All I Wanted Was For My Mother To Love Me

For most of my life, I longed for my mother to love me. I craved a mother-daughter relationship like I saw on television shows. I wanted her to be my best friend.

Our relationship was never that way. I have always had a solid relationship with her, but we always had tension and distance due to our circumstances.

I decided to write a novel to examine my relationship with my mother. I had hoped it would give me insight as I had to go deep into her thoughts and feelings to write her effectively.

When I reached the halfway mark in my novel, I concluded that my mother always loved me. I just didn’t see it. That was partly because my grandma tried to steal my connection to her from her.

My Mother Had The Cards Stack Against Her

When I was 2, my father died after a painful battle with lung cancer. He never smoked, either. He was only 29.

Just before my father’s death, my brother, Jason, died. He was only 2 months old. He had multiple health problems. His death crippled my mom emotionally.

Four months after my dad died, my grandpa passed away. My mother was very close to her dad. She found him lifeless on his couch. She recalls hearing him from another room breathing his last breath. He had a fatal heart attack on Easter Sunday.

My mother turned to drugs to numb the pain of her multiple losses. She was only 22 and experienced more loss than most of us suffered in our whole lives.

I was an active toddler. She wanted to give me the best life possible. My mom met a former cop, and they got married quickly. He moved us to another state and abused me severely. My mom participated, at least I suspect. But the end result was my mom lost custody of me to her mother.

After losing custody, my mom worked hard to regain custody. Eventually, the courts allowed a 50/50 custody agreement between her and my grandma. She had obtained a well-paying job and a spacious home. She purchased everything she needed for me. She was on track to get full custody of me.

My grandma received a letter to notify her that in two weeks, my mom would get custody of me. She would lose custody and knew it would be difficult to see me.

Instead of trying to work out a visitation schedule with my mom, she decided to kidnap me. She moved me to another state and kept her whereabouts a secret.

My mom was beside herself. She wasn’t sure what to do. While she had a job, it wasn’t paying her enough to hire a private investigator to locate me. The pastor at her church agreed to pay for a PI. After several months, she finally found me.

Our Emotional Reunion

My mom drove to Amarillo, Texas, to see me. We had moved there to help my Aunt Linda with her terminally ill daughter, Marsha. She said when I saw her, my face lit up, and I ran to her. I touched her face and said, “It’s you, mama. It’s really you.”

My grandma had hired a lawyer in Texas to draft custody orders. She lied about my mom and had a judge sign off on the bogus order. My mom couldn’t take me home. She wanted to, but she could get in trouble if she did.

Over the years, I saw my mom regularly. We talked weekly, and she visited often. She was never absent or not around. Every time she would leave, Grandma would drill me to tell her everything my mom told me.

We moved back to Kansas after Marsha, my cousin, passed away. I began to see my mom often again. This went on for years. Grandma tried to poison me against my mom, but it never worked. I believed my mom was a good person, so no amount of trashing would change that.

As I grew up, I have had my share of fallouts with my mom. I have been angry and often asked her about the abuse I suffered. There was a time when I felt angry that she no longer wanted to discuss it. After going through my own CPS nightmare, I finally understand her.

I Walked In Her Shoes

In 2018, I lost custody of my children. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did. I had ended my abusive marriage, and I was not in a good head space. My ex refused to allow me to have 50/50 custody. I moved out with my four older children, leaving the youngest three with my ex.

My ex called 911, claiming he wanted to end his life. They took my kids to foster care, refusing to allow me to have custody. I tried. They told me I could get custody of them, but one of the case workers thought I was an “emotional risk” to them. In the end, my nutjob ex-husband obtained custody.

My ex tricked CPS into believing he was a victim and I was the crazy one. The judge told me in February (with the new case) that he couldn’t believe that my ex obtained custody of the kids. If it had been his courtroom, I would have gotten the kids, even if I was struggling with my mental health.

I took it in stride. I used this time to work on myself. I sought therapy to recover from the domestic violence relationship. I started writing more and began to support myself.

I knew eventually I would get my moment to shine. A year later, my ex started allowing me to see the kids. I saw them monthly for an afternoon or evening. I wasn’t enough, but I would take it. I used this time to bond with my kids and prove I loved them and wanted them back.

In 2022, my ex-husband lost custody after a domestic violence incident with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend. The kids were flung back into foster care, and I had to fight for them again.

I did everything required. I jumped through all the endless hoops. And by June 2023, I had custody 50% of the time. On November 8, 2023, they came home to me for good. The judge ordered no parent time for their dad. I had sole legal and physical custody of them.

I Finally Understand Her

This whole experience made me understand my mother. She went through a similar experience with her mother. The only difference is she never got a second chance. She never regained custody. She had to listen to the family gossip and trashing her character.

I realized that my mother always loved me. She had her own mental health struggles after dealing with so much loss. After years of anger over feeling unloved, it was liberating to discover my mom always loved me.

My mother is a kind, gentle, and compassionate woman. She is a brilliant artist and a published children’s writer and poet. She won a $25K prize for one of her poems.

She never deserved any of the hate I threw at her. But like any mother, she took it because she loved me enough to love me even when my behavior was ugly.

Have you ever realized you were looking at a situation all wrong? How did you make it right? Please share your thoughts with me in the comments section below. Remember to follow me to read more of my content.

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Originally published on Medium.