I Married My Mother
(or someone just like her...)
The Crack
There comes a moment when everything suddenly clicks into place. All the years of pressure, confusion, and emotional static line up for one sharp second. For me, that moment happened in my mother’s bedroom.
I was sitting at the foot of her bed, crying so hard I could barely breathe. My mom was already deep into Alzheimer’s, but she had a rare, lucid stretch that day. I said, “I can’t take it anymore.” And I meant it.
The stress. The pressure. The feeling that no matter how hard I tried, nothing in my house — or in my life — was ever good enough. And the brutal truth: it wasn’t going to be good enough. Not for the people I was trying so desperately to please.
My mom didn’t have the words anymore, but she understood. She knew that kind of silent pressure intimately. She’d lived by it, too. Growing up, she did all the small tasks — cleaning the garden, cooking dinner, keeping everything just so — as if perfection could hold the world together. She never named the stress out loud, but her whole life vibrated with it.
When my kids were little, she’d sometimes say, “The stress level in this house is crazy.” I brushed it off. I was the lobster in the pot — I didn’t realize the water had been boiling for years.
But that day in her bedroom, something cracked. I felt it: a deep fissure running through the version of myself I had been trying to maintain. I realized I was being eaten alive from the inside out. Something had to give.
Retreat
My instinct, as always, was to retreat inward. Present the solid exterior. Act like everything was fine. But something in me knew that the armor was splitting. This wasn’t a small shift — it was tectonic.
That was late 2019. Then came Covid. After a year and a half, my mom went into memory care. Three months later, Marlowe left for university. The foundation of my world thinned out all at once.
I was too depleted to initiate the change I needed. I had made commitments, and I was determined — stubbornly, maybe — to honor them. And honestly, the unknown felt scarier than the pain I’d grown used to. At least I knew how to survive in the life I had.
Facing the Devil
When divorce finally came to the table, I was devastated. Even necessary change hurts. The future becomes a blank page, and blank pages can be terrifying.
But through all the grief and uncertainty, one quiet word kept circling in the back of my mind: free.
I am finally free.
I didn’t realize how suffocated I’d been until the pressure eased and I could finally breathe without calculating who I needed to be.
Recognizing the Pattern
There are so many things I could have done differently, but here’s the truth I didn’t want to admit: I was used to someone else being in control. Growing up, my mother made the decisions. No discussions. No negotiations. The first time I ever saw my parents “talk it out” was their divorce conversation. I should’ve recognized the pattern when Gunnar asked me to sit on the sofa so we could “talk.” Yep — that was our divorce conversation.
The lessons you don’t learn come back around, and patterns repeat across generations until someone interrupts them.
That’s my job now: to interrupt the cycle. My kids are already better at this than I ever was. When the stress in the house spikes, one of them will say it outright. Just like that — the air clears. They’re naming the thing I spent decades burying.
And honestly? Even tiny topics — dishes in the sink, the laundry room disaster — can feel like “hard conversations” when you grow up in a house where conflict wasn’t allowed. (Are they hard topics? They sure can be.)
How does that FEEL?
As life moves forward, my biggest lesson is learning to identify how I actually feel. I suppressed my emotions for so long that “fine” became my default setting. Now, even when it’s uncomfortable, I’m practicing saying something real.
And here’s the twist: I didn’t turn into my mother — I married a version of her. Classic plot move. But once you see the casting error, you don’t have to keep acting in the same play.
The old script is done. I’m not auditioning for worth or permission anymore. I’m the one at the table now, deciding what happens next.
And that’s what freedom feels like: authorship.
Tarot Pull
Seven of Swords
What a card! Deep into the Seven of Swords are patterns passed down from childhood. It reflects how I learned to survive: by retreating into myself. It shows the quiet escape and self-betrayal. The message is: time to leave quietly because the situation is untenable. But now, everything will change!