A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 16
Hello mother,
Where do I start but to say we’ve missed out on so much together. We could’ve and should’ve had so much more between us as mother and daughter. I look around and see so many beautiful relationships that could’ve been ours. I’ve spent years crying over the mother I wanted to have.
I yearned to have someone that I could relate to and share my innermost feelings without fear of judgement. Instead you made me feel I had no right to those feelings and I was wrong to feel them. I was always flawed in your eyes and never entitled to be me.
I wanted so badly a mother that would embrace me fully the way I was and build me up instead of tearing me down. I grew up doubting myself and still do to this day. I never felt good enough in your eyes and still struggle with this in the eyes of others.
I believed everything you told me and this formed my view of other people and the world around me but it was your world through the eyes of a narcissist.
Yes, narcissist. I’ve never told you that you are a narcissist have I? I’ve learned so much over the last few years and you have a disorder called narcissism.
Before you start denying it and shutting me down please hear me out. You had a traumatic childhood of emotional and physical abuse with grandmother a raging alcoholic and again a narcissist. You were tossed around from relative to relative and then a convent. Somewhere through that abuse you shut down and with that was your empathy and emotional development. You formed a survival mechanism and part of that was the need to control and bury away the real you.
Yes I know not you, no, its me reading too much into the situation but I know what you are now and no amount of gaslighting can ever fog this new found knowledge I’ve obtained. I’ve learned how you’ve triangulated my brother and I to achieve your control over us but that backfired.
You see now you also will never have the experience of seeing a relationship the way you dreamed it would be. That being the relationship between your grandchildren.
Before you start getting angry know this was not done to hurt you but rather protect my children and myself from further abuse on your part. I now know you can’t help the way you are it’s a part of who you’ve become.
This disorder you have has stolen so much from you and I. We will never be able to be a proper family ever again. No family dinners where we laugh and share our lives. No Christmas holidays around the tree unwrapping gifts together. No trust where we can open up to each other during times of need. No spending time together you and I shopping or just even going for a coffee together. We were robbed of so much because of narcissism. One word but so much damage.
I’ve mourned the loss of the mother I so very wanted through the years but in the process i’m gaining a love for myself. You didn’t want me to know i didn’t need your approval or validation but through understanding narcissism I realise it’s not about me and my shortcomings but its about your personality disorder, narcissism.
I want you to know I love you and have forgiven you but you will no longer control the way I feel about myself. The abuse stops here. Oh you can continue on as you always have but i won’t allow you to affect me as you have all these years.
Mother you have a personality disorder called narcissism and this is why we will never be what we should’ve been to each other but I will make sure i’m that parent to my children.
7 thoughts on “A Letter to the Narcissist – No. 16”
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Heartbreaking yet positive. All victims/survivors of a narcissistic loved one suffer greatly. But none more than the children of a narcissist.
My narc relationship was a romantic one which I barely survived. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain of being raised by one. Unable to escape, powerless, nothing but chaos, hurt and confusion since birth.
Cheers to you #16. You’ve broken thru, and thus, broken the cycle. You are a courageous, strong warrior. Your kids are lucky to have you. Happy, happy Mothers Day(5-13 in U.S.)!!
This really resonated with me. A mother narc is the ultimate betrayal in my book. And it reverberates into the next generations as well as if you have children, they don’t have a grandma, assuming you are no contact. I have heard it said that no one will ever love you as much as your mother – and I believe this to be true because while you may find “mother” figures throughout your life, they will never love you or know you in the way that your own mother should have. My twist on the saying above is that no one will ever hate you as much as your narc mother. Because they groomed you from birth, they know exactly how best to stab you in the back. In the end, they will never fathom that they were always the true loser in the “relationship.” Their whole existence is a sham. I am sorry you, too, had this experience.
I always watched loving mothers and their daughter’s and I used to just long for their expressions of warmth, love and caring to be directed at me. It was a common experience since I was a very young girl. I never analyzed why, so caught up in the hurt and longing. But I get it all now. Everything has been reframed.
I won’t allow my daughter near my mother at her older age, and we no longer speak. Yes, deprived of a friendship, sense of acceptance and all that you wrote. And my daughter will never know a loving grandmother, either.
Well said! Relatable
Wow, this letter series is phenomenal. So powerful.
I have so much respect for the writer of this letter, it Is a beautiful letter. There is a different tone, the writer appears to be coming from a place of acceptance, I don’t sense anger in this letter. There is sadness, loss, and the knowledge that this relationship was not what it should have been. It should have been securely attached with love, support, and care.
It shows a persons insight into the concept of narcissism creating narcissism, and accepting this as a creation of a coping mechanism, a way to survive. An important part of acceptance is understanding, not approving of how the writer has been treated but understanding the root cause and subsequent effect, and forgiving them.
Forgiveness is quite often not a redemption for the abuser / transgresser but a release / letting go for the person doing the forgiving.
I love how the writer has identified their self worth, and how they have linked validation back to themselves, empowering themselves again.
This was a very emotive read, and an important one. This bond between mother and child is one of the most important, and fundamental. The writer has made another path for themselves, going in a different direction, with a focus on their own children having a different, positive, loving experience.
I will always be in awe and humbled by the strength of the human spirit, and the tenacity, resilience that can be observed through stories such as this…
I thank the writer for sharing this story. X
Dear “Daughter,”
Thank you for sharing this letter. Even though having had a narcissist in my life, I never understood it from a familial point of view. HG has illuded to it but other than that, I don’t understand.
You’ve given us a glimpse of the suffering from a child’s point of view and whether intimate or familial Narc abuse, the wake of destruction imbeds in the memory forever.
My hat is off to you for stopping the abuse. I wonder though, how did you escape becoming a Narc yourself? But no matter, you escaped!
If the Narc had more than one child, chances are good that at least one will rebel and not turn narc. That was my experience having two narc parents and two siblings. I was the rebel making me the best scapegoat, of course. Same holds true for my husband, though only his mother was a narc. He also had two siblings and became the one who rebelled. We rebels found each other. Our siblings followed in our parents footsteps in varying degrees.