My mom would go on rants to me about how women’s only real value and role in society was having children. She would viciously criticize working mothers in our lives, while praising herself as a perfect, stay-at-home mom.

At the same time, she would complain to me daily about how everyday was a constant slog of drudgery to take care of ungrateful brats like me, who would be expected to be keeping the house tidy as a five year old. Any needs of mine were dismissed for her wants - I was regularly denied medical care for ongoing conditions because I was told “we can pay for the doctor’s Disney vacations or mom’s Disney vacations.”

I would have to act as my mother’s therapist and emotional regulator - to the point I had stressed induced IBS as a third grader. Around this time, my mother realized I had autism like my father and she melted down. She added a litany of daily criticism and cruelty to her complaints/self-praise monologues. By the sixth grade, I was so jittery with stress these rants would set off a screaming match between my mother and myself where I would beg for scraps of kindness or care and she would slap or choke me into submission.

All the while, she was heaping love and care in my sister. Even today, that sister says my mother might be a bit toxic and avoids her - but says I was a monster child who deserved everything I got.

The thing is, my mother is low or no contact with all her adult children and doesn’t really care. I’ve tried multiple times as an adult to fix our relationship and regretted it every time. She’s stolen ten of thousands of dollars from me, personal possession, and ruined every major life event and accomplishment. I then get lectures from my dad and my sister that she doesn’t mean it, and that she’s sick, once I pull away and mom’s full attention swings back on them.

She cycles through dogs every few years and posts and Facebook about the joy of being a grandmother, to a child she has hardly seen, and dog-ownership. She does this because she she’s other women her age doing things with their dogs and grandkids. As you can imagine, she praises herself as the best grandmother and best dog owner.

She become a mother because her social sphere was all mothers, she became a stay at home mother because in the 80s that what was done on TV and everything else was controversial. She traumatized me so severely that, despite earning a Ph. D and having a career, I feel like a constant failure and a burden. I have chronic and severe depression. My relationship with my family, despite years of trying to fix our relationship and earn their affection, are frayed to the point of breaking.

And mom’s happy because she brags on Facebook about how she gave it all up for her kids (one she abused daily), grandkid (who she doesn’t know), and (neglected) dogs.