Around the time I graduated college, I threw a bon voyage party for my mother. Her face, framed by warm, chestnut hair that curled at her jaw, lit up as she swapped stories with a dozen friends we’d known for decades. She had a volatile gaze that could shift without warning and a booming laugh that filled the room. We raised our glasses, toasting her move 3,000 miles away.
I leaned in, towering over her petite 51-year-old frame, as we posed for a picture. “Thank you for all this,” she whispered. Our smiles didn’t betray the long history of silence and anger between us.
Weeks earlier, she’d sent me a ten-page letter to my dorm room. In it, she revealed, she was in love with a woman and was moving cross-country to be with her. Her coming out didn’t surprise me, but her question did: “Will you still love and accept me now that you know?” Despite everything we’d been through together, my mom worried my love was conditional and that I’d abandon her just like my father did.
Seven years earlier, when I was 13, our life had come undone for the first time. One February afternoon, after walking home from the bus stop to our two-story townhouse in the suburbs of D.C., the sight of my mother’s purse on the kitchen table left me uneasy. She usually worked late — as a phys-ed teacher for an elementary school, she often spent afternoons cleaning up the gym and didn’t arrive home before dinner.
When I went upstairs, her bedroom shades were pulled down, only a sliver of sunlight peeking through. She was lying in bed, lifeless and quiet. Terrified, I put my ear to her chest, listening for her breathing and heartbeat. “Mom,” I whispered, “Are you okay?”
Her eyes opened. “I don’t know, honey. I had an accident at work,” she said. I froze. “The doctors told me I have a concussion.” Instantly, I pictured myself sitting completely alone with no one to care for me. Since my parents’ divorce when I was 3, my mother became the person I counted on for everything. I’d never seen her cry, appear stressed, or get sick. She dressed in well-coordinated magenta button-down shirts and slacks and had hair that was never out of place. With no other family nearby, she was my primary caregiver. Despite her own demanding schedule, she always managed to drive me to and from dance classes, spending weekends at my recitals.
I reached for her hand, “Mommy, are you gonna die?”
“I’m sure I’ll be okay,” she replied, sounding unsure. Her hand touched the side of my cheek as she explained what happened: She’d been spotting a student doing a back walkover — a tumbling move where the person arches and reaches back with their arms, then kicks over their legs — but instead of the student’s leg going backward, it whipped sideways and struck my mom hard in the neck.
At 44, my mom went from being an independent, single parent to an incapacitated patient. She was unable to walk, drive, work, or function without help.
The first few days, she laid still, in constant darkness. The emergency room initially prescribed her Tylenol for pain and Antivert for dizziness, but it didn’t help. When it became clear she needed more time to recover, I called her school and talked with her principal. The woman said unfamiliar words like “short-term disability” and “workers’ compensation.” I tried, as best I could, to describe how sick my mom was — how she slurred her words, she was dizzy all the time, and she wasn’t the same person anymore. She couldn’t get out of bed, much less ride in a car. A case manager for workers’ compensation came to the house to assess her and started to believe what I’d been saying all along — that my mom had become disabled overnight.
Soon after, her caseworker agreed to grant her temporary leave, since the accident took place on the job. In the weeks that followed, though, rather than recover, my mother got worse. Each morning, instead of putting on a dress shirt and kissing me good-bye before I walked to the bus stop, my mom would still be asleep when I left for school. Afterward, I’d blow off my friends to rush home to check on her. I tried to encourage a few bites of saltine crackers or dry toast and sips of water, but she was often too nauseated, disoriented, and worn out. Her accident had left her with a constant sensation of spinning, delayed thinking, and double vision — it was as though her entire body was trying to operate but it was in slow motion. Once she would finally sit up to eat, she’d immediately go back to sleep.
For months, this was my daily routine, my new version of normal. While my friends were going to sleepovers and football games, I was propping my mother’s pillows, helping her dress, making meals, arranging appointments, booking transportation, and balancing her checkbook. I just wanted her to be okay, so I could go back to my life.
Despite her primary doctor telling us to “be patient” and my mother’s disconnected state, we became desperate to find someone who could help her. I stepped in, wanting to get her out of bed. Our arms interlocked, I guided her down the carpeted staircase to the dining room. She lacked balance, so I held her as best I could with my thin adolescent frame as we made it all the way to the table. The short walk was reassuring — if we could accomplish that, maybe there was hope. My fingers scanned the Yellow Pages, searching for neurologists and specialists in the area.
Two years later, as a freshman in high school, I started to crack under the weight of my responsibilities. I rebelled, quietly, slowly at first, by staying out late after school. One Friday, despite my guilt and the thick stench of their cigarettes, I joined a group of seniors from my school. We all piled into a dark-green Mustang, where, from the backseat, I looked out the window at the streets blurring past. Once we arrived at an unfamiliar house, we tossed our backpacks down and someone shoved a cold can of Natty Light in my hand. I tried to ignore the smell and bitter taste, as I choked it down, my first beer. A few hours in, the alcohol left me numb — lighter than I’d felt since the accident.
I began going to after-school parties regularly, drinking and smoking weed. Sometimes, I’d call my mom to say I’d be home late and hanging at a “friend’s house.” Eventually, I stopped bothering. Every time I’d get home, she was sleeping, not noticing another day had gone by.
She did become more aware, eventually. In fact, it happened the day I lost my virginity to a boy I’d had a crush on. I was 15, drunk, and lying on a bare basement mattress of a random house, where he’d left me alone. Upstairs, I could hear boys laughing loudly through the ceiling above me — “dude, she was bleeding on me, like everywhere.” All I wanted was to go home, to hug my mom.
When I got home later that night, I walked through the front door straight into our first fight. My mother had been waiting for me in the kitchen, her eyes angry and disappointed. I set my bag down and muttered, “Hi,” trying to sound casual, hoping she wouldn’t notice how dirty and stained I felt. My face burned as she glared at me. Did she know what happened?
“Where the HELL have you been?!” Her words jolted me sober. “I told you,” I stammered. “I was … at a friend’s house.” Scrambling to escape, again, I backed out of the kitchen and ran upstairs. “BULLSHIT!” she yelled, just as I slammed my door. I slid to the floor, collapsing my head in my hands.
I wished I could have explained away my behavior, but I couldn’t admit what I’d done or who I’d been with. Something sharp had driven itself between us after the accident. I didn’t long to be close to my mother anymore — it was the opposite. I hated my role, her injury, and my life. I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. But, in my effort to break free, like every other teenager, I’d isolated myself more, making me reckless and bitter. Getting away from her seemed like my only option.
After that, my mom attempted to take control, threatening to ground me. The following morning, she called down to me as I was leaving for school, “Be sure to come straight home!” But, I just rolled my eyes, pulled the front door shut behind me, dismissing her comments and her rules. I sought out other ways to avoid my house, like joining the cheerleading squad, playing lacrosse, and ignoring my curfew.
We began to fight constantly: The more she clung to me, the more desperate I was to pull away from my needy mother.
At 16, when I got my driver’s license, an even heavier load of responsibilities were dropped on me. In addition to helping at home, I now also had to drive her to doctors’ appointments, to the grocery store, and the post office. During my junior year of high school, after driving her around one afternoon she began rattling off errands she needed me to run. I snapped. I pulled into the lot, put the car in park, and let out a frustrated sigh. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at me, “I don’t understand why you’re so angry at me all the time. What did I do?” Eyes closed, I squeezed the steering wheel. “It’s just all so FUCKING exhausting and it never ends!” She cupped her mouth, stifling her tears. Immediately I regretted my words, the feeling of guilt that I’d grown used to pushing down came rushing, heavy and pressing hard against my chest, reminding me I was trapped.
As time went on and she slowly recovered further, standing and walking became easier. Our relationship, however, didn’t. We avoided talking about it — she didn’t bring up any of our fights after they happened — we were both just trying to survive in our own ways. Anytime she tried to talk to me, I’d say I had homework or had to go to practice, to get away.
Toward the end of high school, a neurologist told her she might have an inner-ear disorder, a condition caused by the accident. He was the 12th doctor she’d seen in six years. Vision therapy was prescribed to help her regain more balance and functionality. After a few months of treatment, although she was still unable to work, she was able to cook her own meals, walk with a cane, and become more independent. Then I went off to college, living on campus, 30 miles away.
With the temporary space to breathe, our relationship shifted to a dance between avoidance and rage. We talked via phone each week and I visited for summer and holidays, but we bickered incessantly. I avoided going home for breaks, knowing it would drain me. The anger ran so deep; I had nowhere to put it but into my voice by yelling back at her, so she could at least feel a fraction of what I carried with me.
The day I received her letter, I was relieved, both for her and me. For years, I’d noticed her deep connection with other women. When I left for college, she reconnected with some close friends and was even able to go on bird-watching trips with them. After she’d return, despite still using a cane for support and her visible struggle to balance, she showed signs of being her old self — the one she was before her accident.
When she introduced me to her partner, the one she’d be moving away with, she was happy — something I hadn’t seen in almost a decade. She said, “Now that I’m doing better and you’re on your own, I get to start my life again.” I was happy for her, for them, but also had a glimpse of freedom I’d never experienced before — release from the weight of the responsibilities I’d carried with me for years. And all of it was being taken on by someone else.
At her going-away party, I thought things between us might be different. I followed my mom to the passenger side of her partner’s car to say good-bye afterward, holding her in a tight hug. She took my face in her hands and looked up at me. “I’ll miss you, my little Lisue,” she said, her nickname for me. Blowing out a breath, I nodded. “I’ll miss you too.” I wanted us to be okay, but I knew there was still so much unsaid.
Soon after, she sold the house, and I needed a change, so I moved away too. I found an off-campus apartment with friends and started working at a bar. Every night after last call, a vodka on the rocks along with a kamikaze shot would slide across the bar in my direction. And, just like in high school, I had an urge to drink every night, to disassociate.
Even with more miles between us, my mom and I still argued. We’d catch up briefly on the phone, which would start out okay until she’d inevitably ask a question like, “By the way, have you signed up for your own health insurance yet? You know you’re an adult now.” Her words would leave me seething and I’d fire back, “No, but I will. Stop asking me!” I’d try to end the call, then she’d turn it around on me. “Lisa! Don’t talk to me that way, I’m your mother!” On the surface, it was a simple question, but it was the way she said it that sounded like judgment — like nothing I said or did would ever be right. As if I hadn’t been forced to be an adult, to be the one who had to coordinate and care about things like health insurance, since I was 13. Our sporadic conversations and blowout arguments via phone continued through my mid-20s. I began to think we’d never be close again.
At 27, I met my now husband; my mother immediately loved him and referred to him as her “son.” When she came into town for our wedding, it’d been three years without seeing one another — I was on edge the entire time. When we’d argue in front of my husband, she’d look at the floor, like she was seeking sympathy from him. It was as though she was playing victim and I was always the one to blame, as if my pain didn’t matter even though I’d taken care of her for so long. Even her subtle gaze could trigger me to scream out in frustration. “I saw that!” I’d shout, then storm out of the room.
The morning of the ceremony, I stood in a hotel room filled with my bridesmaids, waiting to go down and recite my vows. My mom walked over, pulled me into the corner and placed her hands on my shoulders, squeezing them. “I love you, Lisue. I’m so proud of you,” she said. “He’s a good man, and you are making a good choice.” I nodded, in agreement. Then, she leaned upward, hugging me. Part of me ached for the comfort of being close to her and another part wanted to push her away.
In those first few years of marriage, my husband, knowing our history, wanted to help keep us connected. He and his mom were close, so naturally he wanted the same for me. When I’d complain to him about my mom, he encouraged me to “give her another chance” and prodded “but, she’s your mom.” He’d stand nearby during my monthly calls with my mom, intending to act as a buffer and be available to give me a break if things went badly. Mid-conversation, I’d give him the side eye, signaling I needed a break. “Hey, honey, do you want to say hi?” I’d say, handing him the phone, then walking out of the room. I began avoiding our phone conversations altogether, it was easier that way — for everyone.
After several months of little communication, I admitted to my therapist in a session how I’d been dealing with our difficult relationship — by disconnecting entirely. Even thinking about my relationship with my mother and our decades of fights turned my stomach.
When he asked why I thought confronting my mom would lead to more arguing, I quipped, “Because we always do!”
“Well, what are you so angry at her about?” he said.
“Because she always needs me!” I yelled.
After decades of anger and resentment, I heard how selfish and immature I sounded — when I thought I was just being honest.
“Have you thought about seeing things from her perspective?” he said.
It wasn’t until four years later, when I was 33 and became a mother myself, that I understood what he meant.
When my daughter turned 1, we arranged for my mother to visit for her birthday. Before she arrived, the familiar tightness of anxiety in my chest returned. I worried our complicated history would spill over into my new life, as a mom and wife. I feared I’d argue in front of my little girl and my husband, that they might see another version of me that I was ashamed of, a broken, angry, and resentful one.
I went back to my therapist again. “Maybe your mother felt guilty she couldn’t care for you, the way she wanted to,” he’d said back then. This time he asked me, “Instead of defaulting to yelling, have you tried not focusing on the past and just waiting to see what happens?”
I was dumbfounded. “Like waiting for us to argue?” He laughed, shaking his head “no,” and said, “You do realize — not every conversation requires you to defend yourself.” I sat there, stunned.
For the entire week of her visit, we didn’t argue once — it was strange and unfamiliar. One afternoon, we went for a walk together with my daughter. I pushed the stroller ahead of us as we talked, feeling more at ease than I ever had in our conversation.
“She looks like your twin,” she said, pointing to my little girl.
I laughed. “Yeah, it’s crazy, right?”
“When you were a baby, you never cried, you were so easy,” she said. “You were always happy.”
The day my mom left, as we said our good-byes, I leaned over to hug her and something softened between us. “It was a nice visit,” she said, smiling up at me. “Yeah, it was.” We stood there, squeezing each other’s hands.
Weeks later and decades after her initial assessment, my mom finally got a proper diagnosis from a new doctor, a neurologist: Her accident didn’t cause a concussion or an inner-ear disorder — it was a traumatic brain injury caused by damage to her carotid artery.
For so long, I’d thought about how her accident had ruined my life, took me away from my friends and forced me to miss out on my childhood. I’d never thought about her experience or considered how hard it must have been for her to ask for my help.
We started speaking on the phone regularly again. We talked about the mutual pain we’d inflicted on each other, the regret and resentment. My mother said, “I wish I’d been well enough to comfort you, it must have been so scary. You thought I was going to die.”
“Yes — and I wish I hadn’t said all those terrible things to you when I was angry,” I replied.
Our calls no longer ended in arguments. I began to get to know my mother in a way I hadn’t before — a quiet, patient, and loving person.
Recently, during one of our hourlong calls, my mom told me about her walks by the marina, dinner with friends, and the support group she’d joined. I shared updates on my kids, projects at work, and my latest hikes on the local trail near my house.
Out of nowhere, she said the words I’d needed to hear for 33 years since the accident: “I’m so sorry you had to do all that for me at such a young age.”
Her words made me catch my breath. “Thank you,” I said after a pause. My chest felt lighter, like something had loosened its grip on me. Finally, I let go of the last of my resentment and I could breathe again.
We sat in silence, the words hanging between us, without all the anger that had been there for so long. And I forgave her and then myself.