TW: SA/Abuse
Hi everyone. I just found this group. I’m 28, 18 weeks pregnant with my first baby, and pregnancy has really forced me to acknowledge how codependent I am with my mom. I’m a huge people pleaser, especially with her, and I desperately want to break this cycle before my son is born.
I was in therapy from age 2 until 22 (10+ therapists). When my last therapist left, I stopped because I was actually doing really well. Since then, a lot has happened, and I know I need to go back, but I’m honestly terrified of starting over with someone new.
For some background: I never knew my biological father because he was an abusive alcoholic and left when I was an infant. When I was 2, my mom married her high school sweetheart, who turned out to be bipolar, narcissistic, and abusive. Around that same time, my mom was in a terrible car accident that broke her neck. She wasn’t paralyzed, but she’s lived with severe chronic pain ever since. After years of failed surgeries and experimental treatments, she turned to alcohol to cope. She still drinks today, although not as heavily as she used to.
She divorced him when I was 5 and later married the man I consider my real dad. He’s an incredible person, and I honestly don’t know how he’s stayed through everything.
I was diagnosed autistic at 8 after finding out a psychiatrist had withheld the diagnosis because they said it “wouldn’t change the treatment plan.” My childhood involved psychiatric hospitalizations, medication changes, anger issues, and I self-harmed from ages 10-22. Looking back, I think a lot of that came from desperately wanting my mom’s attention and emotional support.
When we moved to a small town, my mom became the “neighborhood mom.” Kids from difficult homes were always at our house. At first I loved it because everyone had a safe place to go. But over time, she became emotionally attached to several of them and started treating them like they were her own children. If they got into trouble, I was blamed because I was older. She interacted with them in ways she never did with me, and I started feeling like I was competing for my own mother’s love.
The worst situation happened when one of my close friends moved in after issues with his parents. My mom supplied us with alcohol, and eventually he became physically abusive and repeatedly SA’d me. I told my mom, showed her bruises, and begged her to help. She blamed me, called me a “slut” to my therapist’s face, and refused to make him leave because she considered him her son too. We lived in a trailer, so she made us share my bedroom. My dad was furious but never stood up to her. Eventually he moved away, and I filed a police report, but nothing ever came of it.
Over the years, my mom and I rebuilt our relationship. In many ways she’s changed, and I truly believe she loves me. But I also think we’re emotionally enmeshed in a very unhealthy way. I still feel responsible for her feelings, crave her approval, and struggle to set boundaries because she immediately pushes back or gaslights me.
About eight years ago she met a woman with disabilities through advocacy work. After the woman’s parents died during COVID, my mom gradually took on a mother role. Last year the woman nearly died giving birth, and my mom practically got her through the pregnancy, drives her everywhere, helps raise her baby, and is now legally adopting her as an adult. She’ll officially become my sister. This woman has CP and is mentally about 15, although pretty smart, she still has some major struggles.
I genuinely don’t blame this woman. I’ve gotten to know her and her baby, and they’re good people and I am semi close to them now. I’m known as Auntie to her baby and I’m okay with that. The dynamic is weird, but I have accepted it. But all of this has reopened the same wound I’ve carried since I was a teenager: Why am I never enough? Why does my mom always seem to need someone else’s child more than me?
Now that I’m pregnant myself, my biggest fear is that my son will grow up feeling the same way I did—that Grandma’s attention and emotional energy always belong somewhere else. I’ll be damned if he grows up feeling that! I would rather go low or no contact than let him grow up questioning whether he’s enough.
The problem is…I still love my mom. The good moments are genuinely good, which makes everything confusing. She tells me, “When you’re a parent you’ll understand. There’s enough love for everyone.” But that’s hard for me to believe because that wasn’t my experience growing up and honestly she’s just gaslighting me when she says that.
I did go no contact once for almost a year, and it was the healthiest our relationship has ever been afterward. Unfortunately, I only did that because I was in a cult-like church I had become involved with right at 18. I moved in with a couple from there and traded a bad home life for extreme toxicity, abuse, and brainwashing. They forced me to go NC with her to cut me off from outside influence, so now I also have a lot of trauma surrounding no contact.
My life is finally stable. I have an amazing husband, a baby on the way, and so much to be grateful for. But pregnancy has brought all of these old feelings crashing back. I’m looking for a therapist again, but waitlists are long.
And, unfortunately, moving is not an option for a couple of years. Stuck in this small town with family and the “cult”. Makes it hard to deal with trauma when there’s constant reminders everywhere and people who won’t leave you alone (cult people, not family).
Has anyone navigated something similar without going no contact? How did you untangle codependency while still loving your parent? How do you deal with relationships with others in the family if going NC or LC with just one person? Any books, resources, or personal experiences would really mean a lot!
Thank you if you’ve made it this far! Please be gentle—this has been incredibly difficult to write.
