Originally published May 9, 2020
Rachel was 10 years old the first time her stepmother hit her. Rachel had peeked through the window leading out to a little covered porch, where her stepmother, Sandy, was talking with one of Rachel’s siblings. Sandy became enraged and accused her of being sneaky. Sandy grabbed her and began smacking her back and forth across the face until Rachel tasted blood. Sandy had split her lip.
I can’t imagine anyone doing that to a child, but it especially hurts for me to think about it happening to Rachel, because she is my mother. She is the strongest person I know, but even the strongest have scars. The only difference is my mom carries her scars on the inside. As a child, she suffered an abundance of abuse at the hands of her father and stepmother. Many of my mom’s stories I had never heard or truly understood until recently, and it’s given me ever more of an appreciation for the strong woman and fighter who raised me to be the strong woman and fighter that I am today. But even after years of emotional and psychological manipulation, she’s hesitant to call it abuse. She doesn’t want to claim that she’s suffered trauma, pointing out that there are so many other people who have come from worse situations and comparing her experiences to theirs. This is not uncommon, however. Many survivors of childhood abuse tend to compare their situations to the extreme cases and minimize impact of their own abuse says developmental neuropsychiatrist Martin H. Teicher, M.D., Ph.D.
My mom had no freedom growing up. She was never allowed to go shopping for new clothes; clothes were brought home and given to her, or she was made to wear her sisters’ hand-me-downs. Frugal, Sandy called it. But Sandy was, and still is, a very rich woman. My mom suffered from very bad acne, but she wasn’t allowed to use any products to help cleanse her skin. She wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, either. My mom has always had gorgeously coiled curls, but she had a specified way to fix her hair. She had to part it and then flatten her curls down with barrettes. She had no choice. She hesitates to call that part of her childhood trauma because, in her words, that’s just how she grew up.
Sandy wasn’t usually one for spankings; my grandfather Steve would administer the corporal punishment. My mother was beaten many times, sometimes even so severely that her entire bottom and the backs of her legs turned purple and hard. Do you know how hard you have to hit a child’s rear end to cause bruises like that? She once received well over 100 swats during a single spanking; she counted each strike.
When I was born, my mom realized she had never truly been loved the way she loved me. She told me that before my brother was born, when I was about 3 years old, she once caught herself talking to me the way she had been talked to as a child. She saw the look of heartbreak on my face, and that broke her own heart. “How can a person not love a 3-year-old?” she asked.
Steve divorced my grandmother, Diane, when my mom was three. He had sole custody of five children, all under the age of eight, and he quickly married.
Years later as an adult, my mom asked her mom, Diane, why Diane let Steve have custody. Diane replied, “Because I was young, dumb, and stupid,” and left it at that.
Steve married Sandy when my mom was five years old. Renee, my mom’s only biological sister, was ten at the time, and my mom remembers Renee telling her, “I do not like that woman.” Renee ended up running away when she was fifteen.
My mom loved her dad and loved spending time with him, too. Steve took her to get ice cream at The Dip in his little Toyota pickup truck. She always loved walking with him and holding his hand. When she was 13, he told her she was too old to hold his hand in public anymore. Sandy of course put him up to it. My mom doesn’t know that for sure, but she knows Steve wouldn’t have said that on his own. He was never embarrassed to hold her hand in public, but after that my mom made a point to distance herself from him. Regardless if they were his words or Sandy’s, they had really hurt her. Steve was either unaware of the way my mom felt, or he just didn’t care.
Ever since I first heard of Sandy’s abuse, I compared my mom to Cinderella, and Sandy to the evil stepmother. Little did I know just how right I was. Sandy would make my mom clean the living room, and if she missed a spot, Sandy wouldn’t tell her where, she would just make my mom clean the whole room again.
My mom hated being at home, especially in the summer months when there was no school. She liked school, and her teachers all liked her too, although she thinks it was out of pity. She was a very smart kid, but she was awkward and had poor hygiene because of Sandy’s rules. All her siblings had assigned shower days. My mom’s shower days were Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and she was only allowed to wash her hair on Saturday. She wasn’t allowed to use deodorant. She wasn’t made fun of outright, but her peers definitely ostracized her. She didn’t have any friends, but despite all of that, being at school was still more preferable than being at home. Her house was always the furthest away from the school, so she was the first on the bus and the last off. She cherished those long bus rides and the tiny bit of respite they provided before she had to be home.
Sandy required all her step-children to call her “Mom,” but it was always very hard for my mom to call her that. My mom never told Sandy that she loved her, because it just wasn’t true, but she desperately wanted to be loved by Sandy. At the very least, she wanted her approval. Sandy never showed any affection or approval, which was why my mom craved it so badly.
Sandy almost never left her room when she was at home, but she would always trace the same path to the kitchen to get coffee. My mom could hear her bedroom door open and shut, and then she would pad across the carpet in her bare feet, clutching her tiny china coffee mug. If Sandy passed by my mom’s bedroom door without stopping, my mom would rejoice. Sandy never made coffee in the coffee pot, but she would keep hot water in the pot all day. She drank Café Vienna instant coffee in a plastic tin. My mom would hear the plastic lid snap open, the water being poured, and the clink of a spoon against the sides of the china cup.
One night at youth group, there had been a sermon about loving and respecting your parents. The pastor had said something about, “If you haven’t said ‘I love you’ or ‘thank you’ to your parents in a while then you’re a horrible person.” My mom felt especially guilty after that sermon, since at the time she was a good little Sunday schoolgirl, in a good little fundamentalist Southern Baptist family. After the sermon, my mom listened for Sandy to walk to the kitchen and get her coffee. She had long since memorized those anxiety-inducing series of sounds. As Sandy was walking back to her room, my mom caught her in the hallway. My mom started bawling and struggled to get the words out, “Mom, I just wanted to say that I love you.” Sandy stopped, clutching her china coffee mug, turned her head to the side and with her signature sideways Disney villain-esque smile said, “Well Rachel, sometimes I appreciate you too.”
Sandy was still in my mom’s head even years later, well after my mom had graduated college and married my dad. My mom would always evaluate everything she did or said, measuring it against Sandy possibly in an attempt to gain her approval, even as an adult. When my mom was pregnant with me, she and Sandy were in a Target looking at baby items. Sandy pointed out sets of bottles and liners, and my mom explained that she wouldn’t need too many of those since she intended to breastfeed.
“Why would you want to do that?” Sandy was visibly horrified.
My mom explained that she had researched it and there were many benefits to breastfeeding, including bonding with baby, especially when they cry.
“When my babies were crying, I just put them in their crib and shoved the crib into a closet and closed the door,” Sandy said.
It was at that moment that a lot of things from her childhood made since to my mom. Sandy never bonded with her own children when they were babies, let alone her older stepchildren.
Eventually mom completely broke off contact with Steve and Sandy in order to begin her own journey to find healing. My parents had quit their jobs teaching at cultish independent fundamentalist Baptist college and Steve and Sandy did not like that at all. There were several insulting and unsupportive phone calls and emails, until my mom sent an email that basically said “don’t call me anymore,” which in turn set off another wave of calls and emails from Sandy. Finally, Steve called. My mom remembers him sounding tired and beaten down, “like his child had died,” as he told her that she was “out of God’s will.” She felt such guilt for putting him through that, on top of all the bad feelings and blocked memories that started to return over this period of time. Finally, my mom had had enough.
“It was like the cherry on top of a sundae,” my mom said. “Which is a horrible analogy because it was a really terrible sundae.”
I remember walking into the kitchen when I was around 9 or 10 and seeing my mom just weeping in my dad’s arms. That worried me because I had never seen my mom cry, and of course I wanted to make sure she was alright. I don’t think she saw me, and my dad didn’t say anything, he just motioned with his hand for me to leave the room. It’s one of my most vivid childhood memories and something that I never understood until recently. She had to be free from Sandy and Steve in order to find her own emotional healing.
It’s been a long time since Sandy was in my mom’s head. She’ll go weeks or even months before she thinks of her again. Occasionally Sandy will forward inspirational Christian chain emails to my mom, all of which go directly to spam. “Every couple of months I feel strong enough to investigate my spam folder,” my mom said with a laugh.
My dad has been a huge part of my mom’s healing process and her return to good mental health. From the beginning he made a point of being respectful towards Steve and Sandy, but he stood up to them and stood up for my mom, while at the same time he supported her as she stood up for herself. He knew from the beginning that something wasn’t quite right with them, although he couldn’t put his finger on it. He saw how they would manipulate and gaslight her.
“I fully supported it [the break] and I fully supported your mother,” my dad told me. “I was not going to play by their [Steve and Sandy] rules, since their particular version of the rules were corrupt.”
My parents have always been a team and always supported each other. When my mom told me her story, I was able to see how much my dad really does fight for my mom. He would go to any length to protect her. He validates what she feels and reassures her when she is unsure of herself. Now that I know more of my mom’s story, I have been able to see what strong people my parents are, especially my mom.
Despite my mom seeming outwardly quiet and introverted, she is fun and has a great sense of humor, as well as a bit of a rebellious streak (which I am proud to share). Over the course of the past ten years or so, I’ve really been able to see that side of her blossom more and more. Sandy would always have something negative to say about her weight or the bright lipstick my mom would wear, but she would phrase it in a “helpful” way.
“I happily wear bright lipstick now and when I put it on, I think, ‘Ha! Take that!’” my mom said. “Which is kind of immature but I’m 48 and I wanna wear lipstick, I’m going to wear lipstick.”
Rachel has always been my rock. She’s compassionate, dependable, supportive. She’s always been the type of mom to give up the last piece of cake if someone else wanted it. She’s intelligent, introverted, and tough as nails. I’ve never seen her scream, and rarely seen her cry. She’s always been my shoulder to cry on, and as I’ve grown older, she’s become one of my best friends.
Rachel is the strongest person I know, and I am proud to call her my mother.