Growing up, our home was chaotic. My mom yelled a lot, slammed doors, gave us the silent treatment for days, and made me feel like I was walking on eggshells. She never hit us, but the emotional side of it was heavy. I used to cry myself to sleep more times than I can count. And any time I brought it up, she’d say I was being dramatic.
Now I’m 27 and she’s suddenly in her “healing and reflection” phase. She’s started posting on social media about how amazing and peaceful our childhood was, how she “always raised us with patience and love.” At a recent family gathering, she told my cousins how proud she was that she gave us such a “safe home.” I didn’t say anything then, but it really bothered me.
Later that week, I told her how uncomfortable it makes me when she talks like that — like none of the hard stuff ever happened. I told her she doesn’t get to rewrite the past just because the truth makes her uncomfortable. She got really defensive and said I was “stuck in the past” and trying to make her feel like a bad mom.
Now some people in the family are saying I was too harsh and that she’s “trying.” But I don’t think pretending nothing happened is the same as making peace with it. So am I the asshole for calling it out
Comments
Simply NTA … it’s said that the truth hurts .. your case proves it.. Don’t let her hide behind her own sanitised version of history
You are NTA!
I get that your mom is a different person now or trying at long last, but that doesn’t give her the right to airbrush out her sh*tty past!
Only one AH here and it’s not you OP!
NTA. Your mom’s “healing” sounds like a selective memory. No one gets a medal for rewriting history—especially yours. Setting the record straight isn’t harsh; it’s necessary. Time to stop tiptoeing around her feelings.
NTA, and no, your mother is not ‘trying’. She’s whitewashing the past because the truth makes her uncomfortable, which it should. She’s not looking for growth or reflection, or she would be more open to hearing your reality.
NTA
If you are, so am I. I eventually cut my mother out of my life because she failed to take accountability for instability, neglect and emotional harassment, stealing from me as an adult and putting me in a position I had to have her pedo bigamous husband deported
… and then rewrote the past to make herself look better. Then gaslighted my sister into agreeing with her.
So I feel your pain and honestly losing her may be your gain.
NTA. She is indeed trying. She’s trying to rewrite history and gaslight you into believing her lies. She is trying to look like the victim. She is trying to hurt you by her manipulation and lies.
A person isn’t really “trying” when they refuse to acknowledge past actions. NTA.
NTA. Your mother’s actions caused harm. Abusers don‘t get to play happy family
You’re not the asshole. Acknowledge the past to heal, not deny it.
How are the ‘some people in the family” finding out about a conversation you had with your mother and throwing their tuppence worth into the conversation? I also think that pretending that you didn’t have a difficult childhood wouldn’t be right either. How do these family members know what your childhood was like behind closed doors? They don’t, do they???
Only tell your mother stuff you wouldn’t mind having written across the sky. Put her on an information diet and keep the topics of conversation to really banal things where you can sound empathetic but you don’t care about it once you’re done.
Then I’d start going low contact with the family members who weighed in here and I’d also consider going low contact with your emotionally unstable/abusive mother.
NTA
NTA. I sound like your mom used to be and to this day, i am sorry for it, asking for forgiveness from my children for it, and learning to be a better parent. This is real accountability and responsibility. No whitewashing, no rose colored glasses.
When she posts that kind of crap again, reply with “gee that’s not the childhood I remember. I remember you screaming at us for X and slamming doors and exploding over nothing. That must have been with your other family. Because you were not that kind of parent to me/us. I cried myself to sleep almost every night because of your “gentle” parenting”
And just keep doing it. And if she mentions it in public, again, same thing “funny, I remember you slamming doors and screaming at us for hours on end over nothing” and so forth
Hopefully she’ll get the hint and stop trying to rewrite history
The Narcissist’s Prayer
That didn’t happen.
And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
And if it is, that’s not my fault.
And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Call her out every single fucking time. Abusive parents don’t get to pretend they weren’t abusive