Susan Forward

She holds out promise and praise that disappear when you prove to have a mind of your own. And she tries to mold you by making you feel guilty if you don’t go along with her wishes and needs.

To an engulfing mother, love means:

• You are my everything, and that makes you responsible for my happiness.

• You can’t live without me, and I can’t live without you.

• You are not allowed to have a life that doesn’t involve me.

• You are not allowed to keep any secrets from me.

• You must never love anyone more than you love me.

• If you don’t want what I want, it means you don’t love me.

• “No” means you don’t love me.

If you had an enmeshing mother, you may carry with you a great fear of abandonment or separation. You may be overly clingy with partners or your own children. You may hold yourself back because you lack confidence in your own abilities and resilience. And you may know precisely how to make your mother happy but struggle to satisfy your own soul.

By now you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, Susan. Almost all the other books and experts say I can’t blame anybody else for my problems.”

Baloney. Your parents are accountable for what they did. Of course, you are responsible for your adult life, but that life was largely shaped by experiences over which you had no control.

“Just Because You Didn’t Mean It Doesn’t Mean It Didn’t Hurt”

“It was like my mom had two sides—she gave me birthday parties, sometimes she came to events at school—she could even be nice to my friends. But then she had this other side. . . .”

Their mothers tore them down, competed with them, icily ignored them, took credit for their achievements, failed to protect them, or even abused them.

But I’ll tell you, I sure didn’t get to feel safe around her—there was no real bond or kindness. . . . I never felt important to her. I was just something she had to deal with when it suited her.

It rarely occurs to them that their mothers were not loving, or even, in extreme cases, that they were malevolent. That’s too hard to admit, and allowing in that possibility produces acute anxiety in children, whose survival is so closely tied to their vital caretaker. It’s far safer for a child to believe that “if there’s something wrong between us, it’s because there’s something wrong with me.”

I looked for the sunniest spot I could find, but you know it was the damnedest thing—it sure looked like the sun and it was bright like the sun, but there was absolutely no warmth coming from it. And this wave of sadness came over me—the sun was just like my mother.