I’m Glad My Mom Died is the title of a new memoir by a former child actress I’ve never heard of, and it’s a best seller. It has received more attention than any other recent book that’s not about Donald Trump, and the response to it seems uniformly favorable.

For all I know, Jeanette McCurdy is a good writer. But it’s the shocking title that seems to please reviewers most. How daring of her! Good for her! The book is a chronicle of abuse by a terrible, exploitative and seemingly mentally ill stage mother whose conduct sounds like something from a Grimms’ Fairy Tale.

But now the mom is safely dead from cancer and Jeanette is sharing her story of suffering and redemption all over the internet to hearty accolades, not least from others who hate their parents and share her bold sentiment. A piece in the Huffington Post reveals that “it’s not uncommon to feel that way.” Uh-oh.

Naturally, as a mother I find this chilling. As a mother estranged from an adult child, I can’t help feeling the title embodies my worst fears. I know my adult child wants nothing to do with me for reasons only he understands. I mean, I know I wasn’t perfect and I yelled a lot. And abuse is in the eye, and narrative, of the self-proclaimed abused party.

But it pains me to think that my death will actually be celebrated, you know? I guess it won’t matter since I won’t be around to be horrified.

Back when I learned about forums for adult children who hate their mothers, I had to stop looking at their posts when someone admitted to feeling no grief upon losing their parent. They weren’t exactly proud of their reaction, like Jeanette seems to be, but rather a little defensive. The other mommy-haters on the forum reassured the griefless adult child that they looked forward to the death of their parent and the relief it would bring.

Since I can only speak for myself, and my own narrative of my experience as both a mother and an adult child of a mother, I guess it’s not for me to judge these damaged victims of bad parents. But it seems like the title “I’m Glad My Mom Died” is somehow acceptable in today’s zeitgeist (sorry!) of proud victimhood and trauma survivors, whereas the title “I’m Glad My Daughter Died” would never be published, let alone applauded.

Is it because it’s reasonable to hate your mom but not your daughter? What about “I’m Glad My Dog Died” or even “I’m Glad My Neighbor Died’? None of these work, do they?

My guess is it’s because the Awful Mother is now a staple of our cultural landscape, from Carrie to Mommy Dearest and beyond.

Mother’s can’t win, is my feeling. The best of us are still not good enough, although Donald Winnicott disagrees. (More about the concept of the good-enough mother here.) Our mistakes engender bitter resentments that time cannot eradicate for many. But it’s my belief that whatever you do as a parent will be wrong. All you can do is try your hardest to make the best decisions you can, to get help if you see you’re fucking up, and to love your kids unconditionally.

I’ve come to forgive my mother for her shortcomings and her bad behavior with the awareness that she was a complicated person shaped by her own difficult childhood. I’m not glad she died; I’m screwed up but I’m not heartless.

Jennette McCurdy tells an interviewer somewhat self-righteously that she’s “done the work” to earn the right to her title. Whatever that means. Is she sorry she was born? I’d like to ask her that. Because she owes her existence to her mother, which is not nothing.

And now she’s making a fortune by speaking Her Truth about her mother. She also complains in the book about her Nickelodeon co-star Ariana Grande’s greater success, which could lead to another brave best seller if Ariana could only die.

Just kidding! You do you, mommy haters.

Thoughts and insults, anyone?

* Giaquinto di Corrado Bottega, Medea, 1752, Hinton Ampner National Trust

If you’ve ever been a child or a parent, you’re well acquainted with the aggrieved outcry, “But that’s not fair!” I was already a seasoned mother the first time I heard another mother smugly reply to her kid, “Well, life isn’t fair!” It was upsetting. Why does anyone think that’s a good lesson to teach??

I mean, duh, life isn’t fair, as we found out for the billionth time on Saturday. It’s so fucking unfair that they won’t find that cunt guilty as charged. It’s unfair that he gets to get away with so much corruption and inhumanity when everyone else has to suffer.

So much unfairness, but why shouldn’t we let children strive to practice and expect fairness? Just because we can’t have it doesn’t mean it’s not an honorable value. Fairness is a universal concept and ideal. It’s hardwired into us. “Studies have shown” that even chimps understand fairness. There’s some experiment with bananas that illustrates this but I’m too stoned to remember the details.

Children just have an innate understanding of fairness, and it isn’t our job to turn them into cynics.

I may just be pathologically immature in still being shocked when things aren’t fair. I can’t seem to accept the unfairness of it all. I still whine, “So unfair!” at least once a day. I always say it when our Netflix won’t load, because it’s NOT FAIR.

If you expect everything to be unfair, though, you’ll start to think it doesn’t matter. You’ll be like a Republican senator! And no one wants that.

Here’s an example: My mother-in-law is 104 and not happy. She can’t see or walk or do anything but on she goes. It’s so not fair!

Likewise, I am unable to be with either of my sons, and surely that’s unfair. The universe is indifferent to fairness. But people have certain primal instincts that operate without logic.

I want things to be fair against all odds, and I want you to want that too. If you have kids and haven’t yet assured them that life isn’t fair, I hope you won’t.

Going back to my mother-in-law (because I’m that stoned) I can’t understand why people react to her age with, How wonderful! or Bless her heart! There is nothing wonderful about such advanced old age, despite that French Nun who insists on living to 117. It’s led to my husband and I affirming a wish to die before everything craps out. My husband once said he’d be ready at around 75, but of course he’s extended it a few years.

Have you Boomers come to a decision about old age? Have you settled upon a reasonable expiration date? I just read a quote by Nabokov, about a disliked writer who had lived to an advanced and “entirely unnecessary” old age, and I laughed out loud. 117 and even 104 fit into that category. Bless everyone’s heart.

For me, ten more years might be enough. I’d like to die with my hair and teeth, let alone a functioning bladder. I think that would be more than fair.

You?

(c) Diane Arbus

Everyone I know and everyone you know can quote the first line of This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin, a poem he wrote in 1971.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

That one line has served as gospel for at least two generations.  It validates adolescent resentment like nothing else. See, a famous poet says you fucked us up, you fuckers. It’s official.

And of course they do, your mum and dad. Because everyone is fucked up, and everything starts at home, where grown ups can make random rules because you are powerless.

If only they’d been more affectionate or less affectionate, more involved or less involved, more attentive or less smothering, if only they’d fought less or fought more. Or as Larkin complains,

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Philip Larkin followed his own advice and didn’t have kids. So he never discovered a consecutive truth that parents learn the hard way. They fuck you up, your kids.

They fuck you up in small ways or in ways that crush you. They rob you of sleep and peace of mind, for starters. You will never rest easy, once you’re a parent. Every fever, illness or broken bone, you’d do anything to take their place. If they’re not home on time, you will be worried, then frantic. Every hurt they experience, you experience with them, but magnified. They own your heart, and they don’t care if they break it.

They didn’t ask to be born, you know. So fuck you. Did you make sacrifices for them? Too bad, that was your job.

I wish I’d had more compassion for my mom, even though she was so unfit for motherhood. I wouldn’t budge in my resentment until she got cancer. I could list the ways she failed me but never put myself in her shoes.

I used to urge my childless friends to have babies, if they asked my opinion. I told them that motherhood was so transcendent, so sublime, that life would be eternal high school without the experience. They would never know the scope and magnitude of pure selfless love. That part is true, I believe, but I regret my sales pitch now. I didn’t factor in how much they fuck you up.

Most of you parents would do it again with no hesitation, right? I would too, because those happy years were the best! But the downside, oh my god, it is terrible. I once considered setting myself on fire – it’s the method most available to women in India, and I thought the physical agony might cancel out the emotional distress. I got over it, so don’t freak out, alright? I’m just trying to illustrate the downness of the downside.

You expect your kids to love you back. You have all kinds of expectations.

Philip Larkin, I’ve always respected your English miserabilism. You were no match for Beckett, but who is? Anyway, not being a poet I can only offer this haiku I just made up.

You poor angry boy
If you don’t feel I’m your mom
You won’t get the house.

Saint Clare intervenes to save a child from a wolf. Giovanni di Paolo, 1455

But I do love a botanica. I just found another one in Long Beach, hidden on a side street but filled with a million delights. Shelves that nearly reached the ceiling were stocked with perfumes, oils, cleaning sprays, amulets, religious figurines, herbs, and candles.

I grabbed a bottle of Arazza Todo oil for a friend, and a pretty teenager with blood red hair asked if I needed help. YES, I told her, and asked in a cheery voice: “What do you have if your kid hates you?”

She led me to a candle labeled Santa Clara, and said mothers used it to pray for the well-being of their children.  She added that the shop’s owner sometimes turns on three candles at once, arranged around a bowl of water. I love the idea of turning on a candle! I might have to go back there to buy a “Court” candle that you turn on if you’re in legal trouble. My kid who hates me has threatened a restraining order against me because I can’t stop sending him email.

[Note to you kids who hate mommy on Reddit: fuck off. This isn’t about you.]

Now that I’m home, I’ve turned on my candle and burned a stick of palo santo to cleanse my house of bad vibes. I can’t actually pray, because duh, atheist, but I can speak to the candle in a tone of respect, like I speak to clothes hangers or things I trip over.

It occurs to me that my reactions to my kid breaking up with me are similar to symptoms of PTSD: Irritability, hostility, fear, rumination, insomnia and nightmares. It is traumatic, after all. One minute it’s Where’s the clean towels? and the next minute, Please leave me and my family alone.

In my most morbid moments, I wonder if I’ll get to hold my child again before I die, maybe because of all the biopsies. In calmer moments, I figure that none of this matters. Life is but a dream. You’re here, stuff happens, and then you’re gone, poof. Why agonize about anything?

Noticing a spike in my blog stats, I traced it to a reddit group or whatever they call it, (subgroup? board?) for people who hate their parents. The parents are labeled “narcissists” for the purposes of explaining why they’re “toxic.”

Someone linked to the post I wrote about Mother’s Day, and people are disgusted by how awful I am. Not only that, but they are discovering that my firstborn child “committed suicide.” Aha, proof of my toxicity. One poster is creeped out by my boast of making good chicken.

Here is the problem, Children of Narcissists. You are viewing everything from a particular lens, and you are not seeing the big picture.

Once you’re a parent, you can see things from both perspectives. You know what it’s like to have kids, and you remember what it’s like to be one. And if you have gained any wisdom, you begin to see that we are all wounded. All of us. Don’t make me quote Hemingway here.

In all my posts called Crazy Mothers Club, you can see how widespread childhood abuse is. It is shocking but true. Those of us who were victims can learn compassion, or pretend it never happened, or join support groups. Before the Internet, we didn’t go around looking for other parents to disparage but that was then.

May I note here that my diagnosis is depression and PTSD, not narcissism?

I wonder what kind of parent can escape the wrath of angry, wounded adult children who congregate in forums to share their stories and single out strangers as perps? I know moms and dads who don’t have great or equal relationships with their children, but are nonetheless loving and conscientious parents. We usually do our best. I would say that even my crazy mother did her best, given her difficulties.

I can’t imaging joining a forum of parents who feel hurt by their estranged children. I don’t like groupthink and I don’t want to expose myself to the gripes of bitter strangers whose circumstances have nothing to do with me.

I wish the best to you reddit people. If you haven’t lost a loved one to suicide, maybe you can research it’s effect on those left behind. In your grief over your narcissist parents, you might also respect that there are other kinds of grief. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You know what I mean.

I am here for a dialogue, but not for hate mobs. Been there, done that already. If your parents (or kids) are toxic narcissists, please chime in. Help us to understand. Just refrain from bringing up my darling son or you will go straight to hell.

Love, Sister Wolf

I wasn’t looking forward to Mother’s Day since no children were going to honor me and my own mother is long gone. My plan was to just suck it up and go out for an omelette. I forgot to factor in my newsletters.

I get so many newsletters even though I’m always cancelling them. The one’s I really should cancel are the suicide alliance newsletter and the one for parents of adult children who hate them. They mean well and at times they have been mildly comforting. They aren’t as bad as the one from Compassionate Friends, which has a lot of butterflies.

So they each sent out a special thing about mother’s day, offering platitudes that make everything so much worse.

The suicide one offered poems from mothers, sharing their Journeys, along the lines of

I remember my shock and how numb I felt
and how I cried
and sobbed
and how I couldn’t get out of bed and
wanted to die
and how I sat in his room
and sobbed some more….

This isn’t verbatim, the poems were actually more upsetting and alarming. Not a Journey I wish to take since my own Journey is quite enough even though I’m not on one.

The Adult Kids Who Hate You newsletter had some advice on how to answer  questions from nosy friends about what you’re doing on Mother’s Day. Stuff like, “My daughter is very independent so she’s off doing her thing.”

Haha, jesus christ, how about a nice “Fuck you, mind your own business”?

Tips on how to handle shame and guilt must be good for somebody and there must be market for them. Me, I’m not ashamed or guilty. My kids can go read about shame and guilt since they’re the ones who left the world or Can’t Stand Mommy.

Instead of the omelette, I cooked a chicken for my mother-in-law and brought it over to her. I make a damn good chicken, as many people already know, and she cleaned her plate. Her own daughter had  elected to celebrate mothers day by going to Las Vegas and not even calling.

Mothers and children of mothers, it’s a hard road being a human being even if you aren’t in Yemen eating dirt. The only thing to do is cancel your newsletters and carry on.

photo – Denis Dailleux, Mother and Son 2009

So you’re going along being a mom, and you think it’s permanent, because, you know, but then all of a sudden he or she decides it’s over.

He or she refers to you as a “biological mother” and pretty much tells you to fuck off.

He or she is just not that into you.

Naturally, you didn’t see this coming and you start wondering what happened, what drove him or her away.

Were you too clingy or too distant, too needy or too demanding, did you complain about the messy bedroom too many times? What did the other moms know that you didn’t?

Were you not a good listener? Were you too involved or not involved enough, too protective or too negligent? When they got big and started to scream at you, was it wrong to scream back? When you patiently read to them or tucked them in bed or served them dinner, was it stupid to think it was part of a lifelong deal?

When you get dumped, you have to let go. Mommy up.

They once loved you but now it’s over. Don’t stalk them online, looking for news, because they’ll just block you until you get the message. Even on Instagram.

It’s hard! But there’s nothing you can do. Accept that you have no power. It was good while it lasted. It was fun nursing them, dressing them up in those cute little outfits, watching TV with them, wrapping their Christmas presents, taking them to see Patti Smith, visiting their college.

They never asked to be born, remember?

Just try to forget about him or her. There are plenty of other kids out there.

Now that I’ve learned about cocoa harvesting, I can’t buy chocolate that isn’t Fair Trade Certified.   Knowing  that everything we buy is tainted with injustice somewhere along the line is troubling. You can’t give up everything; but child slavery is a good place to draw the line.

The Ivory Coast provides 43% of the  cocoa  beans used to make the world’s chocolate. The US Department of State estimates that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 are victims of human trafficking or enslavement.

In 2001, in an attempt to avoid government regulation and intense media scrutiny, major cocoa companies made a voluntary commitment (the Cocoa Industry Protocol) to certify their cocoa “child labor-free” by July 2005, but that deadline passed with little fanfare. The deadline was then extended to certify 50% of farms “child-labor free” by July 2008. The cocoa companies trumpeted a few pilot programs, but continue to purchase and reap profits from child labor cocoa.

Hershey has been the slow to implement changes and has been the subject of an email campaign. Now, they have issued a press release, announcing a $10 million investment in West Africa to improve cocoa farming but it’s not clear that this will help any actual people.

Fuckers!

“Americans alone spend $13 billion a year on chocolate.” Ha, at least half of that comes from me, personally.

I need chocolate to live. I am not  exaggerating. Without chocolate and coffee, there would be no reason to get out of bed or even breathe. My favorite form of chocolate is Toblerone and it isn’t Fair Trade Certified. It’s owned by Kraft, which helps to diminish its appeal, somewhat. Maybe I’ll have to write to them and beg them to get on board.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Favorite chocolate?

In the morning, my youngest Wolf will be going off to college. I am braced for Empty Nest Syndrome.

Being me, I googled Empty Nest Syndrome. All the images are depressing. The moms all look like the women in ads for antidepressants. Then there are a bunch of standard bird nests, sadder looking than the moms. There is even a website called emptynestmoms or something. There are also support groups. Ha.

I read a new agey thing with a nice mystical angle but in the end, it pronounced:

“There is no more empty nest syndrome, unless you have issues.”

Oh no! What?!? Fuck. But wait:

“It is, and has always been about, discovery and recovery … and best of all realizing you can have fun and create your own reality.”

God.

I just want to start all over again, to when each child was a baby. Everything seemed so easy. I could be a better mother and bake cookies. I would never yell.

I’m so proud of my boy and I know he’ll go on to change the world. But I wish I could stay in bed for around six months rather than contemplate my Empty Nest. You can bet I won’t be creating my own reality, unless that involves the reality of imaginary children who will let me cuddle them and never leave.

Recently I attended the wedding of one of Max’s oldest friends, who was also a member of his band.   It was a joy to see this wonderful young man celebrating his love for his adoring bride, his obvious soulmate.

The wedding was also an opportunity for me to see old friends, and to see some of Max’s school pals who were now grown ups.   There were babies and toddlers everywhere and I got to hold a placid baby girl wearing a pink tutu.

We couldn’t help but notice a family with three or four young children, all completely bald.   I assumed that one of the kids had lost his hair from chemotherapy and the others had shaven their heads in solidarity. You hear about this practice more and more, and I respect the  sacrifice  and devotion involved.

After several funny speeches, the bride and groom danced to a recording of a silly song about bees or something.   It looked like a dance you learn in preschool, with funny hand-motions. It was adorable. During their dance, one of the bald kids joined in, weaving between them and spinning around happily in her own world.

It was such a poignant bittersweet image: The glowing couple embarking on a new life together, the little child with cancer, whose fate was uncertain.

When I was drunk enough, I danced with my husband, who wouldn’t let me lead. Then I danced with some women who just wanted to shake it up regardless of the too-fast beat and our painful high heels. When we finally said goodbye to the groom, we learned that the bald kids had  head-lice, not cancer.

Ha! See how things change depending on your perspective? It’s a good reminder that all experience is filtered through interpretation.   From now on, I hope I can remember that a tragic worldview could be a lapse of judgement or a  tendency  to see cancer instead of  head-lice. I can’t think of a proverb to  illustrate  this insight.

Anyone up to it? It has to include the word  head-lice.