I felt unworthy of genuine love or care unless there was sex or money involved in the equation. De-conditioning myself from those beliefs has been an uphill battle spanning the last 20 years of my life. Growing up, I saw my mother and father work and carry on a relationship based on those 2 external sources of validation. Until I got thrown into the mix and made to live those values as well. These are deeply rooted beliefs that spawn dysfunction across all areas of life. Leading to damage of the human spirit.
My father a traumatized man and also the primary provider got injured at work in the early 90’s. He eventually became disabled due to that injury and never was able to go back to work. After that injury, my mother began working more and my father’s self- worth went down the toilet. His addictions became worse. He was more depressed, angry, and was nastier in general. He and my mother fought more and his parental discipline became harsher and militant style when I made mistakes.
If he was working, he was a happy guy. Of course everyone wants to be able to provide for their family but due to his own upbringing making money was the beginning and the end of his self esteem. Sadly, he didn’t value his own talents, sense of humor, or unique way of looking at the world. As my father’s lack of worth became more apparent he leaned on me more emotionally and my mother was no longer fun loving and nurturing. She constantly yelled at me and became insufferable to deal with.
In August of 1997 we moved from NJ to South Florida. Despite being on disability, my father had managed to save enough money to purchase a house from my grandparents. He moved my mother and I to Palm Beach County. We lived 15 minutes away from the beach. I could drive past Trump’s Mar-a-lago on a Tuesday if I wanted and with 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, and an in-ground pool living like I was on vacation became my new reality. At least from the outside looking in and as long as I was able to compartmentalize the horrors taking place within my house. But for that small snip-it of time I can see now that he felt accomplished and as a result was able to be the Dad I missed having.
Within a year of moving, my mother couldn’t find consistent work and was fired from a part time job for writing unauthorized company checks. Moving to Florida isolated us away from family/friends in NJ. My father still couldn’t work at this point and is truly becoming an even bigger asshole than he was when we lived in NJ. My mother is resorting to writing bad checks to save our household but also buying cocaine so she and my father could “connect” peacefully and deal with their feelings together because he needed something in order to allow himself to have feelings. While sober and feeling afraid and powerless, my father was standoff-ish, gave the silent treatment and was terribly condescending if you brought anything he deemed too vulnerable to the surface. Including expressing feelings of love and affection.
Looking back, my mother and I spent a lot of our time trying to keep him happy. I wish he had worked harder to heal and knew his value within our family.
This coddling of him came between her and I. She eventually stopped working altogether and went on disability for the long list of back problems she had been struggling with for years. From an attachment injury and addiction standpoint it was easier to just stay home with him so they could be codependent together on a consistent basis. In her pursuit of my father’s love, she didn’t have the awareness to understand that she and I were doing the same things with the same goal. Trying to keep him happy by fitting ourselves into these molds that Tommy/Dad viewed as worthwhile in order to seek love and safety within our home.
She often viewed and treated me as competition not her daughter.
When I was 14 my parents sat me down to tell me about their addictions to crack/cocaine. My dad took the lead as my mother sat at the end of our oblong dining room table just staring at me as he spoke. He told me to keep my mouth shut about it otherwise they could be arrested or I would get taken away. He told me to start getting my own life and that there was nothing I could do because this was his life and his problem. I guess my feelings didn’t matter because his didn’t.
I was shocked and numb. Frozen in time. To this day I struggle to feel feelings as a result of that night. My heart was broken, I was scared of my home, and felt so angry and controlled all in one shot. And despite the flaws, attitudes, and brokenness he was still the most important man in my life up until that point. The funny guy who also protected me, brought me out for ice cream, taught me how to tend a garden and take care of my pets, and took great pride in my ability to write, he has just told me to protect him, my mother, our household, get a life and don’t tell anyone in the world why.
My childhood ended that night. I no longer was worried about my favorite color, boys, teenage issues, clothes, make-up, colleges, careers, or much of anything other than what he told me to worry about. My grades were only a concern because they continued the “show” that everything was fine in the Saul Household. I was now the 3rd provider, protector AND the child that doubled as the external proof that they were doing good as parents.
I shortly started a part time job at 14 and spent everyday at school worried that I would come home to house full of cops or find them dead.
On my days off from work or school, my dad, in moments of his sobriety, would take me out to see a movie or grab lunch and we would have a great time. He would discuss with me about leaving my mother and wanted my opinion on that. Because in my adolescence this dynamic was painted to me that my mother was the irresponsible coke-head that couldn’t control herself on the 3rd of the month when the disability checks came in. So if he could just get away from her, he could have a great life and things would get better for me, too.
Despite him openly telling me while high on cocaine that there was nothing I could do about his addiction. We will just ignore that though, right dad? Well, I did ignore it for so long because I could’t see the contradictions with my child brain.
In any case, I got more attention when I made money and had good grades. And if he wasnt spending time with me to do fun things and complain about my mother, he was coming out of withdrawals crying to me about what a fuck up he was and say, “by the grace of god, I’m such a good kid”. It was all based on his shame, because if I pulled a bad grade, didn’t understand a joke, didn’t make enough money, wore too much eyeliner, cut the lawn in the wrong direction, or dared calling him out on his bullshit. I’d get a complete rip away from my father, silent treatment, a scary “talking to”, get a quick hair pulling to shock me out of my silence while getting punished, or angrily told to get my shit together as he walked away. I guess that was so he didn’t have to get his together.
Instead he got to scapegoat me as the problem in life when he was “happy” and could therefore be a good husband to my mother when I had brought in enough money. Which allowed him to become my parent again for a small timeframe.
His mother left when he was young and his father was an alcoholic so I wasn’t allowed to be a kid because he needed a mommy.
By the age of 15 I was making more money in a better job, helping with unpaid bills and food. By 16 I was a Pharmacy technician for Walgreens, By 17 I was a high school drop out with a full time pharmacy tech job, a GED, and making enough money to support myself if need be. I had a small annuity locked away in Bergen County, NJ surrogates court until I was 18. That was already tapped into twice by my parents to save the house from foreclosure before I was able to start lending money from my paychecks along with 10k from my annuity when I was 18 and received that money.
My jewelry and belongings were taken and sold regularly at local pawn shops. Sometimes I got it back, sometimes I didn’t. By 18 I made more money than my peers, started college a year early, and drove a brand new car that I bought on my own with my money from working and whatever was left of my annuity.
He couldn’t say shit to me anymore, huh? He made me into the best man I could have ever become. A better man than he was. My childhood was gone, feminine softness squashed, my mother consistently shamed, and my developmental needs entirely ignored. His fears became my problem and I was expected to carry them better than he did. So I did. I did it to avoid his abusive behavior. Follow his demands, avoid my fears, and quite frankly it eventually became about me gaining the power over my own life so I could get out of there! Which I did at 18.
The only time I got truly ignored or treated like shit by the time I was 17 was when my mom felt jealous and she wanted to fight me while being a “sober parent” for about 10 days out of the month. When the 3rd of the month came and she once again had the power to lure him back to her with days long binges of drugs and sex. She would claim back her power as a way to mark her “territory”. Even going so far as to call me his girlfriend when she couldn’t afford drugs. Little did she realize she was just taming and appeasing him to make life more bearable the same way I was doing when she didnt have the money for drugs. Their sex life became obsolete unless drugs were involved and eventually even other people were invited in to uphold that area of their lives. Porn was openly viewed in my home. Homeless people and drug dealers were invited in to live in my home. All of who eventually became apart of the drug usage and sexual encounters. All proudly spoken about by my father to me.
Through it all, my mother sat by quietly. Never attempting to protect herself or me. One of the most gut-wrenching and repeated scenario’s with my mother is when she would cry to me about how we needed food in the house or tell me that they (her and my dad) needed new socks and underwear. I would feel sad for her yet special that she asked me. Mostly because I missed the mom I vaguely remembered that I had and truly adored. She would take my money, buy drugs, never buy food or clothing and would lie to my father about where the money and drugs came from. After days of drug use and days spent withdrawing/ sobering up, I’d ask him where the money went. He claimed he didn’t know she borrowed it, he would confront her, and in the most uncaring way possible she would smirk at me, shrug her shoulders, and say “sorry” guess we will get it back to you next month. They would fight, he would cling to me out of shame for his decisions and what she did, she would get angry at me, call me a bitch or my father’s girlfriend, insist that I thought I was better than her and the cycle would repeat itself monthly. At least.
On my 18th birthday, my mother called me a little bitch after I got mad at her for kicking me in the side while I was on the phone making a doctor appointment. I didn’t ask a question that she wanted me to ask so she kicked me as I was leaning against the frame of her bed.
I ate part of a cheesecake alone at the dining room table for my birthday. My dad came and sat with me sometime later, apologizing for her. Feeling grateful for him at the time, I couldn’t see how his own pain affected his ability to love her properly and made such a huge impact of her sense of safety. With the gifts of time, maturity, and healing I can see things so much more clearly now.
My mother was so much in need of a man’s (or anyone’s) love that she betrayed herself and me over and over again to gain access to or to offer one of the two things valued most by her husband. Money and/or Sex. In another post I can share more about her life events but for now I will share the following. When I was 33, I received a random phone call from someone claiming to be my mother’s best friend from kindergarten. This woman knew a lot about me, my mother, my father and my life in general. Among other pieces of information that shattered me, she felt the need to tell me that my mother was raped or sexually assaulted at age 6 by someone in her family and that person’s friends as well. This phone call wasn’t the first I had heard of this but it was the most clear and in depth recall of the situation. It was an out of the blue reminder of how little women love themselves or value the experiences/lives of other women. Just the act of calling me in the middle of my life to dump this info on me shows a huge lack of empathy. My poor mother couldn’t love herself. How could she? She was so accustomed to throwing herself away for others, being used, and never truly getting to have her own femininity or softness. My mom was betrayed at a young age. She wasn’t kept safe or believed by the people closest to her. It makes sense to me why she wouldn’t even be able to see me much less care about the hell I was going through and what she was catering to in her marriage.
My mother was once a little girl who had a heart that was stepped on.
After leaving Florida on my own in June 2002. My parents eventually lost the house and moved back to NJ after me. I ended up moving back in with them by January 2003 and we moved around to a few motels again until moving into this shithole of a place in Little Ferry, NJ. This is where they would continue doing drugs, invite my uncle who used heroin to come live with us and continue the drug dealer/friend traffic for sex and drug use. I was back in their mess again. Working and trying to handle life. This time with friends around me that I often went out with to stay away from the house. So much happened that I truly can’t even go into it all now.
On December 31, 2004 around 11pm my mom appeared in the doorway of my room. She asked to come in. To which I agreed. She told me she was so sorry for everything she had done to me, all I had been through, and expressed how proud of me she was. It was the first time in 19 years as her daughter that I received a genuine apology. I felt loved by her for the first time in a decade. The little girl inside me was excited to maybe get a chance to start a new chapter of our relationship. That night left me with hopes of her finding sobriety. She was so smart, had a beautiful personality and smile. She was a warrior who would fight for anyone she loved and her spirit was so ready to be purely loved in return. I could remember the ways she loved me when I was little. My mom would read to me nightly, give me baths, make me breakfast daily, hug me tightly in her sweater in the rain, have toast parties with me on Saturday mornings, teach me math because she was an absolute whiz at it and helped me realize my drawing abilities. I also terrorized her by putting hair ties and clips in her hair while she napped or using all of her make up while she was on the phone with friends.
I contained my feelings of hope because it wasn’t safe to be openly vulnerable with her. But I thanked her for the compliment and told her it was OK for all she had done and that I loved her. I asked her if she wanted to go get our nails done the next morning. She agreed and left my room. I found her dead next morning on January 1, 2004. And I remained guarded, angry and deeply heartbroken until I saw I was traumatizing my own daughter at the age of 3.
My mother squashed her light because others did it to her a long time ago. My unhealed father did the same to her (it was done to him, too) and then to me in his painful and piss poor attempts at teaching me to be better than what I grew up in. She couldn’t see herself or me anymore. She found her worth in him. He found his worth in what she could provide when he was unable to. When she was unable, I then had to provide the half she couldn’t bring in anymore. Never did he have to figure life out again to do any real work on himself. It always fell on her or me. And it was either her or I taking the blame or being shamed.
While my childhood is an extreme example, this basic dynamic of transactional relationships exists and is interwoven into our society. Men are raised not to acknowledge flaws and feelings but to bury them instead. Women are taught their value is found in their body and is measured by how much a man desires it and how much they can do for him.
I played into the same dynamic for years and leaned more on the masculine side because my father demanded that I be an extension of him so that he could feel better about his shortcomings. However, still being a woman this left me open to sexual assault, rapes, objectification and a constant lack of safety/space for my own femininity. I have fought quiet battles that are more than anyone knows about or has seen. Learning to embrace my femininity has been the hardest hurdle yet.
Experiencing the overt and covert aspects of this type of childhood and overall toxicity fueled by drug abuse has been excruciatingly painful and the healing has been deeply rewarding at every step toward victory. At the start of my healing I made so many mistakes as a young, dysregulated, traumatized and undiagnosed neurodivergent mother. I firmly believe that I wouldn’t have even began to heal myself if it weren’t for my daughters and I still make so many mistakes now. The one thing that was the most damaging was me shunning away my own softness and teaching them to do the same. The past few years have been about healing from that for all of us. Learning more vulnerability and honoring when we need safety.
With each mistake I’ve made came a chance to heal my past and change their future.
This Mother’s Day weekend has been about assessing my worth, values, healing so far, and to do a serious check in with my daughter’s about their own. All in the name of my own mother and the women that came before her who didn’t know how to heal their own worth. In this post, I am giving my mother the voice she never had by sharing some of her truths and mine.
Despite all of the pain I experienced at her hands, she was worth it to heal. She was worthy of love. She was more than her body or ability to make money. She deserved to be heard, truly loved and kept safe. She gave me life and at her healthiest nurtured me as a child. I always heard her talking about how much she wanted me even if I came out with 20 toes and 20 fingers. LOL
I wouldn’t have been able to heal or love my own daughters if I didn’t know that I was loved by her to some capacity. A mother’s love clouded by drug abuse, criminal behavior, emotional and physical abuse, but a love that was shown in a bookended fashion during my life with her. As a young child and on the eve of her passing.
I saw and felt the glimmers of her soul in her moments of clarity. Now that I am at the age she was when she passed, 41, after completing some more EMDR sessions this year, I have deeper insights on her and the ability to see the woman she was.
Mom,
I have been mad at you most days of my adult life, The anger coming the hurt and wish that you could have known what a gift your spirit was. Being someone for someone else, other than who you truly were killed you and teaching me, allowing me, and demanding me to be someone other than myself only set me up for repeated betrayals by both men and women. Leaving me to deprive myself of true love, healthy friendships, belonging and causing levels of trauma to my own children, All without me being able to see it at first.
However, I promise to keep fighting for us both and for your granddaughters. Fighting battles both out loud and in the silence. Answering to nobody anymore and becoming whoever I want and feel is right for me, authentically, unapologetically and in the most vulnerable way I can. As I continue to heal from the hell of my childhood I’m still learning to rebuild my self worth outside of the jobs I hold, money I make, and sex my body makes available to the opposite gender.
I wish you would have found the strength to choose to face your own pain and heal yourself in order to do what was right by me instead of relying on me and blaming me. Hiding from yourself and using your body as a transaction to pay for the ways you made mistakes and leaving my father to clean up your repeated messes only led to ignore the feelings in yourself and within your marriage.
You had the power to change everything by being brave enough to stand in your sovereign power.
Through it all, I love you now more than ever anyway. I’m grateful for the lessons of darkness that made me search further for the light you couldn’t find. I’m not better than you. I’m only in a better position now because I have been lucky enough to have the chance to learn from lessons you taught me.
-Jessica
Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there that fall into unseen patterns, make mistakes, choose to heal, and kick life in the ass. ❤
Road To Harmony 
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