Mother Hunger

My Original Heartbreak was primitive and profound; No one can break your Heart like your Mother.

Trigger Warning: This essay is about the Dark Mother. Be prepared for reading about child abuse. My intention in writing and sharing my experiences is to contribute to the collective efforts to bring light to the truths of motherhood and the devastating effects of traumatized, unsupported mothers in our world.* I want to be very clear that this is not an attack on my mother or my family. This is an honest, creative expression of my own personal life experience. Mothers are still a kind of untouchable subject, but hopefully soon we, as a society, will be able to talk more openly about the struggle of motherhood and offer support to mothers in need. I hope that my work is supportive of our collective evolution.

This essay includes many a quote from the exquisite Kelly McDaniel, author of ‘Mother Hunger’ (my favorite work thus far on narcissistic mother abuse). Bethany Webster is another Mother Wound specialist who’s work I admire and Teal Swan doesn’t focus specifically on the mother but she has some great insights on the scapegoat and self-hate strategy, her work has helped me understand a lot. Alice Miller’s ‘The Drama of the Gifted Child’ and Karyl McBride’s, ‘Will I Ever Be Good Enough?’ are both excellent reference points if you are seeking more material on this subject. I also want to send a big shout out to Jennette McCurdy, author of “I’m Glad My Mother Died”, who’s bravery and humor inspired me to continue on this path of putting my experiences ‘out there’.

“Until we become sensitized to the small child’s suffering, this wielding of power by adults will continue to be regarded as a normal aspect of human conditioning, for hardly anyone pays attention to it or takes it seriously.” - Alice Miller, The Drama of The Gifted Child

This essay is dedicated to my Inner Child. I love you the most, my sweetest girl.

“If we can put aside mother blaming, our collective understanding of Mother Hunger could guide an inspired effort to support women in preparation for motherhood” - Kelly McDaniel

“Every mother is first a daughter who carries her own wounds.” - Kelly McDaniel

My mother experienced a traumatic relationship with her mother as did my grandmother with her mother, and so on and so forth… one healer I worked with told me he had to go back 16 generations on my mother’s side just to find one healthy soul to work with.

I’m going to start off with some Astrological aspects because Astrology has really helped me make sense of the challenges I’ve faced in my life.

Doomed from the Womb

When your Sun & Moon square Pluto in the 8th House … (Sun is Father, Moon is Mother(& emotions), Pluto is Power(&destruction), Square is a challenge, 8th House is the ruler of Death)

“The problems arising in the present are often fueled by the unconscious, and the 8th house represents our psychic inheritance. The family demons may include death, abuse, emotional manipulation, nasty parental divorce, violence, suicide, or mental illness. According to Jungian astrology, many 8th-house people are born to be the “curse breaker” of the family—the Astrology of Fate. Indeed, if the individual can wield such power, they can also bring profound healing. They have a talent for transforming.”

“The eighth house shows how you will face the big crisis in your life and how you will recover.”

Abuse, emotional manipulation, nasty parental divorce, violence, mental illness… all present in my family. No suicides although my father nearly died from an overdose of Xanax and one night my mother took a gun, walked outside our house onto the street, and threatened to shoot herself. My dad is currently in a hospital facility, for the second time, due to mental health issues.

Black Moon Lilith in Cancer/4th House

“It is a house ruled by the water element, thus carrying a mysterious air with karmic depth, especially concerning the Mother’s bloodline. The patriarchal world tends to condition people with a sense of shame, guilt, and rejection regarding their primal nature and wild desires for creative expression, which is the wild feminine side of Nature’s balance. That is why Lilith, in the home of the Cancer archetype, brings anger to the Mother that lives within us all. Challenges within family life are likely to be experienced by those with this placement. How exactly they unfold is described by the sign Lilith is in. But that the demons to be faced are related to shame, guilt, and rejection in a person’s roots is an expected probability. Feeling rejected by family and having complicated relationships with relatives are not uncommon for those with Lilith in the 4th house. Most of the trauma and pain induced on these people would have happened during their childhood but are likely still affecting their adult life. Especially because Lilith in the 4th house is one of the most demanding positions to deal with due to the big scar she leaves on these people. This causes them not to feel safe in the world, and they might struggle with finding a place where they feel that they belong. Settling down is a challenge that is often solved much later in life. Trauma-bonding, anxiety, and commitment issues are examples of what a lack of inner security can cause. Another indication of a severely wounded Lilith in the chart is when these people did not feel welcomed in their own homes. Especially during their childhood, this could have been a daunting experience. Abuse may have been inflicted on them, indicating that their parents (or one of them) could not provide security and create the protected environment a child needs to grow up in a healthy and balanced manner. The lack of security and peace in their family is likely caused by traumatic experiences in the family and could have been passed on for generations. Rejection and shame could also have been issues in the family. With Lilith in the 4th house, it is likely that one of the parental figures embodied Her archetype powerfully and did not show their child the proper nourishment a parent can give. They may have been overly strong-willed, manipulative, and dominant to maintain their autonomy. This indicates that Lilith in the 4th house is related to transgenerational trauma, and those with this placement were directly confronted with the wounded patterns of the generations in their family. Even though this is hard to deal with, it is also the most incredible opportunity these people can have to face the demons that have haunted their families and transform them into power sources.” - Jaya Margherita https://zodiacstory.com/astrology/lilith-4th-house/

All just to say I fully believe this path of mine was written in the stars. Twas meant to be. Tis why I am here. Karma’s a bitch. I must have been one bad witch in (several) of my past lives.

Sometimes the most important teachers are the ones who show you who you don’t want to be

MATERNAL CRUELTY

“You needed love, I needed you”

One quote always stuck with me when reading about the Dark Mother: “You tried to destroy me, but you failed, and I forgive you”

Alice Miller writes in her book, The Drama of The Gifted Child:

“The humiliated grown daughter, if she has no other means of ridding herself of her burden, will revenge herself upon her own children. She can do so secretly and without fear of reprisals, for the children have no way of telling anyone, except perhaps later in the form of obsessions or other symptoms, the language of which is sufficiently veiled so that the mother is not betrayed. The parent may consciously fight with vigor against cruelty in the world yet carry within themselves an experience of cruelty that they may unconsciously inflict on others. As long as it remains hidden behind their idealized picture of a happy childhood, they will have no awareness of it and will therefore be unable to avoid passing it on. It is absolutely urgent that people become aware of the degree to which this disrespect of children is persistently transmitted from one generation to the next, perpetuating destructive behavior.”

Both my mother and father were born into poverty and raised Catholic by teenage parents & both sets of my grandparents were also born into poverty and raised Catholic by teenage parents… Does anything more need to be said? Shame and addiction have plagued my Ancestors for only God knows how long. The big thing in my family is shame. Catholicism is basically rooted in shame. According to the Catholics you are born with ORIGINAL SIN. In case your unfamiliar with Original Sin, here is Wikipedia’s definition:

“Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (the story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, in a line in Psalm 51:5 ("I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me”)”

Humility vs Humiliation

I was taught it was wrong to love yourself and feel good about your gifts. One of my memories is from when I was so little my feet didn’t touch the ground of my mother's maroon suburban. I was looking out the window and silently prayed to the Angels (when I was little I believed I had Angels with me), “I don’t want to know how beautiful I am”. My little self didn’t want to get in trouble anymore for showcasing my love for myself.

In Catholic school we grew up having to go to confession once a week… I remember I used to just make things up when I went in because I couldn’t think of anything I did wrong. As a kid I also remember knowing there was no way God was punishing. I knew punishment was not love. I was a wise little child. I never consciously subscribed to any of this until my life fell apart for like the 6th time and I thought for sure I was being punished. But really I was just hardcore settling and the Uni was like no, bitch. You will not settle. (I used to think I should be allowed to settle if I wanted to. It reminded me of all those annoying teachers who told me, “You have so much potential.” Eye roll.)

Even the most resourced parents can become overwhelmed with the enormous responsibilities and emotional rollercoaster rides that come with raising children. Factor in poverty and a belief system rooted in shame… it’s got disaster written all over it. They didn’t have a chance.

“Most of us grew up with Patriarchal Mothers in Patriarchal Houses. In the absence of the Matriarchal Life Force of The Great Mother- who supports the Soul’s Bloom- came the Patriarchal Death Mother- who kills every Authentic and Sensitive Spirit in the room. Our mothers failed us because these systems failed them, too. We must find another way through.” - @sarahofmagdalene

So here I was, this tiny little wise Aquarian being, totally shame-free, buzzing about, refusing to keep my clothes on, talking to animals, collecting acorns for squirrels, delighted in my creative expressions, born into a family who, because of their own shame, demonized me. With no one around to see me, love me or protect me, I developed the belief that I was a bad egg. My self-worth became rooted in this belief. Throughout my life I chose relationships where I was not seen, valued or emotionally supported. To say that I was deeply hurt is an understatement. I began to hate myself. I would continue on a self-destructive path until…

After Tower Card moment #8, I finally found the validation I was needing to face why I was the way I was. Kelly McDaniel wrote a book called Mother Hunger that completely changed everything for me. The dark mother is still a taboo subject in our culture and up to this point I was not wanting to own the fact that my mother was my torturer. It’s a harsh truth to bear and I was in denial. I didn’t want it to be true. For me it was a lot less painful to believe that I was the problem, that I was just inherently bad and deserved to be punished… but that’s not the truth. I was a bright, sweet, loving, smart, hilarious, innocent little girl. I had read books on narcissistic mothers before but when I read Kelly’s book it really awakened a part of me that I had kept very hidden away. Mother Hunger gave me the courage and permission to fully own what this part of me already knew but was afraid to say out loud. All this time my Inner Antagonist had been telling me I was overreacting and it was my fault and I must have deserved it and I had nothing to be sad about and I should be grateful… but when I read this book I knew deep in my bones that I wasn’t overreacting, it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t deserve it, I wasn’t making anything up and I wasn’t crazy… it was all true and it was totally natural for me to feel all I had been feeling. And so after a lifetime of running away from my feelings I, at last, allowed myself to feel.

Here are some quotes from Kelly’s incredible book, Mother Hunger:

"Describing an abusive mother is not easy. We don't like to think of mothers who hurt their children. The idea is so abhorrent that our collective denial protects us from the knowledge that it happens. For the most part, we deny that mothers harm their daughters."

“Maternal love is our first experience of what love feels like, and the maternal care we receive informs how we feel about ourselves throughout life.”

The chapter on Third Degree Mother Hunger describes the kind of relationship I had with my mother.

What is Third-Degree Mother Hunger?

“Third-Degree Mother Hunger comes from having a compromised mother who frightened you during the years you depended on her. Instead of nurturing, protecting or guiding you, she yelled, hit, shamed and abandoned you. As a result, your relationship with yourself and others is devastated. Terrible mood swings startle you and anyone close to you. You have periodic bursts of energy but no direction for it. Nights are scary and sleep is difficult. Inside, you carry a haunting confusion about your basic needs and wants and a deep feeling of homelessness that creates a burning need for emotional escape.”

“Those with Third-degree Mother Hunger experienced little if any nurturing, protection, or guidance as children. Their primary caregiver was both a threat and an attachment source. Nature’s adaptation to caregiver threat is an emotional eye patch; a type of blindness that keeps danger (caregiver) close. As adults, individuals with Third-degree Mother Hunger are lonely and misunderstood. Early terror and deprivation branded their hearts (& nervous system) with confusion and pain. Adults living with extreme Mother Hunger may not appear scarred, but early childhood terror silently burned their developing immune system, cognitive abilities, and emotional well-being. It often takes decades to locate and soothe this tender wound. In the meantime, survivors struggle with dissociative traits, toxic shame, and memory difficulty.”

“Third-Degree Mother Hunger shares symptoms with personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. But I don’t consider Third-Degree Mother Hunger a disorder; it’s a profound attachment injury that creates a constellation of symptoms that make life unbearable.”

“Patterns of relationship instability- idealizing someone one moment but in the next experiencing the same person as cruel- are normal for those with Third-Degree Mother Hunger. Fear of abandonment, difficulty sleeping, eating disorders, mood problems, and difficulty finding meaning in life are all part of complex post-traumatic stress and Third-Degree Mother. Addiction to something or someone can feel like a life raft. So can suicidal thoughts and self harm.”

LITERALLY MY LIFE IN A NUTSHELL. No wonder I wanted to die, right?

Therapists usually ask about my dad and my response is always that I don’t remember him being around very much. I remember he and my mother were very unhappy together. My dad is a manic depressive; he has intense highs and intense lows. He just wasn’t there and when he was there he wasn’t emotionally available, so he was never really there. I remember he was a coach for my elementary school basketball team. I remember feeling proud he was our coach although he was tough. I remember we did Indian Princess together. He was always distant but I felt like he at least tried. I remember my dad always being there for dinner but dinner was always quiet and tense, I was focused on finishing my food as soon as possible so I could go to my room. I felt like my dad was on my side even though he wasn’t necessarily protecting me. I felt like if I really needed to, I could talk to him. When my mother handed out extreme punishments I could go sit with my dad and together he and I would agree on a rational consequence. A lot of the abuse from my mother was unseen. My dad didn’t know and I was too young to verbalize what was happening. My dad never overtly hurt me the way my mother did. They say neglect is it’s own wound and I am looking more into that. I don’t remember my dad being cruel when I was little. When I got older things changed but this chapter is about my childhood. As a child, I felt like my dad loved me even though he couldn’t express himself emotionally. Whereas with my mother not only did I feel like she didn’t love me but I felt like she hated me, and not only did I feel like she hated me, but I felt like she wanted to hurt me. Honestly, I felt like she wanted to kill me. As a child, I felt terrified of my mother. Much later on in my life, when I was in my 30’s, my sister said to me, “You’re scared of her” referring to my mom. And she was right, it was true… I was scared of her. I’m still a tiny bit scared of her. It’s taken me years to put together this essay because for a while I thought she might come after me. I have to do a lot of somatic work to move the terror from my childhood years out of my body.

Memories started to flood my being when I read Mother Hunger. It’s covered in notes and page ears and tear drops.

The mother wound was hardest to pinpoint and for many years I didn’t have the memories, the words or the heart to face my reality. Remembering all of this broke my fucking heart. Grief knocked me out. I felt like I would rather die than face all of this. When I started doing inner child work I barely had any recollection before high school. This collection of essay’s I’ve been working on started out as an outline of remembrance, a way for me to reconstruct the beginning of my life. During hypnosis sessions, meditation & kundalini yoga I would receive flashbacks and write them down. I always knew I had a “mean mommy” but never imagined the serious consequences this kind of abuse brings about. I grew up in the “sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you” era. My mom threw me down on the floor and kicked me over and over again in my stomach one time. All the other stuff was hair pulling and pinching, forcibly grabbing my arm, making my bath water too hot and scrubbing me too hard, brushing my hair too hard, harshly drying me off after my bath. Insidious stuff. My grandmother told me my dad called her when I was just an infant, telling her I wouldn’t stop crying. She said when she got to my house I looked like I was starving. She told me my parents didn’t even have enough formula for me in the house & she had to send my dad out to buy some. She told me she looked at my mom and said, “Babies don’t cry like this for no reason. She’s hungry.” When my aunt got married, I was a flower girl in her wedding and was so frightened of my mother that I shit in my pants because I was too afraid to ask her if I could go to the bathroom. When doing work with an Emotion Code practitioner we discovered the main emotions stuck in my system were terror, humiliation, shock & conflict. I wet the bed & sucked on my finger, both of which I was heavily shamed for. She hated my voice. She sternly told me, “don’t call me ‘mommy’”. She fired a babysitter I loved. She was always finding ways to remove from my life that which I loved. Because I was afraid to talk to her face to face I would write her letters sharing how I felt and slip them under her bedroom door. I was so brave. My sweet vulnerability was met with humiliation. She would roll her eyes and make me feel like I was stupid and annoying, completely disregarding my tender emotional state. Sometimes she wouldn’t even acknowledge my letter at all. She made me take off my clothes in front of her when I didn’t want to. She used to scream at me, “I’ll beat you bloody murder!”, while chasing me around the house. When someone was kind and loving with me, or when I felt afraid of what my mother would do to me, I would have these moments of huge emotional expression, tears bursting out of me, deep sobs. I would cry so hard my teachers and other parents were concerned. My mother would act like she didn’t know why I was so emotional. She made it seem like I was overreacting, like I was crazy. She would act all nice, like, “Oh, honey. Stop crying, it’s ok.” No one understood or knew how it was when it was just me and her. She was an expert at hiding her true behavior. One year my cousin came to live with us but didn’t stay very long because he said my mom was too mean. When I was older she nicknamed me “Nat Rat”. I told her I hated it and she didn’t care, she thought it was funny. When I lost my virginity (with my boyfriend, whom I loved), I told her, thinking it might make us closer.She screamed at me, calling me a slut, and proceeded to grab all of my clothes and underwear that she deemed "slutty" out of my closet and drawers, put them all in a trash bag, taking it outside to the trash bin, and then drove off. I went out and took the trash bag out of the trash bin and back into my room. I fought back when I got older. One time she told me I was evil. Her looks were crushing. She would give me these “I’ll kill you” looks. Her eyes haunted me. The stare of hatred is a tough one to shake especially when they come from the person who birthed you. I used to have dreams about her literally murdering me. I would wake up sweating.

I think the absolute worst part is the gaslighting. My mother telling me she didn’t say the thing she said, didn’t do the thing she did, didn’t feel the way she clearly felt. I remember my dad would get home from work and she would say we went to a movie or did this or that, and none of it was true. She told other mothers how we would read books together every night… also not true. I thought I was crazy. Like, did I blackout? She lied about little things, too, like how much something cost. I was confused a lot as a kid. Confused and terror-stricken. Emotional pain is invisible. There were no bruises, nothing to prove what she was doing to me. The need to prove has been this big thing in my life I’ve had to overcome because the truth is- I can’t prove it. If you asked anyone in my family today they would probably tell you they have no idea what I’m talking about, they’d probably tell you I was the problem (#scapegoatlife) and I think this has been the hardest part of my healing journey. I am the only one who really knows. I used to wish to be so lucky to have a parent who would give me a black eye or break a rib so then at least someone would know I was being hurt. I remember one time during a family vacation my Aunt Beth pulled me into a room, hugged me tight & whispered in my ear, “I know your mom is hard on you.” She told me I was strong and that I would be ok. That’s the most validation I’ve ever received from anyone in my family. Unfortunately, this aunt lived in another state and I only saw her this one time. My close friends & boyfriends all knew my mother had serious issues but they were kids, too, and unable to really help me. It’s hard for people to believe mothers can be liars, much less cruel. People want to automatically think all mothers love their daughters. I completely disagree. What I experienced with my mother was not love. Psychological and emotional abuse is the absolute worst because it’s unseen. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I can’t prove it and accept that me knowing is enough. Writing about it helps a lot.

“Unintegrated Dark Feminine Energy is succubus, co-dependent, manipulative, covert, and not operating from a healthy level of self-care, or center personal power. The Dark Feminine in her most integrated forms shows up as our narcissistic mothers! A woman hellbent on being loved to the point of obsession and manipulation to get it! She is a woman afraid to live her truth, so she destroys other women, especially with her projections.” - The Trap Witch

Along with my outline of personal memories, I also started a list of characters I would come across in movies and books that reminded me of my mother:

Medusa from The Rescuers

Betty’s mom in Mona Lisa Smile

Miss Minchin from A Little Princess

Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother

Matilda (a mix of Matilda’s father & Trunchbull)

Aunts from James & the Giant Peach

‘Hush’ mother

Mr. Robot - Elliot’s mother

Maureen's mother from Center Stage

Scar from Lion King

Step-Mother from Mary Shelley

Caragen from Casper the Friendly Ghost

Aunt Elizabeth from Emily of New Moon

Aunt Sheela from Gangubai Kathiawadi

Vivi’s mother from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Professor Dolores Umbridge (from Harry Potter)

Reese Witherspoon to Izzy in “Little Fires Everywhere”

Medea (an Ancient Greek Tragedy written by Euripides) (post-divorce mom)

Zoe from The Dark Side by Danielle Steel

Bonnie’s mom from Big Little Lies

"We know kids who experience horrifying events and adversity don't all develop symptoms of traumatic stress. That's because of one determining factor: if a familiar, consistent adult can help make sense of what's happening, kids can tolerate adversity. But when a mother is the source of fear, her love is the traumatic event. And there is no way to make sense of this. Danger fuses with love. Instincts for self-preservation surrender to the overarching need for bonding, creating what's known as a betrayal bond with the mother. When a mother's love is threatening, your body remembers the pain at a molecular level. An abusive mother generates traumatic stress, because your coping capacity becomes overwhelmed and you are too young to protect yourself. Since a mothers love is your primary defense from adversity, when she is the threat, her care is a profound relational betrayal. To bond with an unkind mother, our merciful imagination works overtime to create a different mother from the one we have. We create one who loves us, one who is taking care of us, one who isn't betraying our vulnerability. Our brain designs a different mother to help us cope with constant fear. Sadly, in service to bonding, these necessary brain changes create long-term personality problems. Surviving Third-Degree Mother Hunger may have left you with automatic dissociative patterns, chronic shame, and the propensity to land in relationships with others who betray you." - Kelly McDaniel

I was forced to bond with the dangerous one.

{The Betrayal Bond}

Getting your internal wires crossed.

In the summer of my eighth grade year, before I started high school, I began throwing up my food. Binge eating was a way for me to cope with unprocessed emotional distress. I would wait until everyone in the house was asleep, sneak into the pantry and gorge on whatever I felt wouldn’t be noticed. A lot of bread. The weight gain caused my already extremely low self esteem to plummet to a level where I could barely even stand myself. Making myself throw up was the next step in my determination to gain control. When I was 14 years old I started drinking heavily. When I was 15 years old I started snorting oxycontin and cocaine. When I was 16 years old I tried to kill myself. My mother told the doctors, when I awoke in the hospital, after the pills I took knocked me out and my stomach had been pumped, that I was doing this all for attention. Maybe I was doing it all for attention. I would see kids in movies who had outward problems and then their parents would see how much they were hurting and things would change. Maybe I thought if I could show how much pain I was in, how deeply I was hurting, then my parents would be able to see me and love me. But instead they blamed me. They made it about me just being a bad person. I started to internalize the blame. No one was on my side. I was 16 and all alone in the world.

My parents had a very ugly divorce when I was seventeen. My dad was sent to the hospital for an overdose of Xanax and my mom was vengeful. At the time drugs were my only way to self-regulate and I started taking serious amounts. Soon after I moved to Los Angeles with my twenty-four year old boyfriend. He paid for my admission into fashion design school, as neither of my parents would, and I got in. Although it seemed I was ripe for a fresh start, my pain body was like a monster incessantly clawing at my back. I took the path of escaping with drugs & guys for over a decade until I had a nervous breakdown after the end of my last relationship, a relationship that started with him raping me, and was forced to stop and take a serious look at what I was doing.

“You know when I was a little girl my mother used to dress me up like a little doll. And I was always a little doll waiting for someone to play with me. You know when you’re empty inside, and have no direction, you’ll end up in some crazy places, right, but you’ll still be lost.” - The White Lotus, Season 2