The 16 year old pregnant teen; everyone judges. The breakup. You can picture it. The hate that comes not only from people at school, but from within the household she is living. Junior year starts in August and she just had her baby on August 3rd. Shit. How to be a mother, a mom, a 16yo girl, woman? To get kicked out of her house just because she wants to have intimacy with someone, so it’s anyone.
To get taken to a mental ward and be separated from her child, to find out there’s nothing wrong with her, she is simply human. You can imagine the story she believes about herself now. To have a baby in August before her junior year, to then be sent away to a girls home her senior year with her child. The confusion, the pain, the strength, the trauma. Which then turns into an utmost tragic story where she continues to seek love from any place she can. Didn’t go to college, got married (more than once) and had five children. A life of trauma, hurt, and I’m sure moments of joy.
But, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her be joyful. I have seen her survival, I have seen her abused, I have experienced her abandonment, I have felt her love; never her joy. My goodness how I hope she has experienced joy.
At the ripe age of 10 I discovered what leather couches feel like when an old white man is sitting across the room from you in silence. Waiting for me to say something, anything. A thing he can say to my dad that might help him understand how to help me. But what do I, a 10 year old girl have to say to a stranger about not living with her mommy anymore? Me, a 10 year old girl who just had her whole world ripped from under her feet? A little girl who lost her little sister, her home, her friends, her family. Me, a girl who aims to please anyone around her afraid to make her dad and stepmother upset? What do I say? I don’t even understand what is happening. So there I sat on a sticky leather couch in dim light, with a man I knew as a worship pastor. Quiet as a mouse, tears streaming down my face with no voice to be heard.
When I meet with 10 year old me, Natalie, I am confronted with immense sadness, and a depth of grief I will never be able to explain. I am met with antagonizing confusion, and a little girl who wants to be heard. A little girl who wants to be snuggled by her mommy, and to hug her little sister. A girl who wants to love everyone around her so she abandons herself, and seeks love wherever she can find it. A 10 year old girl who lost her mother and no one understood.
There were times in my younger life when my mom wouldn’t show up to our visitation, making me believe she didn’t care about me. Like I was an afterthought – the little girl that begged for snuggles after bedtime because I couldn’t fall asleep without her, began to resent her. She became the villain in my life. There were years that went by where my mother and I didn’t speak. Where I didn’t see my little sister, or my little brother. By no fault of my own, but that was something I wouldn’t learn for a long time.
I yearned for the mother daughter relationships I saw my friends have, the ones I saw on TV. Why couldn’t I have that? I looked for the love of mothers all around me always feeling empty and desolate. I internalized not having motherly love into a belief that I wasn’t enough, or deserving of being loved. I searched for this love in boyfriends, friendship, God, music – but nothing was ever enough. I “graduated” “therapy” (Christian counseling more times than I can remember). No one was helping me repair my relationship with my mother, and I was under the impression that she didn’t care about me, or want me.
In college I realized that my longing for a mother in my life was no longer avoidable. I’d call her and we would talk on the phone about anything, about nothing. I confided to her in ways I never had with anyone else because I knew she wouldn’t judge me. Most times when I would hang up the phone, I would cry. Tears for the confusion I felt, for the years that went without me speaking to her, saltiness on my cheeks for the relationship with her that I wanted and not the one I had. I know in her own way she was trying to have a relationship with me; broken, fragile, and completely imperfect – but she was trying. It broke my heart when she told me she wasn’t coming to my graduation, because she didn’t get me there, my dad did. It broke my heart that I wasn’t getting her support; it broke for her too. That she missed my girlhood, my teen years, and my young adulthood.
I’ve always known my mother wound.
I poured my heart out to strangers and loved ones about it. I’m thankful today. I can know in the deepest parts of me that I am enough as I am. I can understand why my mom couldn’t love me the way I needed her, why she wasn’t there.
Mending my mother and I’s relationship hasn’t been easy, and for the longest time wasn’t something I was sure I wanted. It’s not typical and it comes with flaws. This love for my mother is tender and delicate and confusing – but she’s my mother.
Mothers and daughters have existed since the beginning of the human species. Sometimes mothers aren’t blood. Some have two mothers, some have four, some have none. The mother wound is a hole that never closes, a bruise that never fades. Everyone’s experience is different, and mine goes even further than this. It’s a wound effecting every aspect of life, and influences me in ways I don’t know. I’m thankful to know I am enough, and am in a place right now to be a peace with the grief.
I’ve been sitting on this post for a long time because it doesn’t feel “finished”. And that’s true. My journey and experience with this mother wound isn’t finished, but for now this is what I have to say. This is a constant in my life, and healing is never complete. This is gut wrenching to write, to talk about. The emotional labor is intense, and this is all I have for now.
This journey isn’t linear – in a world of unknowns I hope this can bring you peace. Peace in knowing you’re not alone, knowing you’re loved, knowing you’re enough.
Little you, you’re enough. Mother or not.
*I have direct consent from my mother to share this story*
