I thought I should balance out the negative of the, what I assume to be hurtful to my mother, news of her having narcissistic traits, and being invalidating in many ways, I would list as many of her good mothering qualities as I could.  These are in no order, just as they come to me.

• I have never doubted her love for me.  She has never given me reason to.  Even when she’s being hurtful she’s loving enough that I know it’s there and real.
• She is one of the strongest women I know.  In the past year and a half she has lost her sister and a brother, and now she faces losing a daughter.  I don’t know how she keeps going, but she does.
• Anytime I leave her house after dark, she makes sure to tell me to text her once I’m home safely.  That’s the love of a mother.
• Chicken crescent squares.  My favorite meal that she makes when I need it the most, on special occasions, and sometimes just because.
• She is a very loving grandmother.  She is very involved in their lives and openly adores my kids.
• She has always complimented my veins.  This one came up in the hospital while visiting my sister, as my sister is severely anemic and having trouble offering up good veins to the nurses for them to poke.  Anyway, my mom has been a med tech for decades now and has always complimented my veins.  As weird as that sounds, from my mom that is a high compliment.
• She always compliments my math skills.
• I have mad budgeting skills that my mom gives props to.  I can go into a store with a list and a fifty dollar budget and spent 49.99.  It’s a gift.
• With all that is going on with my sister, my mom has kept up-to-date with all appointments and every single individual detail of everything in my sister’s medical life.  She’s also very proactive in getting my sister healthy and is organizing the search for a donor list that will take her.
• Mom has never been one to say no to books.  Parents can’t say yes to everything their kids ask for.  Even if they can afford to, that’s how you raise spoiled brats.  My mom, like all moms, said no her fair share of the time.  However, when it came to books, I heard yes a lot more often than I heard no.  It was my mom’s way of validating what really mattered to me.

That list could and should go on but I got distracted by a dying sister and watching my mom’s shining strength in a horrid situation.  I am confident that if I were the sick one, and my sister healthy, my mom would be doing the very same for me.

I can’t say my mom is emotionally neglectful.  Not fully.  You hear all these stories, including from my readers, and that just isn’t and wasn’t my mom.  She says hurtful things and she struggles to validate.  However, it’s worth pointing out I can be very closed off, so it is possible the problem isn’t all her.

When I had that conversation with my mom, it wasn’t in therapy like planned.  It was sitting in a hospital cafeteria the day before that post went live, because it was the best we could do in the chaos around us.  It was looking like mom wasn’t going to be able to make it to the therapy appointment, for valid reasons, and so I just got it out-of-the-way.

I had already typed up what I wanted to say.  My words offered validation to my mom while still sharing the observation I had made.  I made it quite clear I’m not accusing her of anything, because I’m really not.  I didn’t offer up more than one example as to how she is hurtful or invalidating, because I didn’t want this to be about all the things she did wrong, and a huge mudslinging debate.

I instead asked her to consider my words.  I asked that I be allowed to write about it.  I asked that she be willing to consider a filter between brain and mouth, with assurances it isn’t all her, and I’m working on mine.

I listed and validated that I am a very closed off person in many ways and I see I may not have been easy to validate or that mom may not have known how to, but I still put forth that isn’t the full of it, and she accepts that.

She isn’t emotionally neglectful, she is lacking in skills on how best to approach.  There is a huge difference there.  At least to me.  The difference being that she wants to learn how better to validate.  She wants to learn when she’s being hurtful so she can not do it again.  We’ve even agreed on a “safe word” of sorts where I say “relationship”, when she’s said something that could hurt our relationship, and she will reflect on what she just said and try to learn from it.  She can’t get mad at me for using the word, and I will try to be patient with the learning curve.  Because she wants to learn, and I want to teach.

As I lose my sister to a horrible disease, a disease where her days are literally numbered, it has made us all the more aware how precious relationships really are.  My mom is not this big horrible figure of pain and agony from my childhood or even now.  No, she isn’t perfect but she’s willing to learn.  And even when she is being hurtful, she still in her ways is able to show her love.

Yes, her narcissistic traits have helped shape my BPD, but I am able to say without a doubt that she didn’t create that.

This is hard for me to write.  Mostly because I fear how my mother will respond.  So it’s worth saying I’m not accusing, but instead suggesting a possibility, and it’s effect on my life and mental health.  If all has gone as planned, I have already had this conversation with my mother semi-privately, in a joint therapy session where she got all the validation she could be offered as to how she is a good mother, and the many things she has done right.  She has done many things right, and nothing is specifically or generally her fault.

But the fact remains, my mother is not the most validating of people.  She in fact has a wide spread history of saying things that aren’t just hurtful, but are also downright cruel.  There is every indication, though no confirmed diagnosis, that my mother is in fact a narcissist.  This is by no means her fault, or her choice, just as Borderline Personality is neither my fault nor my choice.

The reason I bring this up?

It took me a long time to realize this about my mother.  For years I thought I was a rare case of Borderline Personality Disorder with a great upbringing.  And you know?  It was a great upbringing.  I wasn’t abused.  I wasn’t neglected.  There was no lack of love.

I just wasn’t validated.  Even as an adult, I hear a lot more about what I do wrong as a daughter, mother, person, that what I do right.

As it turns out, a lack of validation goes a long way towards encouraging someone towards BPD.  I will always argue that because of my DNA, I would have been mentally ill either way, but I’m finally willing to face the fact that my mother’s inability (as I don’t think it’s a choice, but a skill she can’t help but to lack) doesn’t help.

And who knows.  Maybe finally sitting down and talking this through with her will have gone a long way towards helping to make her aware of the problem.  Knowing there is a problem, and admitting it to yourself, is half the battle of fixing it.

What do I want from all this?  That’s exactly when my therapist asked when I asked her for the joint session with my mother.

Well, I want to be able to write about it.  Writing about my experience with BPD and not writing about my mother to some degree, would be like writing about lung cancer and not owning up to 30 years of smoking.

I also have hope that my mom cares enough, as I know she does, to take this knowledge and use it to help her think before she speaks.  A skillset we all need.  But now she’ll know why.

I love my mom.  I don’t doubt she loves me.  I have hope this can better our relationship and not bring it harm.

A side note:

For the rest of you with mothers like mine to any degree, I highly recommend reading Will I Ever Be Good Enough by Dr. Karyl McBride Ph.D. as it is far more than helpful. It’s 9 dollars that helped my open my eyes, gain insight, gain courage, and start to heal.  And no, I was not paid to tell you that.  That comes from my heart.