i'm sorry, mom.

an exploration of my relationship with my mother

Published on UC’s The Gargoyle

Carly Campbell

As a child, the branches of my family enveloped me, and I couldn’t tell if it was a loving embrace or suffocation. 

Now, I am living with a roommate, working on my own passion projects, and building a life of my own. Whenever I recall memories of my childhood, it comes from me looking back at my roots, not from being consumed by their hold on me.

A quote by Bonnie Burstow in Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence changed my perspective completely on the idea of a family, and exposed the cold, harsh truth of my relationship with each of my parents:

"Often father and daughter look down on the mother together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are and cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother's fate."

This challenged me to investigate my role as a daughter. Have I looked down on my own mother? Have I been treating her the same way my father always had?

Often, father and daughter look down on mother together.

My father, with his two daughters, had always wanted a son. I grew up as “daddy’s little girl,” proudly carrying this title and wearing it as a badge of honour. Every action I made would scream “Papa, look at me!”, as I moulded myself into the son he always wanted. He used to proudly proclaim that I was nothing like my mother.

They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point.

My father called my mother stupid. Not fun. He invited me to laugh at, and never with, the buzzkill. I soaked his words in like the sponge that I was. Mother would always nag. Scolding my father to stop drinking, or picking a fight with him which would drive him to anger. She was crazy for being frightened of the world, which was seemingly the sole reason she forbade me to hang out with my friends at the park or ride my bike after dark. Mother became the enemy.

They agree that she is not as bright as they are and cannot reason as they do.

I developed resentment for my mother from a young age. I partially blame my fathers words for that, but it was also as a form of self-defence. I remember feeling the weight of her eyes watching me, as she honed in on my flaws. Small critiques within small talks turned into sharp jabs. My hair was too messy, my dresses too wrinkled, and my speaking voice too loud. The message was clear; I wasn't feminine enough. I wasn’t enough at all. She would compare my appearance to the appearances of other women in my family like my cousins, or my sister. I was frustrated that she cared about my appearance more than my opinions, upset that she never seemed to feel proud of who I was, and constantly felt pressure from her to be better.

Mother would never love me for who I was.

Why did she fail to see me?

As I shrunk away from her, I inched closer to my father. The resentment I had for my mother turned into resentment for femininity as a whole. I ate the words of the patriarchal doctrine for breakfast.

I learned to hate women before even realising that I was one.

The black hole of my resentment had grown insatiable, my kind eyes turned cruel as I looked down at my mother and proclaimed, proudly: “I am nothing like you.” I would be embarrassed to be anything like you.

I had finally become my father’s son.

But the arrogant view I held of my mother, the one I used to belittle and demean her — it was only a matter of time before it would be pointed towards me. No matter how “masculine” I tried to be, I would always be seen as a woman first, a person second.

There was an inherent illness I have only now noticed in my relationship with my mother. It was not that she and I were so different, it's that we did not see each other. How could I love my mother when I only saw her through the eyes of others?

My mother is a woman, but she was once a girl. Growing up in a Christian, Hispanic household taught her that marriage was the only way to leave the home, and that being a mother was her one purpose. She had a role to fulfil and she grew fond of her sole option. How could I have failed to realise she had hopes and dreams?

In amending the skewed perception of my mother, I had to take a step back from looking at her through the tarnished lens of my relationship with her. Then her actions were illuminated not entirely as her own, but as actions crafted in the environment in which she was raised. She only attempted to raise me how she had been taught to raise a daughter. Her goal was to develop her daughter into a wife, the same way her mother had done to her.

I love my father, but he's changed as I age. As a woman, I can't help but notice the inadequate way he loves my mother, in the way he fails to see her outside of this typology of wife and condemns her love as if it is a barrier to his freedom.

I am more feminine now, and I care less about impressing him. I don’t hold back from critiquing his behaviour. “You're just like your mother,” he had told me now, more than once. I'm no longer daddy’s little girl. It's obvious I am one of them: a Woman. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother's fate.

My mother is beautiful. My mother is kind, dorky, and awkward. My mother never throws out birthday cards. My mother loves snoopy and shitty rom-coms and me, if I let her.

I couldn't love her because I couldn't see her. I fell victim to the environment which would only paint me in the same way. In my subtle hatred, I perpetuated a patriarchal valuation of women as lesser. I'm sorry, Mom. You loved me in the best way that you could.