The Heartbreak of Loving My Hurting Mother

When I was fifteen, my room’s walls were swirls of green and yellow, which my mother had done because she knew I loved green and yellow. I had these Skull Candy headphones around my head, connected to a pretty pink phone, all gifts from my mother, and it was one of those summer afternoons when I was fast asleep. I was tired from school, fed a very generous and delicious lunch by my mother, and I was too sluggish to care. 

My mother walked into the room, and she found me asleep at 5pm. She had told me repeatedly that from 5pm to sunset, one must not sleep. In Islamic traditions, this brings bad luck. 

My mother woke me up by screaming, and when I asked her if she was crazy to scream like that, she flipped and began a narrative that was all too familiar to me. It was like watching a rocket accelerate or a pinball spiral down. What began with calling me rude, in a span of two minutes, ended with her telling me she wished that I had died in her womb. 

Image by Kaboompics on Pexels

This incident chipped a part of me forever, and it was my reality for more than a decade. A narrative that I have been actively trying to disassociate from is the one that has left the most significant impact on me: the heartbreak of loving my hurting mother.

As a girl who has never been able to live up to my mother's expectations, used to waking up and falling asleep to her constant criticisms, my inner voice was that of my mother. I was harsh towards myself and my failures. I was constantly putting myself through suffering to appease a woman who raised the bar higher every time I reached close.

The pandemic somehow broke my relationship with my mother. Or maybe all those years of suppressing my anger finally caught up, and the child who had held space for her died at the impact of her mother’s toxicity. 

All the heartbreak finally led to therapy, as I decided that I would never be a hurt person hurting someone else like my mother had done. I explored the heartbreak that my relationship with my mother was causing me. The constant villainisation, criticisms, verbal and physical abuse had taken a toll on my self-esteem, so I turned to compassion to protect myself. 

Slowly and gradually, while I continued to love my mother, I detached from her and everyone who supported her behaviour. I think this is something that is possible: loving someone and detaching yourself from them at the same time. Finding the strength to do this surprised me; I never thought I could do it. But I had a realisation that changed the perception of my mother from a toxic woman to a hurt woman. 

My mother wasn’t hurting me for herself. She thought of me as ugly, because she looked at me from the perspective of a man who looks at women as sexual objects, or a future husband, who she thought my life should revolve around. She screamed at me to die because, in her eyes, I failed as a Muslim. In that moment, she was a Muslim woman who had accepted it was her destiny to appease a version of Islam shaped by patriarchal interpretations.

As a practising Muslim, I feel it’s important to clarify that my criticism is not of Islam itself. Islam, like many religions, contains diverse and empowering teachings, and it was the distortion of these teachings — not the faith itself — that shaped my mother’s actions. Over time, I have grown to read Islam through the lens of Muslim feminists like Fatema Mernissi, Asma Barlas and Amina Wadud, who have redefined Islam for me and have shown me how patriarchal readings depart from the faith’s core principles.

All of my mother's shaming was always rooted in thinking of me as ‘less’ of a woman. Not just for her, but for patriarchy, and — what took me a decade to understand — for my father. The heteronormative patriarchal family structure often puts an enormous amount of pressure on women to perform roles that appease the patriarch. As such, my mother was acting to appease my father rather than in my best interest. Patriarchy also instils a deep sense of perpetual failure, which we see reflected in our society when mothers are constantly criticised for the ways that they raise their children.

My mother was a gatekeeper of patriarchy, for my father. However, this wasn’t the complete story. 

At the age of twenty-five, I met a girl in London. Meeting her startled me. She was exactly like my mother. Her good, her way of loving, her way of hurting. Some days, I felt as if I were talking to my mother. From day one, I knew how to calm her, how to help her. I knew exactly what she needed to feel better, or what she was saying, even when she wasn’t saying it.

Everything changed that year. Instead of seeing my mother as toxic, I focused on her triggers. Breaking schedules bothered her, so I tried to stick to mine. She was principally rooted in Islamic and Indian traditional values, so I showed her I followed those wherever I could. A dirty plate left in the room terrorised her, often leading to her screaming, so I changed wherever I could. Instead of her screams, I tried to understand her problems. When I separated my mother from what I thought she was struggling with, I was able to see her: the struggling woman. 

Image by Claudia Soraya on Unsplash

The relationship I have with my mother still isn’t perfect today, but the spirals only happen once every few months. Therapy strengthened me enough that I am now able to show compassion to myself, primarily, and then to my mother. My sisters will always have a mother in me, if they tire of their biological one. I didn’t have that growing up, so I know the importance of it. 

But I also stood my ground, sunk into my feminist principles, gathered the courage to fight with my father instead of her, as it was him who needed to back off. 

The burden of breaking the cycle of trauma is a heavy one, and I don’t recommend any woman to take it upon herself to fix it. In my case, I had two lovely younger sisters which kept me going. I didn’t even aim to end this cycle of abuse, I just kept going because I couldn’t stop being hurt, and I couldn’t fathom cutting my mother off. Maybe here, my intersectional identity as a marginalised Indian queer Muslim woman has a bigger role to play. 

Image by Monstera Production on Pexels

A few months ago, I made a joke and my mother laughed; later in the evening, while crossing my room, she winked at me and I smiled at her. These are my favourite seconds of my life now, and they will probably always be.

There are more days like those now, there is more kindness, and the spirals are followed by apologies. She knows, and she is trying to be better every day. And for me, that was all I really needed.

Image by Jonatas Domingos on Unsplash

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This article has been sponsored by the Psychiatry Research Trust, who are dedicated to supporting young scientists in their groundbreaking research efforts within the field of mental health. If you wish to support their work, please consider donating. 

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