Relationship with my mum and how this is affecting me as a new mum with a daughter.
Inspired by a fellow blogger
For as long as I can remember my mother and I have never had a good relationship.
Never remember good times with her. We are more like acquaintance.
My mum has always been hard to talk to, never listened to what I had to say and would always talk about herself.
I always felt like she doesn't even like me let alone love me. Over the years from getting angry and jealous about my relationship with my father and getting angry about me wanting to help her with changing things in her life, I have finally given up on trying.
So you might think, why would a new mum say I have given up on trying to help my own mother. Well over 25 years I have seeked and seeked approval, love and affection from her. I have helped her and my father sort out their lives too many times. This time around it started with a study room.
Well at this point I have come to realise that my mum is a hoarder. The room was so bad that you couldn't open the door. There were toys all over the floor and 50 000 other stuff that shouldn't be in the study.
One day I said to mum, as a gift from my husband and I, we will organise the room for you. She said sure and we set a date when this would happen.
It took me 2 weeks to measure out cubboard and shelving, buy containers, label the containers, reorganise all the toys etc. Those with children know that looking after a 5 month old 24/7 and taking on small tasks is a challenge.
The day of reorganising, my mum sat there with a foul face. She then said in the worst attitude 'this is going to take forever, I didn't even want to do this' .
That was it... I finally told her exactly what I thought. A real honest talk. About how they will be examples for our children and how it can be a safety hazard as the kids constantly get toys out of the study.
She broke down into her anger rage. When I wouldn't stand for this she broke out into tears and didn't talk to me for 2 weeks.
Well I finished reorganising the study as with all the effort, precious time with my daughter and money that went into organising everything I wasn't going to just leave it.
2 weeks went by and she finally decides to say hello to her grandchild. Sheas usual pretends that nothing ever happened. She never thanked me. Never mentioned anything to me about anything. I then thought. My mum is obviously going through a rough time, I will not hold this against her and just move on. But never again will I try to help as she breaks my heart everytime.
After this I decided to live my life as an example and stopped trying to fix things that obviously can not be fixed by myself. I want to live my life as an example to my child, not break my child down.
In the time of all this craziness with Covid we should now become more kind and willing to listen and act to become better people.
Thank you to quarantine stories for giving me the courage to talk about this.
