Motherhood After an Abusive Childhood

Before having my child, I spent many years pursuing my own healing. The year before I became pregnant, I would have said I was almost completely healed from my tumultuous childhood. My life was fantastic: I had the courage to start my own business. My husband and I were happy together. My physical health was better than it had ever been, and in spite of many years of struggle with fibromyalgia, I was actually teaching fitness classes five or six days a week.

During pregnancy and the time when my daughter was a baby, I must have read 30 different books on parenting, babies and children. I wasn’t seeking to be the perfect parent: I was trying to figure out what babies and children needed most from their parents. From conversations with other parents on Facebook as well as family members, I became aware that many parents liked to say things like, “I tried my best” and “everyone makes mistakes” and “no one is perfect.” I found these things unhelpful. No one would become a doctor, a teacher, or even an accountant and throw out a pithy, “no one is perfect” when confronted with a mistake. Therefore, I wanted to learn how to avoid mistakes, create a loving environment for my daughter, and not turn her childhood into what mine was: a chaotic and frightening mess.

After awhile, I realized that everyone does make mistakes. What good parents do is apologize and try to do better the next time. What bad parents do is throw out a line like this: “nobody is perfect” and then proceed to move on, unchanged. A good relationship with one’s parents entails an openness to criticism that was so sorely lacking with all of my caretakers.

As my daughter grew older, memories of my own childhood began to flood my days. It wasn’t something I was trying to do — remember. In fact, it was quite a shock to remember vivid smells, emotions, and both happy and sad memories. So much of my childhood had been lost to me. It always felt like a fog. I could remember, but without clarity.

What makes parenting after growing up with child abuse or neglect so difficult is that experiences with your own child can trigger memories one was never able to access before. A certain smell, a birthday party, a place that one never went to as an adult suddenly brought back an entire filmstrip of the past. It reminded me of the scene in Prince of Tides, when Nick Nolte’s character is at his child’s birthday party and remembering a birthday party from his childhood when his father lashed out and abused his mother. There were many moments like that, although I’m happy to say, there have been fewer of them.

What I wish I had known before having a childhood is that what happened to me is normal. I wish I would have talked to a therapist sooner, one with experience helping new mothers.

Becoming a mother was like walking into a dark abyss and then coming out of a fog that had always enveloped me, as a sort of protection from the truth. I slowly joined support groups and met many women in my shoes. Some of them I became friends with. Little by little, I surrounded myself with better, more supportive friends that became like a new family.