“You’re always causing trouble.”
Just like sea turtles who deposit their eggs in the sand and then go back to the sea, some mothers disappear emotionally almost as soon as they’ve given birth to their daughters. Unavailable, distant, and cold, they may be physically present, but they look right through their little girls, preoccupied with their own needs.
Self-centeredness is common to all the mothers we’ve seen, but the mothers at this end of the continuum are so disturbed that they neglect their daughters’ basic emotional needs, and sometimes their physical ones. So incapable of caring are they that they put the lie to the assumption that bonding is an intrinsic part of motherhood. Women like this treat their daughters like objects, resenting them, blaming them for life’s dissatisfactions, withholding even the smallest kindness, and, in the worst cases, failing to protect them from predators and abusers—or becoming abusers themselves.
These mothers who emotionally abandon, betray, and batter are mothers in name only. And they leave in their wake daughters who are fearful, angry, ravenous for affection, and forever struggling to find their own way.
Emily: The Invisible Daughter
Emily, a thirty-six-year-old comptroller for an architectural firm, contacted me for help with her two-year relationship. At her job, she felt competent and respected, she told me, but her closeness with Josh, who had a small importing business, seemed to be slipping away.
EMILY: “I have good friends, I’m making good money. But I’m so miserable at home. I thought Josh was sexy and exciting when we got together, and I thought he wanted kids. I really want a baby, and I can hear the clock ticking. But everything went bad between us. Josh keeps everything to himself, and he’s so withdrawn—we’re living together but I feel so alone. He’s always on the computer, and even when we go out, he says so little, retreats into his phone. He leaves me starved for love. The sick thing is that it feels so familiar it’s almost comfortable.”
I asked Emily why this was familiar to her.
EMILY: “This is so hard to say, but my mom was like that—so distant and cold. I . . . didn’t feel like she wanted me around.”
The loneliness and distance she felt with Josh, she told me, was very much like what she remembered from being a child.
EMILY: “My mother had me, but she never hugged me or told me she loved me. When she did talk to me, it was to tell me what I had done wrong and what a burden I was to her. Once she even said, ‘I wish you’d never been born.’ ”
SUSAN: “Oh, Emily. I’m so sorry that happened to you. ‘I wish you’d never been born’ is the cruelest and most wounding thing a mother could say to a child.”
Emily teared up. “Thank you,” she said softly. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever really heard me.”
We sat quietly for a moment, and then I asked Emily if she got any affection from her father.
EMILY: “My father was out of it most of the time. He worked really long hours. Looking back, I think he did everything he could to avoid her. So I never got any guidance, no teaching, no love or support. Why did they even have me if they didn’t want me?”
Emily believed she had to be the only person rejected so dramatically by her mother, but I reassured her that sadly, it’s a story I’ve heard all too often. Many daughters have told me they’ve been ignored, made to feel invisible and unwanted by mothers who starved them of attention, touch, warmth, and support.
Mothers like Emily’s look at their young daughters seeing only “mess” or “bother” or a disruption of the fantasies and plans they had for themselves. In their preferred vision of life, they’re unencumbered by a child’s needs. And to them, the sweet face of their little girl—an innocent being who loves them unconditionally—is scarcely visible.
We look at these mothers and wonder: How can they be so untouched, so unmoved, so callous toward a helpless, hapless child who is completely dependent on them for emotional sustenance that is as essential and life-giving as milk?
What creates these situations? The reasons are many and varied. We have to assume that a mother who is so cold and uncaring must have been severely traumatized herself. She may have been rejected, or grown up in a loveless household and never learned even the rudimentary aspects of tenderness, empathy, or giving. That kind of trauma doesn’t go away by itself.
When these women become adults, they often get caught up in the social pressure to have children. Some give in to a husband’s desire to have a baby when it’s not really what they want themselves. Or they unwittingly become pregnant and feel compelled by their moral or religious beliefs to become mothers, despite their own misgivings. Then, when the baby arrives, they suddenly have to face the reality that having a baby dramatically changes a woman’s life, demanding attention she may not know how to give.
A woman like Emily’s mother almost certainly was a stranger to love. Without a spark of love to soften her fears and frustrations as she navigates the new world of motherhood, such a woman fills with anger, and her daughter becomes the scapegoat for her discontent, boredom, or sense of helplessness about her life. She wants that child out of her sight.
The Scars of Feeling Unwanted
The kind of emotional abandonment that Emily experienced may seem far less dramatic than, say, a mother leaving a baby on a church doorstep or driving off in the middle of the night for a new life with another man, but it’s every bit as confusing, disorienting, and scarring.
EMILY: “I didn’t get to feel safe or be a child. I wasn’t given any safety net. No teaching, no instructions, no structure, no love or support in any area. I was so ill equipped to handle life. I didn’t know how to do basic things. I could never count on my mom for anything. She never made me feel like I was a daughter. I never felt like I was a treasure to her. I was just something she had to deal with when it suited her.
“I felt so abandoned. When I got my first period I didn’t know what was happening and I went to my mother. Her response was, ‘Handle it yourself.’ ”
Emily decided early that negative attention was better than no attention.
EMILY: “At least when my mother had to come to school because I was caught cheating on a test or kissing a boy in the hall, I could pretend she cared about me. I wound up getting into a lot of trouble, but if I wasn’t in trouble I was invisible.”
Invisible. It’s a word I’ve heard so often from daughters like Emily. Her mother essentially erased her, and she had such a hunger for love that she’d do anything to get it. She never learned that she could be loved for herself.
EMILY: “I made bad choices with men. I would give up my money, my success, my plans—anything—to get someone to love me or want to be with me. I longed for people to take care of me, and it never worked out right. They all turn out like Josh—so great at the beginning and then they wind up pulling away, if they were ever really there.” (She began to cry softly.)
“I just don’t feel I’m good enough for a good relationship or a good guy. Sometimes I wonder what I’d be like if only I’d had a normal mother who actually gave a damn about me.”
SUSAN: “Emily, I want to help you move ahead, and to do that, you can’t stay stuck in ‘if only,’ because ‘if onlys’ keep you trapped in longing and fantasy and wishful thinking.”
I told her that we’d work on two tracks, exploring both her relationship, which was the current crisis, and her childhood. She could learn new ways of being and feeling and becoming visible, whether she stayed with Josh or not.
The Mother Who Fails to Protect
Just as a lioness will battle to the death any creature that threatens her cubs, a loving mother must do no less. Of all the responsibilities that a mother must fulfill if her daughter is to thrive, perhaps the greatest is protection. A mother who knowingly fails to protect her daughter from harm or from physical or sexual abuse at the hands of a father, stepfather, or anyone else is guilty of aiding and abetting the perpetrator. Emotional abandonment takes on traumatic and dangerous facets when she betrays her daughter by standing by and allowing physical harm to befall her.
Fearful, passive, and destructively self-serving, some mothers will permit their daughters to be pummeled or sexually molested rather than confront the abuser and take the risk of being injured or abandoned themselves. They will do anything to hold on to their partners, no matter how cruel or violent, ignoring their daughters’ screams and pleas, and even rationalizing that they’re doing the right thing by not getting involved. They look away and silently let the harm continue, leaving their daughters feeling fearful, suspicious, and full of guilt, believing they’ve brought all this pain on themselves.
Kim: Facing Old Ghosts
Kim is a striking, auburn-haired woman of forty-two who writes for women’s magazines. She told me her relationship with her daughter, Melissa, who was sixteen, was starting to be full of friction and tension. Kim and Melissa had been very close, but once Melissa started the normal process of pulling away and preferring to spend more time with her friends, Kim had become preoccupied with worry. Melissa was popular with her friends and a good student, and Kim told me she wanted to be sure things stayed that way.
KIM: “She’s complaining and complaining that I don’t trust her, but all I’m doing is setting limits so things don’t get out of control. She has a nine P.M. curfew, I have her check in from wherever she is, and of course, no dating or overnights. That’s a recipe for trouble.”
I told Kim that I didn’t understand what she was so worried about. Melissa had good grades and seemed to be doing well.
KIM: “That’s right. But I know what happens when you don’t keep a close eye on kids this age. They can spin out of control in a second.”
Kim seemed to be creating negative expectations of Melissa out of whole cloth, and I wasn’t surprised that a sixteen-year-old would be upset about living with such binding restrictions. She couldn’t even go out to an evening movie and stay to the end if she had to be home by nine. But Kim insisted that her daughter needed her protection.
KIM: “You know how bad it is out there and how easy it is for kids to get in trouble. I wish to hell that my mother had cared about me as much as I care about Melissa. There would’ve been a lot less turmoil in my life.”
I asked Kim to give some careful thought to whether her anxiety about her daughter might be connected to issues from her own life. Were there some old ghosts dancing around?
She thought for a long moment.
KIM: “I guess I’ve always been worried that I would not be a good enough mother. I know that talking about this is long overdue. . . . My childhood was so awful, and I thought, ‘It’s over and done with—I have a good life now. I can just grit my teeth and go on.’ But I’ve got so much buried garbage from the past.”
Kim’s eyes filled with tears. I assured her that once we dealt with “the garbage” head-on, it wouldn’t have so much power over her. “What was going on in your house when you were a kid?” I asked.
KIM: “The only person I’ve ever trusted enough to tell about this is my husband. . . . My childhood was a nightmare. My father was a bully who had fits of crazy rage. He would beat me and throw me against the wall regularly. And my mother just stood by as a silent witness. She didn’t do a thing! She allowed him to treat her like shit, and she allowed him to treat me the same way. I had to pay the price so she could have a husband and the facade of a family. All she cared about was what everyone would think.”
In an abusive marriage, the mother becomes a terrified child—far more concerned with defending herself against physical or emotional violence than she is about keeping her daughter safe. She hides—sometimes using her child as a kind of shield to take the brunt of the abuser’s treatment—instead of taking the necessary steps to get the abuser out of the house.
KIM: “I wanted so much for her to protect me and care for me. But she watched everything and then acted as if she was blind.”
Kim became the sacrificial lamb while her mother lived in a constant state of denial. In such situations, truth becomes the enemy because it is a threat to maintaining the unhealthy balance of a destructive family. If these mothers were to face the truth, they might have to do something about it—call the police or a child abuse agency. But they’re too frightened to even consider that. So they preach the value of silence and compliance and try to stay out of the way.
KIM: “My dad . . . was crazy. He beat me with a belt, yelled at me, punished me. I couldn’t do anything right. Every day in that house was hell. I felt like I was drowning . . . there was never enough air. From the time I was five or six, I knew rage, hate, anger, and white-hot fear better than anyone should ever know it. I wanted my father to die . . . and I hated him so much I wished . . . I wished I could kill him. What child should ever have to feel like that?
“And my mother! I know she heard me scream, heard the belt hitting my skin. I know she heard the anguish when I cried for help. . . . And she never once protected me. I was her little girl and she never. . . .” (She sobbed quietly for a while, then wiped away the tears.)
“You know what I could never understand? Why we couldn’t go live with my grandmother. She lived in a big house, and I always counted the extra beds and wondered why we couldn’t stay with her. We had a place to go, but my mom kept me under the same roof with that monster. She let him abuse me and my little brother. . . . I told her we should all run away to Grandma’s. But she told me, ‘You know we can’t do that. Your dad would never let me get away. Don’t talk that way. It’s not going to happen. Don’t bring it up again.’ I felt helpless and scared all the time, and I had no one to talk to. I learned my voice didn’t matter—I guess that’s why I tried to express myself through writing. I felt so isolated. I didn’t know who I could trust.”
WHEN TRUST BECOMES A CASUALTY
That atmosphere of fear, frustration, and betrayal left lasting marks on Kim’s ability to read people and situations, and she couldn’t develop an accurate emotional barometer. When she left home, she often went to extremes where trust was concerned; most unprotected daughters do. They may assume erroneously that everyone will hurt or betray them, and believe they are alone in a dangerous world. That can lead them to undermine closeness and intimacy by becoming fearful and suspicious, and often expecting the worst of people. After all, if you can’t trust your mother, why should anyone else be different?
Or, paradoxically, they may swing to the other extreme and become overly trusting, feeling so desperate to find someone who cares for them that they may ignore warning signs and find themselves involved with people who will victimize them again. Women who were unprotected as children don’t believe they are worthy of love—on an unconscious level, they believe that if they were, their mothers wouldn’t have allowed them to be hurt. “I don’t trust that anything good will happen for me,” a woman who was an unprotected child tells herself.
“No one good and kind would really love me.” Most adults who were abused as children are often unconsciously pulled toward the kinds of people and behavior that became familiar in childhood, and for daughters like Kim, that often means unstable and even potentially dangerous partners.
In college, Kim met Alex, a smart, outgoing business student, and she told me, “I felt like my life was finally going to be good. Here was someone who really seemed to love me.” When he asked her to marry him a year into the relationship, she said an enthusiastic yes, even though she’d seen glimmers of his temper, which disturbed her from the beginning.
KIM: “Looking back, I can see all the little moments when I knew there might be trouble. He’d blow up at a waitress because our food took a few extra minutes to arrive. Or he’d get into a yelling match with some crazy person in the street instead of just walking by. It made me nervous, but it didn’t happen a lot, and I thought he’d just had a bad day.”
Kim could see Alex’s potential for explosiveness and it scared her, but she took a certain comfort in it, too—don’t ever underestimate the power of the familiar. But she hadn’t been destroyed by her treatment as a child, and there was a healthy part of herself left intact that could see Alex clearly.
It was that healthy part that emerged to save her a couple of years into the marriage when Alex’s rage roared toward her.
KIM: “I put up with a lot from Alex. He was okay when he was sober, but he started drinking a lot, and he was a mean drunk. He had a terrible temper, and I was so scared after Melissa was born. When he got angry, he looked like my father all over again. But one night he smashed a wall with his fist and broke our best china because he didn’t like what I made for dinner. When that happened, I knew I had to get a divorce to protect me and my daughter. I swore I would never be the kind of mother to her that my mother was to me.”
Kim acted with considerable courage when she left Alex. Scared by how close she had come to being abused again, and how close Melissa had been to violence in their home, she found a support group for survivors of child abuse and devoured books. She found out that she wasn’t alone and drew great strength from being in a community of women who understood what she’d been through.
And until recently, she believed she was finally putting the past behind her. She had done well as a writer, and her second husband, Todd, a successful chemist, was wonderful to her and Melissa. She had many satisfactions, but her painful conflicts with Melissa were troubling her deeply.
The old decision that had helped her through the hard times—“I will never be the kind of mother my mother was to me”—was standing in her way now. Kim feared that if she didn’t constantly watch her own daughter, she could be guilty of turning into her mother. So she’d compensated by becoming an overprotective disciplinarian. And that old issue of trust had arisen for her again—though she knew intellectually that Melissa was responsible and levelheaded, she found herself expecting the worst of her. Once again, she didn’t know how to find a reasonable center.
As we worked together, Kim started to realize how much her own childhood terrors were at the root of her anxiety about her daughter, and they both significantly diminished for her as we exorcised the pain and power of her childhood experiences. She was able to ease up on Melissa, and with time and goodwill on both their parts, they were able to reclaim the loving relationship that Kim feared they had lost.
Nina: When the Victim Becomes the Villain
Many nonprotective mothers have a shockingly well-honed ability to justify an abuser’s behavior by blaming daughters for “causing” the abuse inflicted on them.
At her first session, Nina, a forty-eight-year-old computer systems analyst, told me she wanted to learn to relate better to people and improve her self-image. Short and rumpled, with her graying hair pulled back in a braid and not a trace of makeup, she’d never been in a serious relationship.
I asked her how she saw herself.
NINA (looking into her lap): “I’m homely and so clumsy. My nose is too big, my eyes are too close together. Nobody’s ever going to want me. All I have to do is look in the mirror—it’s no secret.”
The mirror is neutral, I told her. It doesn’t say words like “You’re homely” and “Nobody will ever want you.” But she’d heard those words on a regular basis—from her father and mother.
NINA: “I was the black sheep of the family. They wanted a pretty blond girl, and I was short and dark and awkward, always tripping over something. See, I have this really weird joint condition, and when I was a kid, it made me really clumsy. I fell all the time. My joints weren’t stable, but I didn’t find out the reason for a long time. My mother didn’t really believe in doctors too much. She’d say, ‘You do all that falling to get attention and provoke your father.’ ”
“To do what?” I asked her.
NINA (after a long silence): “Beat me. He started beating me when I fell. He said I was doing it on purpose. Then he would beat me up whenever he was in a bad mood. With his fists. With a strap. . . . I was afraid to fall, and I couldn’t help it. When I was little, I stayed in my room until he’d left for work so he wouldn’t see me.”
Like so many nonprotective mothers, Nina’s mother became cruel and critical, projecting a stream of blame onto Nina to justify her own cowardice and terrible neglect. “Stop making your father upset,” she’d tell her terrified daughter. “Stop saying bad things about him—I don’t want to hear them.” She built up her abusive husband while tearing her daughter down, saying things like, “You know how hard he works—you have no compassion. You don’t know how to be in a family.”
Down is up and up is down in the perverse logic of abusive households. Little Nina, with her debilitating and untreated physical problems, was the villain, and her father became “the victim,” even though his own child cowered and hid from him. “Just be nice to him—say good morning and smile,” Nina’s mother would tell her. Smile at the man who beats you.
At the same time, she’d batter her daughter’s self-image.
NINA: “She would shake her head as she looked at me, like I was a curse she had to live with. And tell me how ugly I was.”
With great resilience, Nina built a life for herself when she was old enough to get out of the house. She got computer training, saved her money, and moved as far away as she could. But she took her mother’s words with her and replayed them in her head in an endless, self-fulfilling loop:
• You’re selfish.
• You have no compassion.
• You’re ugly.
• You’re damaged.
• You’ll never find a man.
Small wonder that Nina was so painfully shy and withdrawn. Certain that other people would hurt her, say unkind things about her, and blame her for everything that went wrong, she avoided any contact that wasn’t necessary for her job, and kept to herself.
She and I began to untangle her real self from the distorted images imposed by her mother, but after a couple of one-on-one meetings, I sensed that what she needed most was a situation that could break through her isolation. Group therapy would be ideal, and since I didn’t currently have any groups of my own, I referred Nina to a trusted colleague and told her that we could phase out our work together once she felt comfortable in the group. She was petrified by the idea of talking in front of people, but after the second group session she found the courage to open up. People listened, she told me. Over time, she was able to look the group members in the eye without fear, and, for the first time, she experienced the pleasure of connecting with other people.
When Mother Is Out of Control
It’s shocking to experience the betrayal of a neglectful mother. But a distinct and piercing shock comes when Mother is the abuser.
Suddenly, the hand that should be caressing curls into a fist. Or it reaches for a belt, a coat hanger, a wooden spoon. The woman whose love should be a given looks at you, or through you, nothing in her gaze but rage. And then she hits.
Her rage transforms everything. Common kitchen objects turn into weapons. A child’s soft body bruises, and bones may even break. Mother becomes monster, and a world that should be safe shatters.
Early in my career, when I was working with so many adults who had been abused as children, I assumed that it was primarily the father or male figure in a household who physically abused his children. But experience has taught me that mothers do their share of hitting and beating.
These women are seriously disturbed, some even mentally ill. And when angered, they lose their ability to control their impulses. Rage takes over for the abusive mother, and her daughter is a stand-in for every person who ever hurt or disappointed her. The child triggers all her unresolved angers, resentments, feelings of inadequacy, and fears of rejection and becomes a convenient dumping ground for all the ugliness this mother has inside.
My client Deborah provides a chilling example.
DEBORAH: “Growing up, I never knew when my mom would erupt and how mad she would get. Our home was a living hell—constant yelling, screaming, name-calling, unpredictable violence. She was so vicious. She slapped my face, hard, and hit me in the head more times than I can remember. She beat me with wire coat hangers, hitting me on my arms and hands and back. And when I’d run into the bathroom to escape, she’d come running after me and open the door lock with a pencil. She screamed at me and said I was a spoiled brat and a horrible girl. Then she’d hit me again and pull my hair. She’d make me stand in the corner with my nose to the wall for hours for disobeying her, and when my legs would get numb and I’d fall, she’d yank me up by my arm and beat the backs of my legs until I stood on my own. It was relentless . . . I can’t understand how anyone could have been so cruel to a young child. I’m not sure how I survived.”
Deborah: Learning to Deal with Rage
I met Deborah, a forty-one-year-old graphic designer with a small and growing business, after she e-mailed me asking for the earliest appointment I could give her. She’d had a blowup with her eight-year-old daughter and was terrified by the anger she felt. “I’m in trouble,” she wrote. She was pale and anxious when she came into my office a few days later, and after I’d gotten a little background information from her, I asked her to tell me what was going on.
DEBORAH: “I almost hit my daughter the other day and it really scared me. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight, and I think I could’ve hit her. I didn’t, but I was this close, and that’s one thing I’ve always sworn I would never do. . . . It’s no excuse, but I’ve been under so much pressure lately. We’ve got three kids under ten, and my business is growing, which is great, but I’m working all the time and I’m wiped out when I get home. I walked in Thursday night and Jessica, my eight-year-old, was in the living room by herself watching TV—the other kids were with their dad upstairs watching a ball game. I don’t know what got into that girl. She’d made a fort out of the sofa cushions and dragged a bunch of food in. She must’ve been roughhousing with the dog because there was popcorn scattered all over the place and a stain where Coke had spilled on the rug. And she was just sitting there in the middle of it, watching some inane show. I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV and laid down the law. I told her to clean up the mess, go up to bed as soon as she was done, no TV for at least a week, and no snacks in front of the TV till I say so.
“She just sat there. And when I told her to step to it, I could hear her calling me a mean old hag under her breath. I just snapped and started screaming at her. . . . It was awful. ‘How dare you talk to me like that. Who the hell do you think you are, you ungrateful little bitch? I’ve had it with you. I work my ass off for you. . . .’ I never, ever talk to the kids like that. The dog’s leash was on the table and I reached for it and I felt my hand go up like I was going to. . . . Oh my God, Susan. Jessica was terrified. I knew that look so well. That was me when I was a kid and my mom was about to hit me. Am I turning into my mother? . . . I can’t let that happen. My mom was crazy. Am I crazy, too? I seem to have so much anger.”
I reassured Deborah that anger is just a very strong feeling. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Deborah had every right to be upset, but as she had learned, screaming and hitting don’t teach a child anything positive. Rage only teaches rage. Deborah would need to work on the anger she had pent up inside. And to do that, we’d have to look closely at the abuse she’d experienced as a child.
Deborah told me that she’d been beaten by her mother from the time she was three or four, and in vivid detail, she described the terrible forms that battering took. When she was old enough to leave home, she said, her mission was to put the violence behind her and never let it back into her life. She cut off all contact with her mother when she went to college, even though that meant working a couple of jobs to support herself. One of them, with a graphic design firm, led to a full-time job when she graduated, and a few years ago, she left to open her own boutique Web design company.
DEBORAH: “I really thought everything would be okay when I stopped being in touch with my mom. Especially once the kids were born and I had my own family. Once you’ve had a child of your own, it’s hard to imagine how anyone, especially your own mother, could hurt her own little girl. This was the woman who was attached to me with an umbilical cord. I was inside her body. I know what it feels like to sense a baby growing in your womb, to see its face for the first time. . . . And to be so savage. . . . How could she? It makes me so livid to think about it.”
Deborah, like so many abused daughters, had a volcano of rage inside because of the pain, humiliation, and degradation she had suffered at her mother’s hand. And now, having seen it explode toward her own child, she lived in terror that it might spill out of her again. It was a legitimate fear: Without treatment, the intense emotions surrounding physical abuse can make daughters vulnerable to becoming abusers themselves.
IT’S OKAY TO SAY “I’M SORRY”
Deborah knew that her first priority was to calm her relationship with her daughter. “Jessica is practically hiding from me,” she said. “She’s still scared, and I don’t know what to do. I think I really traumatized her.”
I suggested that she start with an apology. Apologizing when you have been wrong is a great gift you can give your child. It lets her know that you are not afraid to be vulnerable or honest, and that you respect her enough to acknowledge your mistakes. It was also appropriate to ask for improved behavior on Jessica’s part. I told her, “You need to ask her to respect you enough to know how hard you work and that you’re tired when you come home—and that you really need her to clean up whatever mess she makes.”
The apology went well, Deborah reported back. When she reached her arms out to Jessica afterward, her daughter came for a hug and melted into her as Deborah stroked her hair. Now Deborah was intent on rooting out her rage, and we spent our next sessions focusing on her anger—and her grief.
The Double Betrayal
of Sexual Abuse
Daughters pay an unfathomable price when their mothers are aware that they are being sexually abused and do nothing. Sexual abuse shrouds a daughter in deep and pervasive shame that leaves her feeling fundamentally violated, stigmatized, and alone. She sees herself as “damaged goods.”
Even after years of candid talk about the subject, many people are still unclear about the driving force behind this crime. That force is not primarily sexual, but a cold, life-warping need for power and control on the part of the abuser, who uses his authority to get his victim or victims (as he may molest more than one daughter) to comply. He may also manipulate or cajole—“Make Daddy happy,” “Let me show you what to expect when you start seeing boys”—making the daughter feel complicit in the abuse, and saddling her with ever deeper layers of guilt and shame that rightfully belong only to him.
The predator wants what he wants and he takes it—from an innocent and powerless girl who may be three years old or seven or in her early teens. Even if he’s aware on some level that she will be severely traumatized by this violation of her body and her essence, and crushed by a trusted adult’s betrayal (and it’s difficult to believe that he doesn’t have some awareness), none of that gives him pause. Emotionally infantile and insecure, a sexual abuser is deeply dysfunctional and severely disturbed in his personal life, no matter how well he may function in the outside world.
And what about the mother who may know or suspect what’s happening but continues to pretend that everything is fine? Like the other mothers we’ve seen in this chapter, she’s excessively dependent, afraid to challenge the abuser whether he’s her husband, boyfriend, or another member of her family—and unwilling and unable to pull her daughter to safety.
Sexual abuse only occurs in deeply troubled families where role definitions and boundaries are totally blurred and violated. I have treated a vast number of victims and guided them through their brave journey to regain their confidence, their dignity, and most of all, their self-respect. For this section, I have chosen one representative case that offers a window into the collusion of the silent mother and the abuser. If you were sexually abused and unprotected, I think you’ll find many elements of your experience here. And I want to assure you: You, too, can heal. The process starts now, with fearlessly facing what happened.
Kathy: Wounds You Must Tend To
Kathy was a smartly dressed thirty-three-year-old who worked as an account executive with an ad agency. She told me she was concerned that her two young girls were suffering because of her recurrent depression, which she wisely recognized as being triggered by the long-term effects of untreated sexual abuse by her father. Her story was all too familiar.
KATHY: “I’ve been struggling with this for most of my life. My father started abusing me when I was eight years old. It was horrible. . . . I tried to tell myself it could have been worse, that other people have suffered so much more, but since I’ve had kids, I’ve noticed how the memories have gotten so much stronger. Anyway, I get really sad, and I’m here because I don’t want my babies to think they’re the cause of my pain. I noticed that my older daughter gets tummy aches when I’m in the dumps, like she can sense my depression. She doesn’t deserve that. So I think it’s time to see if I can really deal with my past. I’ve done a lot of reading and tried to do some work on myself over the years. I thought I was better, but I was wrong. I’m not done.”
Kathy was wise to come in. Sexual abuse is one life experience that absolutely mandates professional help. Depression is as constant as the change of seasons for people who’ve been through what Kathy had experienced. But the more you work with a good therapist, the more the memories of abuse lose their power over you. Doing that work is a loving gift to yourself and your family.
The first step, I told Kathy, was to talk about what had happened in her house when the abuse was taking place. Naturally, it was difficult, but she summoned her courage and plunged ahead.
KATHY: “The bad stuff started when I was eight. We’d be sitting on my parents’ bed watching TV and my dad started wanting to play ‘ride the horse,’ with me bouncing against what I learned later was his erection. I didn’t know what was going on at first. Then he started to put his hands and his mouth on me, and he made me touch him. . . . He never penetrated me. But it was awful, Susan. . . .”
SUSAN: “Of course it was. You were confused. You were frightened. And you don’t have to have been penetrated to be sexually abused.”
Sexual abuse encompasses a whole range of actions that may or may not involve penetration. All of them involve the betrayal of trust and the wielding of the abuser’s power to coerce or involve the victim. Exposing genitals to a child, showing her pornography, and asking her to undress and expose herself to him fall on this spectrum, even though there may not be actual physical contact. When there is contact, abuse can take myriad forms—touching the child’s genitals, buttocks, or breasts or having the child touch the adult’s; rubbing against the child; penetration with fingers or objects; oral sex; intercourse.
Your body—all of it—is where you live, and your whole being feels the impact when it is violated. Bottom line: Any kind of behavior with a child that has to be kept secret probably falls under the heading of sexual abuse. And like all the examples given above, it’s almost certain to be a criminal act.
THE SILENT PARTNER: DENIAL AND ACCUSATIONS
Kathy’s abuse went on for years, and I asked her if she’d ever told anyone.
KATHY: “My father warned me not to say anything, but I told my mother when I was ten. I wanted it to stop! But she essentially did nothing! She talked to my dad, and he said he would never do it again, that he would get counseling. None of it was true. The sexual abuse went on and on.”
A loving mother, knowing that her daughter was being molested, would rear up in fury and take steps to end the abuse. “If anyone touched my baby like that,” one caller to my former radio program told me, “I’d want to kill him, and I’d call the police in a minute!” She was the epitome of the protective warrior mother, and every daughter deserves a mother like that. But a daughter whose mother lacks that righteous anger and strength may be abandoned for years to attacks on her body and being.
Worse, her inadequate mother may make her feel responsible for her own abuse, as we saw earlier with Nina. The words are as corrosive as acid when such a mother blames her victim daughter:
• He would never do something like that. You must have come on to him.
• You could have stopped him if you wanted to.
• You must have enjoyed it.
• If you hadn’t worn those tight shorts, this never would have happened.
She may flat out deny that the abuse is happening with words like: “You’re making this up to get attention.” “That’s impossible.” “You’re saying this to get back at him.”
If she deigns to “protect” her daughter, it often takes the form of an ineffectual “Put a lock on your door” or “Just stay away from him.”
How is this kind of denial, callousness, and complicity possible? Like the other mothers in this chapter, the woman who allows her daughter to be sexually abused is passive, fearful, self-absorbed. She may be terrified of what might happen if the family were split up. She may be afraid of the shame or guilt she’d feel if others were to find out. She may believe that her daughter’s abuse is the price she has to pay for her husband’s financial support of the family and fear the turmoil and consequences she would have to face if she took action.
In some instances, she may even be jealous of her daughter. It’s not uncommon for such a mother to feel that she’s been replaced in the marriage, mistaking the brute power dynamic of sexual abuse for a sexually based act, and seeing her young daughter as a competitor for her husband. If the father is a successful professional, as many incest perpetrators are, she may not want to give up the goodies that go with that—financial security and a big house are often more important to her than her daughter.
This crippled mother is almost completely devoid of empathy and compassion. Love and protection aren’t in her emotional vocabulary.
THE SECOND LEVEL OF BETRAYAL
I can’t overstate the impact a mother’s response has on the way a daughter heals from any kind of abuse. It’s crucial to the way her daughter thinks about what’s happened to her and the way she feels about herself in the aftermath. A loving mother believes what her daughter tells her, assures her she did nothing wrong, and takes action to ensure that the abuse will never be repeated, often by getting a divorce or having the abuser arrested. In the absence of this essential validation, the abused daughter feels damaged, dirty, and different—the Three D’s of incest.
Kathy coped initially by isolating herself, as some victims do, hiding behind a wall of weight, with the erroneous belief that that would make her less desirable and therefore safe.
KATHY: “I had no interest in dating for a long time. Who would want me? I was the girl whose own father did awful things to her. I ate to fill the gap, the loneliness. I didn’t trust anyone, and I was stressed all the time. In college I put on a lot of weight, and that made me feel even worse about myself. I got some counseling for my depression and managed to lose a lot of it, but I was still convinced I would never feel loved. . . .
“After college I got an internship at an ad agency, and then a real miracle happened.”
At work, Kathy began a friendship with Ethan, a man who was kind and playful. Their mutual attraction became a romance.
KATHY: “Ethan has really been great. I know it hurts him to know the specifics of my pain. He’s heard it for the thirteen years of our relationship, and he’s stood by me while I’ve been trying to get better. He’s been a godsend.”
But even with Ethan’s love and support, she was never sure when memories of her abuse, which were largely dormant early in the relationship, would overtake her. They flared up when each of her daughters was born, and sometimes when her husband bathed or dressed the girls. This is not uncommon; having children is one of the most powerful triggers for reactivating dark memories. Other triggers can include the death of a parent, a scene of abuse in a television show or movie, even seeing your daughter reach the age you were when you first were abused.
KATHY: “Mom feels that this should be behind us, and she recently told me that she won’t talk about it because it is embarrassing to her. She has no idea what embarrassment is. I’m at a point where I don’t want her denial and negativity in my life. She acts as if nothing happened. I want to put this behind me, too, but she won’t help. And I am so furious about that. They say you need to forgive before you can move on. I wish I could.”
SUSAN: “What your mother did was terrible, Kathy, and there’s no need to forgive her despite what a lot of people may tell you. But you do have to release the power and control that her betrayal has had over you. Forgiveness is not a magic wand that you can wave to change everything, especially when your parents have done nothing to take responsibility for their destructive behavior.”
KATHY: “Thank you for saying that. Now that I have my two beautiful babies, the outrage keeps surfacing. I could never let anyone hurt my children. I would never put them in a situation where anyone could potentially harm them. I guess my challenge is to figure out why my mother didn’t feel the same way about me. . . .”
I told Kathy that it’s not usually productive to focus on the “why,” because we may never get to the bottom of it. Healing comes from looking at what happened, how it affected you, and what we can do about it now.
Wounded, Not Ruined
Of all the things I’ve done in my long career, I’m proudest of the fact that I was one of the very first mental health professionals to take sexual abuse out of the cave of secrecy where it had been hidden and bring it into the light. It was a tough battle, and I talked (oh God, how I talked) on radio, on television, in seminars, and in newspaper interviews, until the public—and some very resistant members of the psychiatric profession—were willing to listen and sexual abuse became a subject that was no longer taboo. Today there’s a much greater understanding about the prevalence of such abuse, and the depths of the wounds it creates. There’s a better understanding, too, of physical abuse and neglect.
I am always deeply moved and awed by the courage and determination of women like Emily, Kim, Nina, Deborah, and Kathy. Despite the betrayal of their mothers, with treatment, they not only survived but went on to lead fulfilling lives.
I want to reassure you that if you are a victim of emotional neglect or physical or sexual abuse and were not comforted or cared for appropriately, your life is not a dead-end street. As severe as are the effects of neglect and abuse, the healing can be equally dramatic. You are not doomed, or cursed. You are wounded, not ruined, and great wisdom can come from your wounds: compassion, empathy, a sensitive barometer that lets you know when people are mistreating you. Using that wisdom is how we all make lemonade out of the lemons. Let me show you how.