Without Kids, I Might Have Gone ‘No Contact’ With My Mom
A couple of weeks ago I FaceTimed my husband while he was out of town for work. Our toddler was next to me and at first he was excited to see his dad, but very quickly he started crying out for “Grandma!” My youngest son, H., is obsessed with his grandmother. She lives just a ten-minute drive away, but she often FaceTimes us — which is why he assumed she was somewhere just out of the front-facing camera’s frame — and he grabs the phone out of my hands. When he does see her in person, he runs into her arms like they’re long-lost friends just reunited after many years apart.
It’s beautiful to see — but like anything with moms, it’s complicated.
My own relationship with my mother is far less straightforward than my toddler’s. Over the years, mixed in with all the good stuff, we’ve had tense standoffs, angry blowouts, screaming matches, and at times, like many out there, no contact.
I’ve lost count of how many women I’ve seen on my “For You” page describing how they’ve cut ties with family, offering up a laundry list of boundaries that were crossed and teaching others how to “grey rock” “toxic” people in their own lives. That’s easier said than done, especially now, as the holidays loom and families feel pressure to get together. Yet another merry season of sweeping discomfort under the rug and swallowing lingering resentments.
One of those TikToks I came across was Emily Ma’s. She’d posted a list of ways she escaped an “emotionally immature parent” and wrote out the steps she’d taken to finally move out and go no contact. The joy on her face in that image she shared reminded me of how I felt when I’d first left my own family’s chaotic home at 18. I was compelled to reach out to her to talk — over Zoom, an inherently awkward platform for intimate conversation, but still — about what inspired her to cut off contact with her mom. As she told me about navigating life without her mom, of dealing with the hurt, of feeling shamed for her emotions, of being given the silent treatment at random, and how what finally pushed her to stay no contact was that she didn’t want to put her own children through that kind of treatment, I started to cry.
When I was in my early 20s, I was dating someone pretty seriously and as we started to talk about moving in together, my deeply religious mom was mortified that I would shack up with someone before marriage. Culturally, it was a no-no and she struggled with how to navigate the fact that I wasn’t interested in abiding by the moral standard set by her religion. After several heated conversations, she stopped talking to me. It wasn’t new for us; as a child I was often given the silent treatment by my mom. At the hint of any minor infraction, she would suddenly ice me out. So I was used to short intervals of the silent treatment already, but this time it felt more permanent. In that moment, she’d chosen the appearance of propriety over me and it felt like I’d been abandoned.
It was as devastating as you can imagine, to have your mother cut you off just as you’re starting to figure out how to live in the world, often in desperate need of her guidance or support. It was an entire year until we spoke again, and though she asked for forgiveness for how she’d handled everything, rebuilding our relationship was difficult, took years, and even then I was immensely wary about being hurt again.
Despite saying I had forgiven and forgotten, it was a wound that I never really let heal, and though we were “normal” on the surface, I kept her at arm’s length. I was “low contact.”
And then I had a baby.
Like Emily, part of me was nervous about this beautiful baby of mine ever experiencing that kind of pain, but rocked by the physical, emotional, and psychological changes of motherhood, I had a new empathy for where my mom was coming from and what she was dealing with when she had three young children, at a very young age, in a totally foreign country.
She was trying to parent us just as she herself was learning how to navigate life. And often her own difficult upbringing was the only roadmap she had.
I’d already promised myself I would do better with my own kids, but forgiving her and giving her a chance to do better herself felt like an important part of that process. I hope when they’re older my kids will extend me the same empathy and forgiveness for whatever mistakes I may make, that they will also grow to see me as a real person, someone whose flaws are as deserving of love and generosity as her virtues.
Still, ours is a tenuous relationship, my guard is up, even when I’m in need of mothering, like when I got COVID at seven months pregnant and more than anything I wanted my mommy.
We’ve talked at length about how it felt to be on the receiving end of her silence and how any hint of that same treatment is a red line. As we have families of our own, it feels especially necessary to make clear what we will and won’t accept and how we want our kids to be treated. If ever I felt my kids were made to feel ashamed or isolated by her, I wouldn’t hesitate to go no contact. Still, I see how hard she works to be a good grandmother, and she is. I’m moved by the relationship she’s built with my kids, the one they’re building with each other and the opportunity for change and renewal inherent in this generational shift. The kids beg me to go to grandma’s house and when I ask them what they love about going there, they tell me that they get to be wild and crazy, that grandma lets them be silly.
Knowing that they get to be so utterly themselves with her, seeing her being tender to them, holding them, and fretting over them to eat or put on warm socks heals something in me, allowing me a glimpse back into the moments that were good between us, a reminder of the gentle mothering I did receive. I get to see her through their eyes and what I see there is love.
It wasn’t easy to get here; I had to not only forgive but truly move forward with honesty and optimism, but I carry that optimism into my own parenting and I think it makes me a better mom. I refuse to shame my kids, to ever make them feel fearful of being themselves, or of feeling they have to be “good” to be loved. When I fuck up, I say sorry, and when they call me out on a broken promise or a moment of hypocrisy, I thank them for holding me to my word. They never worry that my love can be as easily withheld as given.
When my husband got back from his trip, he and our toddler had a great big reunion, and as he danced around with joy that dad was back, he yelped, “Grandma!” A word that, in the moment, felt like love.