✦ The Modern Heiress

Clinging to her was survival. Releasing her was rebirth.

There’s a version of my story people like to imagine: one where a daughter just “doesn’t understand” her mother, and maybe someday, maturity will make it all make sense.

That version is not mine.
Because I grew up not misunderstood but completely neglected.
And when I finally walked away, it wasn’t in anger.
It was in clarity.

I was introduced to womanhood not with guidance, but with distance. My mother did not raise me. She outsourced that role early, first to a paid caretaker, then to my grandmother. But where the first woman was kind and routine, the second, my grandmother, was neither. She was abusive in calculated ways.

She would isolate me, deprive me of food, scream insults, and let my eldest sister hit me daily. I wasn’t allowed to use the computer, wasn’t allowed outside, and was forbidden from asking for anything. I slept alone in a cold room every night while the rest of the house gathered together, bonded in a warmth I was never permitted to access. I was not allowed to laugh, cry, smile, or even speak up. My pain was either ignored or punished. I wasn’t allowed to buy the same things others had, to wear what made me feel pretty, or to want anything better. I was made to feel like a burden for existing.

And my mother knew. She saw it. And she let it happen. This emotional, physical, and psychological abuse continued well into my teens, until I was sixteen or seventeen, and all the while, they told my mother I was misbehaving, twisting my trauma into defiance. And she believed them.

At sixteen, I entered an elite all-girls school and lived in a dorm. I watched other girls with their mothers, how they talked about periods, skincare, clothes, and heartbreak. I wasn’t taught any of it. I observed like an outsider. I simulated girlhood like it was a foreign language. The truth? I had to study femininity, because it was never introduced to me.

Not long after, I attempted suicide for the first time. I was paralysed from the waist down for a month, hospitalised for days. I couldn’t walk. My legs were numb, and even sitting upright was difficult. My mother didn’t stay by my side but my father did. He gently looked after me, feeding me medicine and supplements every day for healing.

Once, while I was bedridden in the downstairs hall of our large three-storey home. A level that had the hall, dining area, library, my bedroom, kitchen and garden I had to sleep in the open hall because I couldn’t move and easier to be monitored. One day, my eldest sister walked down the stairs and stopped, watching me as I tried getting up. She didn’t offer help. She didn’t speak. She stood there, looking down at me like a hawk observing prey. Her expression had no warmth, only satisfaction. It was as if she enjoyed seeing me suffer. All I could think was: How evil can she be? She never once visited me in the hospital. Like the rest who abused me, it felt like she wanted me dead.

I briefly lived with my mother after school. But she was cold and closed off. When I tried to connect, she pulled away. She didn’t know how to nurture me because we had never built trust. I wasn’t familiar to her, and she wasn’t safe to me. She cared about grades, not growth. When I succeeded, she took credit. When I struggled, I was met with shame. My eldest sister was pampered, adored, protected. I was invisible, expected to endure.

Years later, during my engagement, I was already carrying all of this pain. Instead of supporting me, my mother began blaming me for every issue I had with my fiancé. She emotionally manipulated me until I broke again. I attempted suicide a second time. I was sent away by ambulance from my home. And again, my mother pretended nothing had happened. She didn’t visit me. She didn’t call. Instead, she ran away to another state, vacationing, as if my pain was her inconvenience, something to avoid, something embarrassing. She made it about herself, escaping the discomfort of her daughter’s reality and turning it into a performance of being “stressed.” That was the final fracture.

Still, we went through with the wedding few months later. And just like that, she put on a mask of sweetness. She didn’t help with preparation. She didn’t contribute emotionally or financially. But she hovered just enough to be seen, only to try and take the wedding gift money from guests later.

That was when the truth hit me like a final storm: this wasn’t neglect. This was a pattern. A self-serving one. She didn’t want a relationship. She wanted control. And once I stopped needing her, I could finally see that she never saw me at all.

I don’t want a reunion. I want a rebirth.

the psychology of letting go of an absent mother

Psychologists call this kind of emotional tethering “trauma bonding.” According to Medical News Today, trauma bonding refers to the attachment that forms between an abused person and their abuser, often when the abuse is interspersed with moments of kindness or connection, keeping the victim emotionally invested. The paradox is painful: we crave the love of someone who harms us, because even scraps of affection feel like oxygen.

This dynamic often develops in childhood, where the caregiver is inconsistent: one moment warm, the next harmful. That inconsistency traps us in a loop. It makes us work harder to please, to earn love, and to deny our pain in order to stay attached.

That was me. I clung to my mother not because she was loving, but because the trauma taught me to equate love with suffering. It took years for me to realise: she was never safe to begin with.

Breaking this cycle is not easy. It involves what therapists call radical acceptance. According to Rogers Behavioral Health, radical acceptance is a tool in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) that helps individuals acknowledge reality without resisting it, especially when that reality is painful. It’s not approval of what happened, but the conscious decision to stop fighting the past.

In the context of healing from childhood emotional neglect or abuse, radical acceptance means grieving the fantasy of the parent we never had, and letting go of the hope they’ll ever become that person. It’s brutal, but necessary. We stop rewriting ourselves to be lovable to someone who chose not to love us. Instead, we begin to love the parts of us they refused to see.

“How Radical Acceptance Can Help You Break the Cycle of Stress” – Rogers Behavioral Health

After getting married, I was no longer the same version of myself, the hopeful, eager, overly forgiving daughter who kept giving chances to a mother who had never shown up. Marriage didn’t just give me a partner; it gave me perspective. I realized how many times I had betrayed myself by letting her in, hoping she’d finally be different.

But the woman who showed up for my wedding wasn’t a changed mother, she was the same, only now in disguise. Behind the smiles and small talk was the same absence I’d always known. So I began to change, not loudly, but consistently. I stopped responding immediately. I stopped making space in my life for someone who never made space for me.

Months later, I finally made a choice I’d long avoided: I told her not to come to my home for festive celebrations anymore. I delivered the message directly, calmly, and with the kind of emotional clarity that comes only after years of surviving someone’s indifference. Her response was as artificial as ever “I respected your request” as if decency had always been her language.

But I knew better. I could feel the falseness, the performance. A few days after that, I did what I should’ve done long ago: I blocked her. I didn’t announce it. I didn’t write a long explanation.

I just disappeared from her orbit the same way she had disappeared from mine when I needed her most.

What happens next?

The aftermath of that decision wasn’t chaos. It was peace. It was lighter mornings and deeper sleep. I stopped waiting for phone calls that never came. I stopped rehearsing conversations in my head that I would never have. Most importantly, I stopped shrinking myself to fit a version of daughterhood that was built on obedience, silence, and emotional starvation. Blocking her wasn’t about punishment. It was about protection. For the first time in my life, I chose me.

In that silence, I found clarity. I saw how deeply I had been conditioned to believe that being a daughter meant tolerating harm. I saw how often I had mistaken duty for love, survival for connection. The truth is, my biggest mistake wasn’t cutting her off, it was letting her back in after meeting my then-fiancé, when I was soft with hope again. I thought maybe love would change her. But love doesn’t change people who benefit from your suffering.

I should have left her in the shadows where she always stood, not out of spite, but out of truth. She had never been present. She had never been available. Her absence was not a one-time mistake, it was a lifelong pattern.

Choosing to end that cycle, to ghost her completely, was not easy. But it was necessary. It was the first time I gave the little girl in me the safety she had always deserved. And with every blocked message, every boundary reinforced, every moment I refused to break my own heart again, I was no longer just surviving, I was living.

Fully. Authentically. Freely.

As for the ones who hurt me, they are not living well today. My grandmother asked for my forgiveness when I was 19, but it was too late. She became sick and bedridden often, not from old age, but from the very cruelty she inflicted. Her pain mirrored mine, only this time, she could not run from it. My eldest sister also tried to reconnect with me later in life, but I ghosted her.

Some doors, once closed, are meant to stay shut. I choose peace over reconciliation with those who never offered me love in the first place.

The reality?

Now, my home is different. It is mine. It feels safe. It doesn’t echo with fear or control. I can eat when I’m hungry, laugh loudly, cook what I love, sleep when I want. I can wear beautiful things without shame, without someone telling me I don’t deserve them. Back in the day, I wasn’t even allowed to touch food first. I couldn’t smile, or laugh, or cry, not without punishment. I was trained to be a silent robot, stripped of wants, voice, and joy. I wasn’t allowed to buy the same things as others, to be pretty, to dream. But now, I live like I matter, because I do. And no one can take that away from me again.

It is unavoidable that having been abused for half your life changes you, it marks you in quiet, invisible ways. It makes you dark in places where light once lived. It dims your innocence and sharpens your instincts. You begin to anticipate betrayal before it arrives. You brace yourself for abandonment even in moments of peace. Sometimes, I wake in the middle of the night with my heart racing, memories crawling out from under the floorboards of my mind, vivid and merciless. I remember the silence of being hurt, the fear of speaking, the way I was taught that my feelings were either irrelevant or dangerous.

And now, whenever I cook a meal for myself, I find moments where I just stop, spoon in hand, staring into space, not because I’m tired, but because the part of me that was always denied nourishment still can’t fully believe I’m allowed to care for myself. When I shower, the water sometimes carries my tears with it. I cry quietly, without sobbing, because I had to learn how to grieve silently.

This darkness that follows me, it’s not a sign of weakness. It is not a failure. It is evidence. It’s the shadow of survival, and it lives in the corners of my life, sometimes whispering that I am hard to love or too much to hold. But I am not. I am not broken; I am shaped. I don’t love any less deeply; I just love more carefully. My laughter now comes with an undertone of grief, not because I’m sad, but because I know what it’s like to live without joy.

Abuse does not only bruise the body, it changes your wiring. It makes you question even your own memories, your own worth, your own voice. But even in that darkness, I’ve learned how to navigate. I’ve built a life that is mine. I’ve become someone that little girl would be proud of. And no, it’s not my fault that I was abused. It was never my fault. I was just a child, asking to be loved,and they were the ones who failed. Now, I carry my pain with honor, not shame. Because surviving that kind of childhood didn’t ruin me. It revealed how unbreakable I truly am.

For anyone reading who feels this ache, please know: your grief is valid. If you are considering healing from a toxic parent-child dynamic, therapy can be a powerful space to unpack and rebuild. Trauma-informed therapy, inner child work, and family systems therapy can offer frameworks to reconnect with your voice, your values, and your self-worth. Support groups, whether online or in-person, also help validate the parts of your story the world may overlook.

Sometimes, the most courageous thing we can do is walk away from what’s familiar and build a home inside ourselves.

—

Your emotional bodyguard in heels,
Madam Alias Solis
Writer, The Modern Heiress