I still haven't come to terms

[CodependentApple]

I'm trying to write poems while thinking of my "narcissistic traits" mother. My therapist encourages me to write poems about my relationship with her. (I've always done therapy poetry.) Sometimes while we're talking about my relationship with mother, my therapist will talk about my mother as if she doesn't love me. I guess I'm still trying to hold onto that idea: ie mother is messed up but she does love me (even if it's conditional). She says she loves me but I know that what she wants most is me to say it back to her so that she will get the attention and feeling of being loved.

She is so broken and she doesn't realize how that brokenness echoes down from her ancestors into her and then down to her children. I guess I'm fighting against the urge to try to heal her. (She spent my childhood ensuring that I was empathetic by forcing me to suss out all her bad moods.)

I need epiphanies: I can't heal her; it's not my job to heal her; I can't rely on her to love me in way that undamaged parents do, instead I need to love myself.

I don't even like my mother much but I still wish she loved me. Anyone else caught in that feeling?

Thanks for reading.

Codependent Apple

[NarcKiddo]

This resonates. My narc mother has always said she loves us, although, interestingly, she never uses the first person "I love you". It is always something like "the mother hen loves her chickens". I have come to the conclusion that she is frightened of saying "I love you" because we might not say it back.

The topic of love is difficult. I was brought up believing that she loved me and, therefore, that her brand of love is actual love. I think her protestations of love were all the more convincing because she believed them. There are generations of trauma in our family and her mother was utterly poisonous, so she would have no clue what actual mother love entails.

I don't actually wish my mother loved me, and I don't like her at all. The reason I don't wish for her love is because I do actually believe I already have it. It is broken, selfish, tainted and grim, but it is the best she can do. I am trying to have the grace to recognise that she cannot do any better, to grieve what I never had and can never have, and move on. That is way easier said than done, especially when I am still in some sort of contact with her.

So in your case it may be worth exploring with your therapist how you feel when your therapist suggests your mother doesn't love you. That may be true, but not fully true. It is possible your mother is giving you all she is capable of. Whatever the truth of the matter, you are the one who needs to come to terms with it. You are right to recognise that you cannot heal her and that it is not your job to even try. I get the feeling from your post that you recognise that logically but maybe you aren't quite there emotionally. I hope your therapist can help you with that.

[xredshoesx]

so much truth here.  CD it's def worth exploring with your T.  i like how your work includes generational trauma and the fact that you have endured not only the abuse of your mother, but also endured the trauma of her being abused by others.

i'm 52, NC since i was 21/22.    my biological mother is uPD and lost custody of me for the first time when i was 3.  we've never had a relationship where i felt secure in her ability to parent.  i like what NK said about our uPD mothers and they are loving us to the their fullest capacity and it's something i need to remind myself of a lot these days as i become a middle aged woman.  something that helped me in my healing over the years was to find female role models of who i would have liked to have as a mother and then using them as a template for how i reparented myself. 

be gentle with yourself today!

[moglow]

Ah the subject of love ... Do they, don't they, is this what love looks like?? Mine says things like, I love my children but I don't love what they do (we're all in our 60s and she still quantifies it as if we're misbehaving children). Or it's over-effusive ooey gooey emojis in text (when she's feeling particularly lonely or needy).

She has this idea of standards and traditions and expectations she's never shared. She certainly hasn't acted loving or instilled in any of us the concept of unconditional motherly love or acceptance.

It's all words and image for mother, saying the "right" thing at the right time in the right way. Any deviation from that image in her mind and there's a cleanup needed on aisle 3. It's all superficial.

At the root of it, I honestly don't think mother loves. Not herself, not her family, not at all. She takes and takes, has little or nothing to give and doesn't try. I truly believe she's empty, an abyss of undying need.

This knowledge hasn't been easy to accept but it truly is what it is. And I survive -now, thrive!- without her love, I always have.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hello CodependentApple,

Great question.

I'll share what I've learned about this through my journey so far. First I'll say that it is very normal to wish our mothers loved us - and for us to imagine being loved by our mothers. These are very human feelings to have.

My own mother was not safe, which messed me up. The person who was tasked with making my world safe, was the person least likely to provide that safety. This turned things on their head for me. When I needed safety to explore (i.e. grow), I could not go to her. Unless I wanted to be yelled at.

Therapists might want us to consider the limits our parents had / have. They might say "your mom doesn't love you" as a strategy - to get us to think about how our parents treat us.

But it would be better if they just looked at how we feel, and how our parents behave, rather than using such amorphous terms like "love". You or I could end up in an endless argument with any therapist, about whether some other person in our life "loves" us or not.

This is my take on this: Because I don't know what they feel inside of them, I can't know if my parents ever loved me or not. All I can know is how they treated me, how they talked to me, what they chose to do and didn't do. Maybe sometimes they did feel love - maybe they've never felt love for me. In my case, I really can't say and have no way of ever finding out.

That said, when a parent is safe, they do certain things, and if someone is not safe - i.e. due to mental illness - they might criticize us, verbally belittle us, talk down to us, dismiss us, run over our boundaries and so on. So then if that verbally abusive parent says "I love you", it doesn't mean they are safe for me to be close with. "I love you" is just way too easy to say, but being safe is something they can actually do (or not do).

After many years of working to recover from my FOG, I couldn't tell you if my parents ever loved me or not. What I do know is that they couldn't listen to me, respect me, provide safety, and were not interested in protecting me, back when I was a kid. Something they have not taken responsibility for.

A lot of therapists would hear that and then tell me "they didn't love you".

At this point in my FOG recovery work, I have been NC for many many years. I've come to terms with the fact that how I feel, is important. And how my parents feel, is no longer my burden (it was as a child).

You wrote that your mother ensured you were empathic so you could suss out her bad moods. Yep! Mine did that as well. This is a great insight that will help you understand your recovery work.

Now I can look back on that and I know that she was exploiting me and parentifying me.

Here in the present, I don't have a parent to call if I've had a good day, a bad day, or any sort of day at all. I wish I had that. This is what I feel, in terms of the question you asked. I wish I had a mother who could listen to me talk about my day. I don't have that. And I wish I did.

I do have the feeling of "I wish I had a parent who cared about me". I see this feeling as very normal, very much part of the human condition. Every time I have that feeling, I have to use what I've learned from therapy / therapists, to help myself through it. Like you do with your poetry.

You wrote that you can't heal your mother. That is what I believe too. I can't heal my parent. I've given myself lots of time to consider what I would have healed in my parent if I could.

There's some good resources out there about damaged / narc mothers and how they try to use their kids to heal them. And how important it is for their kids to disentangle. Jerry Wise's videos have helped me understand a lot of this.

You will keep healing from this.

Trees

[bloomie]

CodependentApple - what profound and difficult questions you are exploring. I am imagining the comfort your poetry is bringing you and am so glad you have that to turn to.

Someone recently told me that I cannot tell them if they love me or not. That is theirs to determine. That got me thinking... while that may be true, I cannot determine or define their emotions, I am entitled to discern if their consistent behaviors and words over time meet the threshold, for me, of reasonably emotionally mature loving behavior.

My own mother proclaimed how much she loved her children and from the same mouth proclaimed if their had been effective birth control she never would've had any of us. She never wanted to be a mother.

So, while she could wrap herself in her own truth that she loved us, always had, always would, her choices aligned with her second declaration. She never wanted us.

Maybe you and others will agree that the words: "I love you" from certain people have truly lost their meaning and are secondary to the reality of how we are treated, spoken of and to, considered and devalued.

I do know that my mother knew how to love. How to take very good care of someone. How to make sure someone had every single thing they ever wanted or needed. How to protect someone with her life. How to build up and promote someone's talents, abilities, inner and outer beauty. How to make sure someone was safe and had proper food and clothing. And that someone was her. Only and always her.

Call it what you will CodependentApple, but it seems your own mother's "love" has hurt you and brought you to a place where you are no longer willing to focus on her and what she may need, but are turning your focus to the truth of your experiences and healing from them. Keep sharing and coming back!

[olivegirl]

My Queen/Witch Mother freely used the word "love."

 Like the word, "sorry," saying the word "love" gave her license to do whatever she wanted bc hey she "loves" us.

I knew from a very young age that my mother did not love me and that knowledge saved me because I knew not to trust her (she gave bad advice intentionally in order to sabotage her daughters.)

English is not my first language.  In my mother tongue, the term to express a non-romantic love and one that is used with children is "ti voglio bene."  Meaning "I wish you well," that is "I wish good things for you."

Well!  My mother would utter the word "love" and then backstab me with false accusations, scapegoating me to feel powerful.

I learned from a very young age that my mother is a liar and did not love me at all.

Did I feel unlovable?  Sometimes.  But I always knew that she did not love me nor had the capacity to do so.

I am grateful for that insight as it led me to the choosing of a truly loving partner.