I Cut Contact With My Mother. It's Massively Changed How I Parent

When I cut off contact with my mother three years ago, the relief was instant.

It wasn’t until a few months later that I started to feel a low burn of dread. It started when my mom – whose number is permanently blocked – texted my daughter from an unknown number: “What can I do to fix this?”

I suddenly realised two hard truths: my breakup with my mother was so complete that there was nothing she could do to make things right. And I was terrified that my children might make the same decision about me when they grew up.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, in some ways, I’d become just like my mom. When I was a kid, I tried every repair attempt to manage her anger, addictions and violence.

When I was 11 and my mom exploded because she didn’t like the way I had organised my closet, I apologised, tried to talk her through it while changing my rainbow of clothes to her preferred pattern of pants on the left, shirts in the middle, and dresses on the right.

When I was an adult, and she raged over my increased attention to my young children at her expense, I sat with her, held her hand, restated and reframed her words and planned and executed dozens of outings and special lunches to make sure she felt adored.

Throughout my life, my mom regularly spiralled into rage when she believed the words I used, my housekeeping skills and my other life choices indicated that I didn’t truly love her, but the actions I took to soothe her would only help for a few hours or days. It took me decades to understand that she was the only one who could quell her own anger. 

I realised, too, that she probably enjoyed the way I desperately sought peace between us. Refusing to let any solutions work for her kept me scrambling to give her the precise formula of attention and affection that would. 

I knew this stemmed from abandonment issues in her own childhood. She often showed a great deal of vulnerability when she described her mother’s emotional distance and her father’s abrupt departure from her life when she was in middle school. Her wound seemed huge, and I spent many years of my life trying to help her heal it. 

Before our estrangement, I believed I was attempting to help her repair her problem, but really, all that work I was doing was feeding a problem she needed to address: the way she projected her huge emotional needs onto her kids.

After our estrangement, I, too, refused to let her even try to repair anything. The only thing that she could do to heal things between us was truly respect the space I asked for. Without her in my life, I felt joyful for the most part, though she relentlessly tried to contact my kids regardless of my wishes or theirs. 

When she broke through, I still felt a pang of guilt. Although I had no interest in reconnecting with my mom, I also sympathised with how awful she must feel every time we rejected her.

This brought me a new layer of dread. I’d not only managed my relationship with my mother for years, but I’d also raised my kids alone, working multiple jobs and organising their complex medical needs.

I struggled to balance my children’s needs and my own, focusing on loving them and trying to create a supportive structure that they could rely on.

I told myself that there is value in showing my children how to struggle, learn from failure and celebrate success. But what if, after so many years of struggling as a single mom, my own kids don’t want me to be a part of their chosen family when they are older?

With up to 26% of adults reporting estrangement from a parent, the phenomenon has recently been called an epidemic. The TikTok hashtag #NoContactFamily has millions of views. Celebrities are speaking up, and articles and booksare being published about the risingawareness that we canchoose our own family. 

By the time my kids are 18, estrangement will likely be even more normalised. As a parent, I realised that I have to let that understanding in – and allow it to transform my parenting. Staying in our kids’ families regardless of our behaviour is no longer a given. We have to earn it.

For me, the first step was unpacking the cycle that was passed down, mother to mother. Because of my mom’s frequent meltdowns and lack of propriety, I lean toward people-pleasing and intellectualising with my own kids.

In therapy, I’ve worked not to parent in a way that is reactive to how I was parented. Even though I’m conflict-avoidant, I’ve learned strategies over the years to engage in healthy disagreements, regulate my own triggers and not shrink away when my children’s feelings get really big.

I’ve also always wanted to offer my children a sense of autonomy, but now I’m thinking critically – and differently – about how to actually make that happen. 

With the guidance of my therapist, I’m focusing on what I always wanted from my own mother – and exactly what I’m now refusing her: consistent pathways to repair and a reliable space to be truly heard.

This doesn’t mean I get everything perfect, but I am learning new ways to communicate with my kids, whether that means asking questions about how my choices have impacted them, reframing a moment or finding an unexpected way to connect with each other. I’m hopeful that this means we will have a fighting chance at having a joyful parent-child relationship when they are adults.

My experience with my mother has taught me that one of the most fundamental disconnections between parents and adult children is an ongoing fight over who owns the stories of what happened, whose fault it was and whether lasting hurt is justified. 

Maybe the first step of healing hard relationships is accepting that several different (and sometimes conflicting) versions of a single moment can be true at the exact same time, focusing on soothing hurt rather than arguing over whether it’s real, figuring out if we can let our own hurt be soothed, and loving each other anyway. It’s always a choice. 

When I have a tense moment with my kids, I’m learning to ask myself: How will they look back on this experience? I ask them questions about their perspective and validate it, even when it doesn’t match my own. I tell them: I believe you. And: I am ready to hear whatever you need.

Whatever I do, my kids still may decide to step away from me when they are older. I hope that time never comes, but if it does, it’s my goal to respect their boundaries.

Maybe the healthiest way to raise our kids is to make sure they know the choice will be available to them, and admit all the ways we are working to be worth a place in their future lives and hearts.

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