If you’re like me–you love your mom and have her support, but the relationship is strained because now, you’re an adult and your mother now needs you in the way you needed her growing up. Like Soledad explained, this issue doesn’t only effect children of drug-addicted parents, but people like me who have grown up in poverty. I am now an adult, with a job, making money and paying my own bills. I am in no way living a lavish life, but I am surviving. I don’t have a disposable income, but often times my mother needs me financially and emotionally.
While I love being there for her, there’s more times that I need her in the same way because I am a 28-year-old woman who still needs her mother to be her mother. Growing up, there were many times my mom couldn’t provide for me and all she could give me was love. As an adult, I get it, but as a child, I was resentful. I watched my friends depend on their parents to get them out of binds or provide them with basics like lunch money and I felt ripped off–like I was missing out on a special bond that parents share with their kids.
I am not labeling my mother a bad mother. In fact, she’s phenomenal. She has three kids of her own and still took in myself, my brother and sister due to our biological mother passing away. For that, I’ve always believed she deserves her own spot in heaven. But, she strained to show us all equal amounts of love and support. As the years went by, I realized I never went to my mother with complaints because I always thought she had her plate full. There were five other kids vying for her attention.
Not only that, but she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia when I was in the 6th grade. From there, her health steadily declined, so there was less time spent with us and more time spent in and out of doctors appointments. I felt like I could never get her support because there was so much for her to focus on, dealing with her own health.
As a grown woman, I’ve come to recognize that resentment, but it lingers. I fight for it to disappear, but when I get a call from my mother about needing money and I am deciding on either keeping my phone turned on or buying food for the week, I’m reminded of our strained relationship. I love my mother and nothing will ever change that, but there are times I wish I could be her child.
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