When Joy Falters: Navigating a Toxic Relationship During the Holidays

I’m not sure when it started. Sometimes I look back and I feel like it must have hit me all at once; I can physically feel the force of my realization, even now. The truth is that my relationship with my mother had been deteriorating for decades and I couldn’t see it–didn’t want to see it–until I started raising my own two daughters.

A Tale of Two Lives

My parents divorced when I was a toddler and I lived with my dad and my stepmom. My mother was a whirlwind of a figure in my life, flitting in and out of it with little consistency. I remember waiting by the front door, bags packed in anticipation of a weekend with her, only to be still waiting hours later, knowing she wasn’t coming. When she did come, we’d drive off into the city where she always plopped down in a different, cramped apartment and I’d get to meet a new boyfriend, many of them treating us to lunch or to dinner and bringing little trinkets for me in an attempt to impress.

It felt like I lived two polarizing lives: one full of stability and strict rules and another, unpredictable and chaotic. As a kid, I mistook that chaos as adventure; I loved feeling like a grown up, my mother’s comrade, the two of us free spirits who did whatever we pleased (one weekend it was watching Titanic in the theater three times in a row, and another weekend it was celebrating my 13th birthday in a bar while a Prince impersonator sang me a breathy rendition of “Happy Birthday”.)

As I got older, my idolization of my mother started to waver. I grew into an awareness that her unconcerned attitude about commitments meant that she missed a lot of important things. But she also grew quick to anger if my own busy school and social schedules meant we had to rearrange visits. When she was mad, she refused to see me at all. She never saw me play a high school soccer game, missed both my high school and college graduations, waltzed in hours late to my bridal shower, and was generally an absent figure in my life for the day-to-day ups and downs.

The Rift Expands

By the time I had my first baby, my husband and I had moved from Western New York to Duluth and my relationship with my mom suffered a rift we never quite recovered from. She wanted to fly out for the birth, and bought a plane ticket before discussing the details with me. I experienced a high amount of anxiety about hosting her. I didn’t know how I was going to manage taking care of a newborn and taking care of my mom at the same time. My husband and I decided to tell her not to come–we had a spring visit to New York scheduled and we’d see her then. When I told my mom, she was furious with me.

My daughter’s December birth was as joyous as my recovery was difficult. I spent extra time in the hospital and months after that tending to surgery complications in my bruised and broken abdomen. Through it all, my mother refused to speak to me for what I had done to her. I would sit in the glow of our Christmas tree nursing my new baby as unspilled tears blurred the twinkling lights; I should have just let her come, I’d think, should have given her what she wanted.

The silent treatment gradually lifted, but the damage was done. Every time I faced a phone call with my mom, my body tensed and my breath quickened. I’d tread lightly, hoping to not offend her and have her withdraw her love and support like she had done so often in the past. When we’d fly back to the East Coast for visits, she’d admonish me for not giving her enough time with the baby, or for choosing to stay with my husband’s family and not with her. But she’d also call to cancel on me, even when I took pains to find ways to accommodate her. She’d insist she couldn’t meet us for lunch because her car was low on gas. I’d tell her we’d come all the way to her and she’d say, “No, no. Don’t bother.”

Making Difficult Changes 

My husband spent over a decade supporting me as I moved through the ups and downs of a relationship I was beginning to view as toxic. He knew it it was hurting me, but he also knew that I had to see it for what it was on my own. It felt easier to dismiss her shaming, blaming, and long absences when I was the only one on the receiving end, but I grew more angry and unsettled at the thought that it would happen to my children, too.

I know firsthand how painful it is to try and rely on an emotionally-distant loved one. If she was angry with me over something, would she then withhold love and affection from my daughters, too? I was not willing to take that risk, so about a year after my youngest was born, I broke my ties with her. We do not communicate at all. It was my decision to pause the relationship and I’m sticking with it.

Silent Holidays

The holidays are difficult. One of the strongest and most pervasive messages of the season is that family should be the most important part of our lives. But I also think family should be filled with people who lift us up, who love us unconditionally–even in times of high stress, disagreement, and anger. Family dynamics are always shifting, and we all go through periods of discontent, but for some of us, a lifetime of absence or mistreatment is too painful of a rift to mend. We are happier–and healthier–when we can focus on the relationships in our lives that thrive when we share our trust and love.

I have an “all in” attitude when it comes to the holidays. I have always loved the magic and the decorations and the bustle, but in the few years since I’ve cut my mom out of our lives, I find myself using the busyness of Christmastime as a way to compensate for my grief. Sometimes, in the quiet of the evening while the tree glows brightly, I think about my her. I think about the relationship we had and the relationship that I craved. I second guess myself and my resolve to remove her from my life. I let a little love leave my soul in hopes that it finds its way to her.

But I don’t call her. I know that even the difficult moments without my mother feel easier to manage than the years I spent trying to earn the type of love I deserved.