by Sarai Johnson
It can be difficult to describe my mother. She can be cartoonishly cruel (like telling me I needed to wear a girdle when I was twelve). But I also hear she’s a great conversationalist. People sometimes describe her to me as “charming” and “sweet.” I think my mother saves most of her barbs for me.
In 2027, GRACE & GRAVITY will be edited and published by the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Submissions for Volume 12: Grace in Justice are open through November 15th.
When I was growing up, she spent a lot of time criticizing the way I loved her. I wasn’t grateful. I never bought her the right gift. If I didn’t love her correctly, how could she love me? If my own mother didn’t think I was good enough, who would? At times, I protected myself by hurting others before they could hurt me. Other times, I accepted bad behavior because I felt I deserved it. This is my “Mother Wound.”
The Mother Wound has no single definition, but I think of it as the way that a mother’s own pain can shape the way her daughter comes of age and participates in the world.
For years, I’ve worked at healing my Mother Wound. I’ve been in therapy for over a decade. Early on, I was assigned Mothers Who Can’t Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, which helped me understand my mother better. I spent months, sometimes years, not talking to her, protecting the wound from further agitation. Over time, I developed some empathy for my mother. But I felt stuck there. Though I was able to forgive her, I still couldn’t understand why she had taken out so much of her pain on me.
I’ve tried writing about the relationship exactly as it is, about the profound hurt and disappointment that things never changed and, in fact, seemed to get worse over time. But it didn’t bring me the clarity or the momentum I wanted.
I wrote my first novel, Grown Women, to figure out how to move forward. Instead of creating characters based closely on me or my mother, I came up with characters who could help me answer particular questions. One question was what happens when you let hurt and anger get in the way of having a meaningful relationship, as my mother does with me. So, I wrote about Charlotte, a mercurial woman haunted by a fraught relationship with her mother, who passes along much of that hurt onto her own daughter.
But it was writing Corinna, Charlotte’s scrappy and optimistic daughter, that gave me the courage to become a mother myself. She helped me think about the myriad answers to the question: What can a wounded person do with their pain? In the book, Corinna is the one who fights to undo generational curses. She doesn’t always get it right. Some readers might feel she makes huge mistakes, but she manages to raise a bruised but brave daughter of her own and works on healing herself in the process. I want to do the same, but hopefully with fewer bruises to my daughter.
It wasn’t enough for me to simply move on from my history with my mother. I had to confront and attempt to fix it. I had to do something with the anger instead of letting it fester, which, for me, meant both writing the book and becoming a mother.
When I invited my mother to my daughter Margaux’s second birthday party, I didn’t think that she’d come. The relationship has been strained for over a decade. I know, in her eyes, I am to blame for the rift, that the fracture is due to my ingratitude and selfishness, not her judgment or insensitivity. So, I was surprised when she and my father RSVP’d yes. I hoped this time would be different. Maybe this time she wouldn’t say anything hurtful. She might even have something kind to say about me, or even to me. Of course, it didn’t work out like that.
On the afternoon of the party, there were hay bales in the front yard, a barnyard-themed banner over the front door, and signs in a Western font on practically every surface including a plate of cornbread shaped like little pigs. As people started to arrive, so did a woman with a car full of animals for a petting zoo. I was wearing pink gingham, my husband wore red gingham, and my daughter wore overalls.
Margaux had just gotten up from a nap and was adjusting to a house full of people. My mother reached to take her from my hip. Margaux physically shied away from her, but my mother persisted. I have clear memories of feeling shy around strangers and my mother making me feel ashamed of that feeling: “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” she would say, or she might have physically shoved me towards someone. That shame only made me turn further inwards and shut others out. Because I want my daughter to feel safe and celebrated, I told my mother to stop. As it turns out, that helps me feel safe and celebrated too.
Having protected my daughter, I felt steeled against the rest of my mother’s attacks. During the party, my mother was asking people how they knew me and my husband, apparently for the purpose of loudly implying that no one was there to see me and that I have no friends. My mother’s love always felt conditional and, at the party, it was clear that I hadn’t met the conditions. In many ways, my mother’s brutality had worn me smooth, to the point that her words slipped off me.
It’s true that I have not been genuinely tested by my relationship with Margaux. Because she is a toddler, she does have the occasional tantrum, refuses to do as she’s asked, or requests that I make her a quesadilla and then refuses to eat it. But she hasn’t yet stolen money, wrecked a car, told a wild lie, or flunked a class. Loving her unconditionally will only get harder from here, I think. And I will make mistakes.
But I know it will be better to love her for who she is than criticize her or wish she were different. It’s something I’m glad to have figured out now. Otherwise, in thirty years it could easily be me walking around my granddaughter’s birthday party making snide remarks.
I also realize that I’ve had more opportunities to heal than my mother. Though I don’t have everything, I have much more than she did at my age. I’m more educated. I live in a major metropolitan area. I have my own career and goals of my own. I have a strong support system to help me with my daughter. I’m fighting my own battles with student loan debt, a high cost of living, and balancing motherhood and marriage with my career, but I am privileged in comparison to my mother. It’s easier to focus on the happiness and enrichment of a little person when all of your own needs are being met. It’s also easier to heal when you have the resources to do so.
In spite of my mother, Margaux had a great day on her birthday and so did I. She loved the animals. She had a blast playing with her friends and older cousins. She ate as many Goldfish crackers and watermelon slices as she wanted.
She proudly wore a glitter crown emblazoned with the number “2” and adjusted it when it turned crooked on her head.
I wish this essay had a happier ending, that the story of my relationship with my mother had a happier ending. Often, these pieces end on an uplifting note about reconciliation and hope and forgiveness. I chose to end Grown Women on a note of forgiveness. But in real life, though I forgive my mother because it’s too painful not to, I don’t see reconciliation in the cards for us.
Healing my Mother Wound is not going to involve my mother. I have to do that work on my own and, for me, a lot of that work involves loving my daughter. I know that I can do things differently and I don’t have to get it right all the time. But I do have to try.
I’m responsible for two wounds: my own and the one I don’t want to give my daughter. That’s more than enough work for me. And there is simply nothing I can do about my mother’s. I wish she had done something about it a long time ago. I wish I could have done something about it a long time ago, but I think it’s too late for her. Not for Margaux and me.
Sarai Johnson grew up in the South, primarily in Nashville, Tennessee. She studied journalism and English at Howard University, and later earned a master’s in literature from American University. She has taught writing at both her alma maters and with several nonprofit writing programs in the DC area. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, two children, and dog. Grown Women(Harper, 2024) is her first novel.
