Trigger Warning: This story contains descriptions of childhood abuse, neglect, trauma, and other sensitive topics, including references to violence and systemic failures. It may be distressing for some readers. Please proceed with care, and prioritize your well-being.
First off, this was not easy to write, let alone share.
As I explain at the end, I wrote this piece with the help of AI. To be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to get through the process of telling all of this without that support. I lived these experiences, and recounting them was incredibly difficult—I needed help to put it all into words, and there’s no shame in that.
This is the first time I am sharing much of this story at all. In the past, I’ve only ever mentioned small pieces, keeping the full truth locked away out of fear of being vulnerable. That fear has been a barrier for me for years, making it difficult to form relationships, especially romantic ones. Writing this now feels like opening a door I’ve been too afraid to even approach.
Even now, as I prepare to share this publicly, I feel the weight of vulnerability pressing on me. Hitting the publish button is not an easy thing to do—it feels like standing on a precipice, unsure of what lies ahead. But I know it’s a step I need to take for myself and for others who might feel just as isolated in their struggles.
While I know I still have a long way to go, this moment—writing and sharing my story—is the best choice I could have made. Whether with or without help, I feel better having said it out loud in this way, and I’m ready to take this first step toward healing.
When I was three, my mother met the man who would become my adoptive father. It was around this time that my memories started to shift, taking on a darker, more vivid tone. I’ve always had a striking ability to recall intense moments with crystal clarity—a gift and a burden rolled into one. It makes looking back on those years even harder.
You see, my mother is a narcissist. She’s never been formally diagnosed, but if you were to look at a list of narcissistic traits, you could check off every single one when it comes to her. Even as a child, I never fully conformed to her way of thinking. I suspect, on some instinctive level, I understood that her logic didn’t make sense.
I was bright even then—reading, spelling out words, coloring neatly within the lines. At just three years old, the world already felt alive with possibilities. But something about her worldview never sat right with me. Deep down, I think I knew it wasn’t safe to surrender myself to it.
To truly understand how my childhood unfolded, it’s important to acknowledge the dynamics of living with a narcissist. Narcissists are driven by an insatiable need for control, admiration, and validation. They construct their world around their desires and perceptions, often at the expense of those closest to them.
In this dynamic, roles emerge—almost like characters in their carefully crafted play. There are the ‘golden children,’ often favored and held up as an extension of the narcissist’s idealized self, showered with praise as long as they conform. Then there are the ‘flying monkeys,’ enablers who carry out the narcissist’s bidding, often defending their actions without question. And finally, there are the ones like me—the ‘nonconformers.’ We don’t fit into their desired mold, and as a result, we often become scapegoats, challenging their control simply by existing outside their expectations.
Even as a young child, I fell into this last category. My refusal to conform wasn’t a rebellion—it was a quiet recognition that her way of thinking didn’t align with the logic and curiosity I carried, even at three years old. This difference became a constant source of tension, shaping my experiences and the way I saw the world around me.
Being advanced as a child came with its own complexities, especially within the dynamics of my home. By the time I was three, I was reading fluently, spelling out words, and excelling in tasks far beyond what was typical for my age. My mind was a constant flurry of curiosity and discovery—logic came naturally to me, as did problem-solving. These were gifts of my neurodivergence, stemming from my autism spectrum disorder (ASD). But like many with ASD, my strengths existed alongside delays in other areas, particularly social development.
This contrast made my mother’s expectations even harder to navigate. To her, my intelligence was something to exploit—a trophy to display when it suited her but dismissed when it didn’t align with her desires. My delays in social understanding? Those became weapons in her arsenal, used to belittle me and make me feel small. She wielded them as evidence that I was difficult or defiant, refusing to see the beauty in how my mind worked.
And yet, it was my logic, my ability to analyze and question, that gave me a shield against her control. While I struggled to decode the subtleties of social interactions, I could see through the inconsistencies in her behavior. I may not have had the words to articulate it at the time, but even as a young child, I knew something didn’t add up. It wasn’t rebellion; it was clarity—an unshakable sense that I was being asked to conform to something fundamentally flawed.
It was also around this age that someone—a teacher or maybe a doctor, I don’t remember who—recognized the signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in me. I received my first referral for an evaluation, a step that could have opened the door to resources and understanding I deeply needed.
But my mother refused to take me to the appointments. To her, the suggestion that I might be autistic was an affront—a challenge to her carefully crafted image. The reality that her child might need specialized care, or simply be different in ways she couldn’t control, didn’t fit into her narrative.
I’ve often wondered how different things might have been if I’d received the diagnosis and support back then. If someone had been there to say, ‘Your mind is incredible just as it is, and here’s how we can help it thrive.’ Instead, I was left to navigate my neurodivergence on my own, trying to make sense of a world that often felt overwhelming and confusing, all while contending with the dynamics at home.
As I grew older, the complexities of my childhood only deepened. In elementary school, I experienced a taste of a therapy approach that, looking back, I now realize was controversial and has since been outlawed. It was tied to addressing my speech impediment, but the echoes of it left their mark on me. Around this same time, when I was six, my life changed in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time—my first sister was born, and my adoption was finalized. What strikes me is that no one told me about the adoption until much later in life.
I remember sneaking into my sister’s room at night to sing to her. Even now, despite the age difference, we share a bond that nothing has been able to break. Yet her arrival also highlighted differences I couldn’t ignore. She was their biological child, and with her presence, the contrasts in how I was treated became even more pronounced.
By then, I had already been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin as my first medication. It suppressed my appetite so severely that I stopped recognizing hunger—a disconnect that has lingered with me to this day. I became underweight, developing the fine down that’s often associated with eating disorders. To my knowledge, no one addressed or even noticed the physical toll this took on me. It was simply another way I failed to conform to my mother’s idealized world. And perhaps because of this, I think it was around this time she began targeting my self-esteem in earnest.
She gave me a nickname—one I’ve never liked—that she used only when we were near the rez where my biological father lived. Those visits often came with stories—good ones, at first—but there was always a seed of negativity planted in her words about the First Nations people there. At the time, I didn’t fully grasp the weight of her comments. It wasn’t until much later in life that I saw the patterns in how she used these moments to shape how I viewed myself and others.
She also made a point of reminding me, repeatedly, that I was one of the first children diagnosed with RSV, surviving what was an unknown breathing issue at the time. I have no memories of those early months in the hospital, but she ensured I saw photos of myself in a breathing tent as an infant. The message was always clear: I owed her something. That feeling of indebtedness, of never quite measuring up to what she expected in return, stayed with me and shaped the way I moved through the world.
By the time I was in elementary school, I found solace in becoming a school crossing guard. Looking back, I think it was a blend of my instinctive need to help others—a spark that would later evolve into my passion for medicine—and a need to be anywhere but home. If you could even call where I lived a home.
My parents were fighting constantly, and I would often try to stop the arguments. Confrontation became something I feared to the deepest part of my soul. There were moments—things I managed to stop—that I shouldn’t have had the strength to do. It was too much for a child to carry.
When there were renovations happening at the house, I’d often hang out with the person doing the work, simply to avoid the chaos. I remember one particular day when I got a hold of a crowbar and accidentally dropped the wrong end on my foot. Instead of crying out in pain or seeking help, I limped my way upstairs, grabbed toilet paper and an elastic, and fashioned a makeshift bandage. By the time it was discovered, it was too late for stitches.
Even now, I’m not sure why I felt the need to tend to such an injury on my own. Perhaps it was a reflection of how deeply I internalized the idea that I couldn’t rely on anyone else, or maybe it was a glimpse into the healer I was already becoming. I was the kid with a nose in a book, the quiet one who learned more than people realized. The quiet ones often go unnoticed, but that’s exactly what makes us dangerous in our own way—we observe, we analyze, we understand far more than most people are comfortable with.
Over time, I learned to harness that skill. Though I’m painfully shy to this day, I’ve become adept at using what I observe to help others. People now often joke with me, saying things like, ‘Remind me to never piss you off, but let me know so I can bring popcorn!’ And while I am, and always have been, a healer, I’ve also learned that sometimes helping someone means standing your ground and forcing them to confront their own pride. Still, those moments terrify me afterward—always when I’m alone.
When I hit puberty, I was given more freedom to play outside, and I took full advantage of it. You couldn’t get me back inside except for meals. I explored every solo activity I could think of—wandering as far as I could before settling into a cozy spot to read. It didn’t help much with the social struggles that come with ASD, but it kept me safer and gave me peace.
Even then, I was dangerously underweight, though I wouldn’t know this until much later when I took charge of my own medical care. Since puberty, my mother found ways to chip away at my self-esteem, always hinting that I was too heavy, or that I needed makeup or some other beauty enhancement. I look back at old photos now, and I see a very pretty girl staring back—but her voice lingers, making it nearly impossible to believe any compliments I receive.
I’ve realized since then that what kept me so underweight was undiagnosed hyperthyroidism. Another medical issue that went unnoticed during my childhood. How much care was I truly denied?
It wasn’t until after the birth of my first child that the hyperthyroidism was identified through bloodwork. By then, the only treatment left was surgery, but before it could happen, the condition had swung to hypothyroidism—the opposite problem. Now, I truly do struggle with my weight.
I’ve learned to look at myself in the mirror, but it’s still not without some form of criticism. At least now, I can look without cringing or feeling that burning sensation in my eyes that signals tears.
Throughout all of this, I learned to hide my emotions. In my mother’s hands, they were weapons—tools she could use to hurt me. So I buried them, learned to keep them locked away. And while that shield protected me then, it’s a skill that’s been both a blessing and a burden ever since.”
Sadly, this was only the beginning of the damage my mother would cause throughout my life.
She never let me learn to do my own hair, always insisting on doing it for me. She wasn’t gentle, either—straightening my hair to hide the gorgeous curls I’ve only recently embraced. It was as though even my natural appearance wasn’t allowed to exist as it was.
Looking back at old photos, I see things now that make me wonder what memories I’ve locked away. There are glimpses—trickles of memories involving my adoptive father and other male family members—that are deeply unsettling. They’re the kind of nightmares most mothers fear for their children. But for me, they were my reality. I was the child who was always a challenge, the one who didn’t fit the mold.
By late junior high and high school, my mother began accusing me of using drugs. The irony was that I had no interest in them—I didn’t like the idea of losing control, and being a social outcast meant I wasn’t exposed to peer pressure. One day, I’d had enough. I told her to either take me to a doctor and have me tested or never bring it up again.
She ended up accusing me again at the worst possible time. I had gone to check on a friend who hadn’t been showing up for our volunteer first aid classes—something I loved doing as a junior first aider. Those classes were a bright spot in my life, but that day left a scar. I found my friend hanging by his belt. The image is seared into my memory. By the time I got home, my eyes were bloodshot, and I was late. Before I could even take my shoes off, the first thing out of her mouth was another accusation about drugs.
Something in me snapped. For the first time, I found my backbone with her. I told her I’d warned her—if she accused me again, I would leave and never come back.
By then, my parents were divorced, and my mother had a son—my baby brother. For the first two years of his life, I was essentially his second parent. I wasn’t even sixteen when I left home, but I had already been caring for him since I was fourteen. He responded better to me than to her, which only fueled her resentment.
I was so isolated that I didn’t even know what narcissism was, let alone that she embodied it. I had been bounced back and forth between my parents whenever I became ‘too difficult’ to handle. Neither of them truly wanted me. My adoptive father, I later realized, was racist toward Indigenous people—a fantastic choice of husband for a woman with a half-Native child, right?
I never went back home, except once. I was pregnant with my son, under eighteen, and had become high-risk enough to require full bedrest. Despite everything, the instinctive need for my mother still lingered. I don’t think that need ever fully goes away.
At the time, I was with my son’s father—a cruel man. Compared to how I grew up, he seemed kind at first. But I remember one moment vividly: at eight months pregnant, I wedged myself between the toilet and the tub, trying to protect my stomach as he raged. When my mother came home, she shooed him off and offered me chocolate milk. That was it. No care for the deep bruises I had from my hiding place. She let him continue living in the basement while I stayed upstairs. We weren’t married, so sharing a bed was out of the question.
Had she allowed it, perhaps one of my sisters would have escaped him. We didn’t learn the full extent of his actions until two decades later.
I stayed with him for far too long. It wasn’t until a social worker—someone who helped young parents—caught him holding my infant son over a four-story railing that I finally left. She acted swiftly, getting me and my son into a safehouse within hours.
I didn’t press charges. Not because I wasn’t terrified of him—I was—but not for my own sake. Despite the broken bones and physical control he exerted over me, I didn’t see myself as worth protecting. That’s one of the costs of growing up the way I did. You don’t recognize abuse easily.
It was fear for my son that kept me away. And yet, my mother told him my location twice.
Eventually, I did escape him. His interest lay in drawing women in, flaunting the image of a dad who stuck around for his kid. Little did they know that his involvement was purely performative—he only acted when there was an opportunity to show off. Things escalated to the point where his actions were severe enough for me to strip him of *all* parental rights, a feat that was far from easy.
Despite breaking free of him, I still hadn’t learned to sever ties with my mother. That inability cost me dearly when it came to my son.
She hadn’t come to visit me in years, despite having countless opportunities. But then again, when does a narcissist want to be around someone who doesn’t feed their ego or make the world revolve around them?
She couldn’t have chosen a worse time to reappear. I was in another abusive relationship—not as bad as the past ones, so I stayed. The bar for ‘better’ was shockingly low. A few weeks before we were to get married, he broke my wrist. I hid the truth of how it happened, but during that time, my big brother had called.
Now, let me pause to explain: my brother was given up for adoption to an aunt, and we had only known about each other for a few years. He despised our mother, though I’m still unclear about all the reasons why. I suspect he knew what she had done to me—perhaps something I let slip during one of our many pool games in my aunt’s garage. My brother keeps his distance from most of the family, considering only a select few as ‘real family.’ I am one of the few in that category—the only sibling he acknowledges.
He wasn’t a nice man, not in the conventional sense. He was someone most feared due to his ties—ties I never asked about and never will. I know enough to have a decent idea of what happens when someone crosses him. That day, when the guy I was with started talking over me in ways that crossed every line, my brother’s tone changed. The coldness in his voice scared me, and I was his baby sister—the one person he protected without question.
He told me to hand the phone over. That tone is burned into my memory. I’ll never forget the 180 that my fiancé did after talking to him.
A few days later, my brother showed up. He had a conversation with me—one that wasn’t a suggestion but a plan. We worked out how I would leave. He didn’t give me much choice once he learned the details of what was happening. My brother has always had a way of getting me to talk, drawing out truths I hadn’t realized I was hiding.
In the gap while we planned, my mother showed up. My son was four at the time, and I was working in the medical field—pulling doubles, juggling life, and carrying the weight of being the sole provider. Though I was in a relationship, my partner didn’t work; he gamed all day. It felt like being a mother to two.
My son, being the incredible kid he is, tried to help clean. He tackled the hamster cage and made an effort to get the trash into a black garbage bag. You can imagine the mess I walked into that day. I was starting to clean when my mother arrived unannounced.
She immediately wanted to take my son for a visit. She lived in a different city, and to him, she was practically a stranger. He didn’t care for her.
I stood my ground. For the first time, I said no and held firm. I was finally beginning to learn—to protect not just myself but my son as well. I had no way to travel except on foot, and there was no chance I would let him go to another city without me.
When I said no to my mother, she became vindictive in ways I didn’t expect. By this point, she had already revealed to me that I was adopted—a fact she used as a weapon to hurt my adoptive father. It didn’t have the effect she wanted, but I was the one left to bear the brunt of her anger. For years, I was subjected to hearing details of their marriage—stories no child should ever have to hear.
I didn’t fully understand what being Native would mean until she pulled her next stunt, which I wish I could say was the worst thing she ever did. My mother called child services.
When they showed up, they were sympathetic and kind. I told them I was planning to leave and asked for help—a choice I’ll regret forever. In many provinces, over 90% of children in care are Native. The residential schools may no longer exist, but the system still takes our kids. I wanted to protect my son from that kind of experience, so I asked them to help place him with my aunt—my mother’s sister.
I never got my son back in my care, no matter what I did. At the time, I didn’t know I actually had full custody and could have simply picked him up. He was my child, and he knew it. Even now, he says that whenever he needed me, I was there. And I was. I would move mountains to be there for him. But child services convinced me that I didn’t have custody.
Think about this for a moment—I was capable of caring for my medically fragile daughter years later, but not my son? I didn’t realize the truth about my custody rights until it was too late.
At one point, my mother had custody of my son. When I discovered that, I raised hell, but it was already done. She went to child services again and surrendered him—a clear case of custodial interference, yet it was allowed. By this time, I had just lost my daughter. Why was I considered fit to care for her, but not for my son?
They moved him to another province and placed him with his father. This, despite a federal order stripping that man of his parental rights for being abusive. My son’s scars, both physical and emotional, are proof of what happened. He has carried those scars ever since.
I didn’t find out the full extent of the abuse until almost two years ago. His father was deemed too abusive to care for his new infant son, yet child services placed my son with him anyway. My son, like me, is Native. Somehow, that detail has always felt significant.
I learned about this when child services called me at school. Naturally, I stepped out to take the call. That was the first time anyone mentioned ASD to me, and my reaction was complete shutdown. I couldn’t process it at all. Thankfully, my dean—a former psychologist—recognized what was happening and helped me calm down. By then, I had Peace, my service dog, who had originally been trained to help me with PTSD. With her support, I was able to settle enough to drive—something that still brings me a sense of freedom.
Once I regained my composure, I called my mother at work, over and over, until she picked up. I asked her point-blank if there was anything she needed to tell me. She dodged the question, saying she didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, I told her I had received a very interesting call. Her response? ‘They weren’t supposed to tell you until next week. I was going to talk to you about it on the weekend.’ It was a Tuesday.
That was it. I told her I was done. I told her to never contact me again.
My mother tried to reconnect several times after that, but by then, I had seen enough to know what to expect. Two of my siblings had already cut ties with her, and I knew the relentless pushback she was capable of. I eventually sent her a detailed cease-and-desist letter—a task made easier by my ASD-driven attention to detail. I covered every possible angle to ensure she couldn’t worm her way back into my life.
Even after that, she still tried to manipulate situations. She attempted to get on government disability by falsely claiming trauma from losing her granddaughter. I could count on one hand the number of times she visited in the three years of my daughter’s life. I called the disability office and informed them of her dishonesty. They denied her claim, and she has no idea I was the reason why.
It took me a long time to get to this point, but I no longer feel hate toward my mother. There’s a fine line between hate and love, and at times, you can move back and forth between the two. But now, I feel something worse. I feel nothing.
I feel nothing for the woman who made my life hell. The woman who, when I came home late from my first date, blamed me for being victimized in one of the most vicious ways imaginable. I was fifteen. She had set up the date with a man in his early twenties. You can do the math. Even after the trauma, she continued inviting him over, trying to set me up with him.
This is the woman who calls herself my mother, yet she has left lifelong scars. Scars that make me feel broken in ways I’m still trying to heal. A few years ago, I stumbled onto a Facebook group for women with narcissistic mothers. It was through them that I finally understood what she is. Those women helped me get to the point where I feel nothing for her.
She is not my mother. She is the woman who raised me in a house that was never a home. As memories come back, I feel their impact—raw and painful. They make me question whether I’m fit for a real relationship, whether I carry too much baggage.
There’s been one man in my life who has never abused me. Just one. My lack of self-confidence—another legacy of my mother—cost me that relationship. I still struggle to recognize abuse when it’s directed at me, though I can spot it a mile away in others and step in to help them.
This is what she left me with. And yet, here I am—still standing.”
While I love writing fiction, it’s in writing about my personal journey—the good, the bad, and the horrific—that I’ve found something deeply profound. Sharing these parts of my life publicly has given me a sense of being heard and validated. It’s a way to process the pain, to name it and give it shape, and most importantly, to share it with others so they know they’re not alone.
This is the first time I have ever written down this part of my story. In the past, I’ve only shared small pieces here and there, but I’ve never had the courage to put it all together. The fear of being vulnerable has always held me back—making it difficult to form relationships, especially romantic ones. Writing this now feels like taking a step into the unknown, trusting that vulnerability can also bring healing.
My hope is that my words won’t just provide comfort but also empower others to push past their own struggles without forgetting what has come before. I’ve learned that trying to lock away memories can backfire. The mind safeguards itself in the face of overwhelming trauma, but when those memories finally surface, it can feel like reliving the moment all over again.
For me, this is especially vivid. There are times I wonder if I might have had an eidetic memory if my mother hadn’t worked so hard to break me, to destroy me. In some ways, my memories are so clear and detailed that they might already be considered eidetic. But rather than allowing those memories to control me, I’m learning to reclaim my power through every word I write.
Each word is a reflection of not only what I’ve endured but also of my refusal to let my past continue to take from me. It has taken too much already. Writing has become an act of defiance, a way of saying, ‘This will not define me anymore.’
Maybe one day, I’ll look in the mirror and smile. Maybe one day, I’ll believe it when someone tells me I’m beautiful. If I never get there, that’s okay too—because I keep trying.
The best way to describe where I am in life is this: I am like Damascus steel forged in the fires of hell. The process of creating Damascus steel is nothing short of remarkable. It begins with folding layers of metal—often a combination of different steels—over and over again. Each time the metal is folded, it’s heated in a blazing forge until it glows red-hot, hammered out to fuse the layers together, and then cooled slightly.
This process is repeated dozens, even hundreds of times. It takes patience, skill, and an unwavering commitment to the craft. Once the steel has been folded enough to create its signature strength and intricate patterns, it is quenched—rapidly cooled—to temper and solidify its form. Done correctly, this creates steel that is nearly impossible to break. Its internal structure becomes one of resilience, and its surface displays breathtaking waves and patterns—a testament to the effort poured into its creation.
I am still in the process of being folded and fired, hammered and quenched. Every difficulty I face feels like another layer being shaped, another moment in the forge that brings me closer to my goal. One day, I will emerge from this process as something unyielding and extraordinary. I will become like Damascus steel—impossibly strong, uniquely beautiful, and forged through the fires that sought to consume me.
As I finish sharing this part of my journey, I want to acknowledge something important: I used AI to help me with this writing. These are my experiences, my words, and my story, but using AI gave me the support I needed to piece it together in a way that felt readable and clear. Writing about such deeply personal and painful moments isn’t easy, and I found that having this tool allowed me to focus on expressing my thoughts without getting lost in the weight of how to format or organize them.
This piece is entirely mine, but I’m grateful for the help AI provided in making this process a little easier. It allowed me to put these words down and share them with the hope that they might resonate with others—offering comfort, solidarity, or even just a reminder that healing is a journey we don’t have to take alone.
And finally, while this is the part of my story that involves my mother, it’s not the whole story. There is far more to my past—other pieces, other pain—that I haven’t shared yet. Writing this feels like opening a door, but it’s a door I will step through at my own pace. As I find the strength, I will share more, and in doing so, I hope to continue on this path of healing.
Who am I? 
I would love to hear from you!