistic supply. I don't want to enable that anymore. Tomorrow is a big birthday for me, like there is no avoiding being a senior citizen any longer LOL. I don't believe she will acknowledge it and even if she did I'm going forward with no longer giving supply. The last few years I've gotten a text on Facebook messenger but since I've blocked her there, she won't communicate any other way (even though she has email, phone and texting capabilities).

Here's what I'm grateful for though - I'm grateful for my life. I'm grateful that I have the life I have now. I'm grateful I am not the mom my mother is. I know I will get lots of warm fuzzies from my kids and grandkids this week, being my birthday and mother's day. I am going to get some flowers for an older lady in my church who shares my birthday. I have much to be grateful for and one of the best things I ever learned in therapy is two or three things can be true at the same time.

1. I can love Mom and pray she has a peaceful day on Mother's Day.
2. I am at peace with not seeing her anymore because my nervous system is healing.
3. I can take my pain as a lesson on what I never want to be and be better and kinder because of my experiences.

So I wish all of you who mother others and mother yourselves, a soft, safe and sweet mother's day.

[GoodPesto]

Hey Tribe 16,
thank you for sharing and happy birthday, senior citizen!
I remember the first time I did not reach out to unPDmoth on mother's day, it felt almost unreal and like a really special day in a very different way. It was like a duty I chose not to fulfil and there was some FOG around it for sure. For most of this year it looked like I would be reaching out for the first time in years but after her visit I do not feel it at all.
Thank you as well for the idea to connect to someone else who shows up in a motherly way. 

[gcj07a]

Thanks for starting the thread!

For context: my undiagnosed borderline mother physically, emotionally, and sexually abused me.

Mothers Day is tomorrow and my feelings are weirder than in previous years. For the last five mothers days (this will be my sixth since going NC), I've dealt with flashbacks and surges of anger and elevated SOT. But this time around, though on the struggle bus more than usual, I am surprisingly put together and calm. I've even been entertaining the possibility of reaching out to her. I went so far as to write a letter and to mull over what I would say. Then, for the first time in a long time, I read back through my journals and reaquianted myself with all that I went through. I had forgotten so much of the horror! In healing so much, in having properly integrated my traumatic memories, I forgot just who I was dealing with. I lapsed into a default assumption that my M is someone I should honor. But having been reminded of what I've been through, and having reminded myself that I can expect absolutely nothing good to come from interacting with her, I once again truly remembered why I put the NC in place to begin with. It wasn't because of the abuse I suffered as a child, but it was because there was absolutely nothing about her that had changed, that she continued to treat me poorly, and she was treating my children poorly as well. The NC wasn't punishment for a bad mother; it was self-defense. It isn't that my mother is a bad person and shouldn't be honored so much as it is the case that I, functionally, never had a mother. Even the sweet moments growing up are tainted with her manipulation. Instead of a mother, I had the opposite: not someone who gives, but who takes. Not someone who loves, but who demands love. Not someone who models healthy relationships, but who twists all relationships to the breaking point. She was no true mother to me, and acknowledging that fact is deeply freeing. As I told my T the other day, I have other mothers in my life I can honor: my wife, my dad's mother, my wife's mother, my wife's grandmother, and many friends who are mothers.

[footprint33]

Thanks for this thread and sending healing vibes to everyone going through Mother's Day without a mother. I haven't seen my bio mom since 2013 and haven't marked Mother's Day for her since before that, so it has been a long time. Mother's Day is much easier for me now than it was when I first went VLC and then NC. I am also a mother and so have celebrated the day that way with my husband and children. However, I think that any adult child of a narcissistic mother, whether or not they have children, can heal through Mother's Day by loving the self and treating the self to something special--a nice walk or meal, watching a relaxing movie, or a gift for the self. We should be celebrating our lives because we survived the maltreatment of our mothers.

footprint

[walking on broken glass]

Hello everyone!
For me, it's the first time that I am contemplating not wishing my mum Happy Mother's Day (it's later in the month in my country of origin). Not a day goes by that I am not thinking about our last in-person interaction and even though I am still in contact with her, the thought of acknowledging her role as a mother makes my stomach turn. I might just avoid talking to her on that particular day.

[JustKathy]

Thank you for starting this thread. My NPD mother passed away a few years ago, but I still come here on Mother's Day. Even though she's finally gone from my life, the day is still hard for me. I have to stay away from social media to avoid all the photos and tributes people share of their wonderful, loving mothers. It's not something I can relate to or even begin to understand.

Sending hugs to everyone who is hurting on a day that's supposed to be joyful, but sadly, never will be.

[GoodPesto]

Surprise! I got a call from unPDmoth today, inviting me on a guilt-trip. I declined. I pity her because she is unwell and I hope she will be able to get over the loss of the contact to one of her kids. Happy day to everyone!

[Rebel13]

This Mothers' Day (USA) marks two years since I last communicated with my mother in any way. It's been overall such a relief! A bit of FOG crept in this year. I would not be surprised if, as time passes, the terrible memory of our last interaction fades a little, making room for the FOG -- "was it really so bad?" etc. Yes, yes it was, and I'm not going back.

I hope the other members of the Bad Offspring Club(TM) are taking good care of yourselves today and every day, whatever that looks like for you.

[DaisyGirl77]

This is year 10 of not doing up the day for me.  Normally I wouldn't think anything of it, as it's usually just another day for me, but this year's been weird.  A few days ago, my ex-Spirit Mom (story is somewhere else here) posted on her social media page that she'd had a great time with her husband and friend/daughter [name].  My first response was to screenshot it & send it to a mutual friend & crow that I'd been replaced while cackling (it really was funny to us at the time, lol).  But this, in addition to a photo Sis2 unearthed, has me feeling lots of things, but can be summed up in calling it grief, I guess.

I was 14 in that picture.  My sisters & I are wearing true smiles in it.  But, if memory serves, that same photo was taken a few months after I'd hit the end of my rope after yet another rip-roaring fight I'd had with my parents & was done with my home life.  I was walking away.  In fact, I was walking.  I remember it being something like 6 or 7 at night, & it was a bit chilly.  All I had on me was my windbreaker.  I was done.  I just started walking.  I didn't care where I was going as long as it wasn't back home.  I was crying mostly because I wouldn't see the family pets anymore, but I couldn't go back.  I just couldn't deal with it anymore.

Maybe 45 minutes later, while I was working out a way to find shelter for the night & continuing on my walk in the morning, a car ran onto the grass & drove right up to me, stopping about a foot from where I stood.  It was uNM.  She got out of the car screaming at me to get in.  I was terrified.  I'd thought I was going to die.  I was prepared to.  Anything was preferable to this miserable life.  So I got back in.  We went back home.

The ruts her car had made that night remained in that grass for a few years.

That's what that photo reminds me of:  How deeply unhappy I was.  We all were.  One of the few bright spots were the animals we had because I felt I could just be me around them.

Sis2 told me she remembered that night.  She & Sis1 were both in the car with our mother, searching for me.  She told me uNM realized she'd gone too far; her gut told her I wasn't coming back, so she made them get in the car.  They'd driven to a bunch of other places around town before they found me.  She remembers how scared she was, wondering if they'd ever find me, & being relieved when I was found.

It's been 26 years since that photo was taken & it's only now that I'm allowing myself to wonder just how different my life would've been if I hadn't gotten in the car.  If I hadn't been found.  If I'd gone to the police & said I want to be in the foster care system than go back to my home.  I'll never know.

Thanks for listening.  Hugs to y'all.