My Emotional Knot: Reconciling Childhood Trauma with My Mom

Have you ever had an emotional trauma as a child that still impacts you today? For me, the answer is yes, and my mom was, unintentionally, a part of it.

When I was in secondary school, I was bullied a lot. When I told my mom about it, she just said to ignore it. I couldn’t. In my country, one of the bully methods is to call us by our parents’ names. My classmates only found out my mom and dad’s names because one time my mom came to pick me up after school, and she just told them when they asked.

I was so upset that she’d revealed their names. I retaliated by yelling at her face: “I’ll find out the names of their parents and shout at them back!” You know what my mom did? She told me to “ignore them.”

The moment that upset me the most-the one I kept going back to-happened one day when one of my bullies asked me to borrow money for a ride home. I refused and left him there. I felt so proud of myself that I happily told my mom about how I just stood my ground. Surprisingly, she asked me why I did that.

“What if he couldn’t get home? What about his parents? Don’t you think they will get worried about him? Why can’t you forgive him? Forgiving will make you happy! Buddha taught us to be a forgiver! Not an avenger! Do you understand!?”

She forced a lesson of forgiveness when all I needed was validation. I was stunned by her reaction. Since that day, I stopped telling my mom anything personal. I cried a lot for a decade because of this emotional knot. I tried to reason that she’s my mom so I shouldn’t be upset, but I couldn’t. Because of this, I always held a bias against her. I went against what she wanted most of the time, often just to piss her off.

Back then, I was just a 14- or 15-year-old kid. Now I’m 27 and have the courage to open up about this to my mom. I called her this morning after I finished my daily exercise. I told her that I had been holding this for a decade and it seemed like it could not go away. She said she was sorry. She really was. She didn’t know that her words had been buried in my heart for that long.

I told her I felt like she didn’t care about my feelings-a feeling I had carried a lot, to be honest. We both cried on the phone and reconciled. I’m so happy I finally had the courage to talk to my mom about this. She’s in her 50s now and can’t walk well. I realized that if we didn’t talk about this, I would be taking this emotional knot with me to the grave and deeply regretting not resolving it while I still could.

Finally, if you are carrying an emotional knot or trauma caused by your parents, please consider talking to them. It’s always better to talk it out when you can-before they’re gone forever. Have you carried an emotional knot or trauma from childhood? Please share your experience and how you dealt with it in the comments! I’d love to hear about your journey.