I think that is one of the ultimate betrayals a parent can do to a teen girl is to read her diary, because those are things that she wants to keep to herself are things that she is still processing on her own, or feelings that are not for the world, and it's like you stepped inside her head without permission. Welcome to the Mother-Daughter Relationship. Show the podcast for mothers and daughters who want to build stronger bonds, deepen their understanding and transform their relationships. I'm your host, Brittany Scott, licensed therapist and mother-daughter relationship coach. After years of working with hundreds of daughters. And mothers. I've developed strategies that help break generational patterns, heal wounds, and create the loving relationships you've always wanted. Each week I'll be sharing insights from real clients, expert interviews and practical tools you can use immediately to improve your mother-daughter dynamic. Whether you're struggling with communication breakdowns, navigating major life transitions, or simply wanna take your already good relationship to the next level. The show is for you. And yes, the transformation I guide my clients through can be yours too. I'll share more about how you can work with me. It's time to experience the relationship you both deserve. Are you ready? Let's dive in. In today's episode of the podcast, you're going to get to listen to me interview Tay. She shares with us her mother daughter's story and how the dynamic between the two of them left an impact on her. I hope you guys enjoy this interview

all right, guys. And we have Tay here with us today.

Hi, Brittany. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today and to talk about this really important topic.

Yes, I'm so excited. And, thank you for allowing me to share your story. So my first question is what was the event or the experience that helped you to realize that the relationship didn't feel good or maybe broke the relationship?

There were a few events, I would say, but I think that our relationship really changed when we moved back to Trinidad from living in the UK. So I'm from Trinidad, I am joining from Trinidad right now. When I was about 12, my entire family relocated to the UK because my stepfather got a different job and it was a whole thing, but I loved it, it was a great time. And when I was over there, I feel like I had a lot more freedom and we had definitely a better relationship than we did before or after. And when we came back, that's when I noticed that things started to change. That the freedom that I had wasn't really there anymore. There was a lot of friction between us. It almost felt like we didn't understand each other anymore, and we were speaking completely different languages. So it went from us being really close in the UK to having this kind of push and pull dynamic. that really came to a head like two days before Christmas one day when There was a misunderstanding. I still don't know what the misunderstanding was if I'm being honest with you and It resulted in a physical altercation And that was really what broke the relationship

and it was between you and her the physical altercation

Yeah,

how

old were you? 19. That's rough. Yeah, that is It has taken me a long time to heal from that. I was in therapy for a long time after that. I moved out the next day. I was technically kicked out, but then I wasn't. It was a very confusing situation because it was. a situation where we had this terrible physical altercation the night before. My dad and my mom separated before I knew myself, so I never knew them together. And it was a situation where I would have called my dad and he couldn't make it to come take me out of the house and I guess he didn't understand the severity of what was going on. And I was not really in a place to explain that either. So the next day I would have found a suitcase on my bed and a note saying that I needed to pack my stuff and leave. And then when I actually started packing my stuff to leave, it was like, no, are you really going to leave? Are you actually going to do this? Which was very confusing to me because you told me to leave, but now you're saying am I really gonna leave after I was physically assaulted? I'm like, I don't feel safe to stay here. And so I packed up my stuff, and I left. I went to stay with my grandmother. And I think that my mom thought that it was just gonna be temporary, and that I would change my mind, and I would come back. But there was no accountability on her end, it was almost like I was the one who was at fault, I chose to leave, I chose to do this, and that's just never who I was, so I never went back. So I spoke to my dad, and I ended up going to live with my dad, and then I went to live up in university and I got an apartment, and I started working and going to school. After that, I didn't speak to her for about three years, initially.

Sounds like she was looking for you to apologize and ask to stay. Yes. And then you didn't do that. You took her note and her display very seriously and you left.

Yes. I remember that being a very confusing interaction because, like I said, it was two days before Christmas, I remember. It was December 23rd. And I had come back from work. I was working in a retail shoe store, but after I did classes at university, just for some extra money over the holidays. And my dad came to pick me up, which was strange because he didn't usually do this. And he lived on the other side of the country. So I'm like, why are you coming to pick me up? But okay. And we went to this kind of Christmas party that his friends were hosting. And it was really fun. It was really a good time. And then I came home and my mother was sitting on the armchair with her arms folded like this. Right next to the front door. So I looked at him. Hi, how are you guys? What's going on? And I'm like really happy and excited. Only to get hit with where were you? Where were you today? Why were you not at school? And I was like, cause I was at work. I'm in a tough spot. School today, cause my exams were over. I found out later on, and I found this out probably years later was that she had heard from a classmate of mine who also happened to be our housekeeper's son, that I had skipped an exam to go spend time with my then boyfriend, which was not true.

She's mad at something. That was a total lie. And never, she didn't even confirm the story with you.

She did ask, but it was, how sometimes parents ask things to hear the answer that they expect to hear. And if it's not that answer, they don't believe it. That was what happened. Okay. And when I would have explained, so I did miss the exam, but I didn't miss the exam because I went to spend time with my boyfriend. I missed the exam because I was not aware that I have dyscalculia, and I read the date wrong. So the exam was supposed to be December the 12th, and I read December 21st.

So when I got there, December 21st,

there was no exam. And I was very confused as to where did they excel? What's happening? And then I realized, oh, okay, I read the date wrong. I went to admin and I was like, okay, I missed this exam. Is there any way that I can retake it? This semester, or do I have to do it in the summer? They told me I had to do it in summer. I used the money I was making in my retail job to pay for the additional exam. So I had everything sorted. It was already done.

Okay, I'll just

do it in the summer. Everything's gonna be fine. That was not accepted as an exclamation. Then it escalated.

Yeah, she already had in her mind what she believed was the truth. And so if your answer wasn't in line with what she thought was the truth, then immediately you were lying. Yes, exactly.

Come to find out that the guy who made up this lie made it up because he liked me and was not happy that I was not in a relationship with him.

Such childish behavior. They'll get you in trouble with your mommy because he's disappointed.

Yeah. And his mom was our housekeeper. We almost grew up together. So I felt so betrayed because I'm like, to me, you're like my brother. And why would you do this to me? And we haven't spoken since that situation. We completely went out of touch. the situation where we already had a fraught relationship and then this lie I guess amplified some of the things that she already felt about me which weren't necessarily true either and I will admit I was a very Reclusive child when it comes to, maybe reclusive isn't the right word. I wasn't very forthcoming as a child. I kept a lot to myself. And I see how in my adulthood that can be viewed by a parent as hiding stuff. But it wasn't like hiding stuff. I just didn't feel like I needed to tell them things.

Yeah, I can see how she views that as hiding or just keeping things from her. In her end, it was probably like you're doing it on purpose. On yours, it was just like, just what, it just was.

Yeah, because I didn't immediately Tell her about the exam thing not because I was hiding it from her but because to me It was already done. I missed the exam. I rescheduled it. I paid for it with my own money So there wasn't anything really to tell but to her that was You didn't tell me that you missed your exam because you were hiding the fact that you did something else from me

Okay, so you move out You go to your grandmother's house, you end up with your dad, and you and her don't talk for how long?

Initially, three years.

Okay.

And then with the coaxing of my grandmother, who I was very close to, she was never happy. That we weren't speaking because it also meant that I stopped going to family events and stop really participating in the family. And we were always a very close knit family. So my grandmother eventually would have said, can you please have a conversation and. I remember we went to a cafe, we met in a cafe to have this conversation and there was just complete denial of anything wrong, there was no attempt to listen to me, there was no attempt to make any concessions, it was I was wrong, I was the one who did this, and the fault is all mine, and from her end it was this idea of I am the parent, you have to listen to me. And I just wasn't okay with that, so I left, I walked out of that interaction. And then we didn't speak again for another six months. And I don't remember who initiated this, but we did go to therapy. Really don't remember how we got there. I don't remember if it was me, or if it was who. But we did go to therapy and things were okay for a little while after that. We were in therapy for quite a few months. I think it was about six months. And then slowly things started going back to how they were. And I realized, okay, then I'm not really seeing any change. This isn't really making any sense to me. I just backed away again.

You said that after some time, after you guys being in therapy, things seemed to go back to the way they were, and you didn't really see any lasting change. What does that mean? You're no longer a child. We're three years, maybe four years into the future at this point. You're in your early twenties. What goes back to how it was before? What does that mean?

The way that we communicated. Went back to how it was post UK pre altercation. It had this, there was this kind of fraught nature where it was almost like I felt that what I said, I would say words. She would hear them, they would go into her brain and they would jumble up and come out as something that I didn't mean it to come out as. And it was almost like we were always competing for control of the situation and there was nothing that I could say that was right. And she also thought that there's nothing that she could say that was right. So it was this really strange situation where we were both walking on eggshells around each other and I also felt that there was a lot of judgment about my decisions and Judgment in a way like how do I say this? It was judgment like You shouldn't do this and trying to exert control over my Direction and what I wanted to do with my life.

Okay, so this fight for control miscommunication and Not understanding each other.

Yeah,

and you say that's post UK that didn't happen in the UK? In the UK We were like besties

No To this day, I still don't know and I do a lot of astrology and human design so sometimes I wonder is this like a Astrology thing like the energetics was just really different and when we came back home it was something different I don't know but when we were in the UK of course we had our disagreements because teenage daughter and mother there were gonna be disagreements but It was never like my experience back home, because in the UK we would go to shows on the West End all the time. Every weekend we were going to a movie, she would pick me up from school, and then we'd go to the mall with my, I have a little sister who's 13 years younger than me. And we would take her, and we would go shopping, and we would do stuff together. She knew all my friends. And I would often be out with my friends would often be over at my space as well, and I had a lot of freedom. It wasn't strange for me to say, hey mom, I'm going to the movies with my friends, and she'd be like, okay, and I'll just call myself a cab, or I would just walk. Cause we, we lived about a half an hour walk away from the Cineplex. So it wasn't an issue for me to just walk. And then when I came back home, all of that disappeared. It was like, we didn't go anywhere together. I couldn't go out. I couldn't have my friends over. I couldn't do things on my own. There was a lot of like, where are you? And why are you not home yet? Which I never experienced in the UK. I didn't understand because I was younger in the UK, but I had more freedom. And now that I'm older, I'm back home where I should be more comfortable. There's none of that, and I didn't understand what changed. Did you ever ask? I did. I still don't know. There has never been a clear answer of what was the difference between the two things.

Yeah. I'm just thinking of a teenage girl, that is so confusing. Like, how are you supposed to act?

It was very confusing because I went from being 13, 14, having the freedom to go to London by myself, to coming back home and not being able to take a taxi. Yeah. And I was always like, where did the mom that I had in the UK go? And I asked her that a few times, which obviously did not go over well.

I can imagine.

I was a very feisty child.

So as a teenager, it wasn't any different, but

I remember asking her, I miss the mom that I had in the UK and she would say, it's the same mom. And I said, no, it's not. No, you're not. You're not the same person. And it could be that maybe when she came back, she had more responsibilities. It could be that things are different at home. Admittedly, we have a less than ideal crime situation here, which we don't have in the UK, or the way that it is, it's not the same. So maybe all of that came into play. I don't know, but I do remember I spent a long time being very confused as to where our relationship

Mhm. And she never had no answer for you. You spoke of a stepdad earlier. Yes. Did he play any role in this?

So just go back a bit before I answer that question. I always say I have four parents because. I don't know my parents as together, my birth parents as together, and then they both remarried when I was very young. So I grew up knowing them both married to other people and having good relationships with my step parents. However, I feel like my step dad and my mom's relationship was that type of relationship where the mother is the disciplinarian. And the dad just goes along with it. He would agree with me in private, and then disagree with me in front of her. Ah. And that was very confusing. Because I would go to him to be like, I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand why mom is being like this. I don't understand these interactions that we're having, why I feel like I can't do anything right. And he would say, your mom is this and blah, blah, blah. And you're right. And I'm side with you. And then when the three of us were together and we're in public or we're in private, but the three of us are together and I bring it up, he's either silent or he's you can't say this to your mom. Or you can't speak to your mom like that, or you have to understand where your mom's coming from and I would be like, where was this person yesterday? Cause that's not what you said to me yesterday. And that dynamic actually led to the second big physical altercation that we had. Which was worse than the first because it happened in the US while we were on vacation. And it resulted in me being left in a hotel by myself with no money. Oh,

how old were you then? 21. In a country you don't live in, a place you're probably not familiar with, and in the hotel with no money.

Yes. And I was lucky in that my uncle, my dad's brother, worked about 15 minutes away from the hotel. So I was able to call my dad. Put me in touch with him and he came and he picked me up and I stayed with him for the rest of my time there. And he also thankfully worked with one of the airlines so he was able to get my ticket changed and get me sorted so that I didn't have to worry about tickets and flights and stuff like that. So I was fortunate that I had a support system in the US in the location where I was. At the time, because another location I would have been stranded. But, I do remember when I brought it up later on when we eventually did go back to therapy. And the answer was, you chose to stay. And I remember saying, It wasn't a choice because I had just been physically assaulted for the second time and I was not gonna get in a car with you and drive for four hours to the next leg of our trip. That's not even a question. Yeah. For me, because it was very clear to me that there was no protections. This was a family vacation. My brother, my sister was there. My stepdad was there. Nobody did anything to stop it. So I can't trust any of you. So I'm not gonna get into the car with you.

Yeah, you weren't safe.

So that was the second time, the second and the final time. After that, we did not speak or see each other for five years. In total, the no contact between me and my mother went on for about 10 years off and on with a brief period of trying to reconnect and trying to go to therapy at the request and encouragement of other family members, but aside from that, it was 10 years.

Yeah, where are you guys today?

Believe it or not, we are speaking. Okay. Not just speaking, I'm actually supposed to go to an event with her tomorrow, because my stepfather did not want to go. So she asked me to accompany her instead. And we are actually really on good terms now.

And how did y'all get here?

That's a good question. We I started speaking again about a year ago. This would have been after my godfather died. Very suddenly, he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and we thought he had more time, but he passed away really suddenly. Yeah, so sorry to hear that. Thank you. And my sister, who's now herself an adult, She called me and she told me he passed away and I had gotten texts from my mom in the days before asking me to contact her but I had ignored them because I didn't know what it was about and I didn't know if I was ready to be in contact with her. So at the point in time that my sister told me Is when I realized that this would have been about my godfather. And she was actually trying to get me to go to the hospital so that I could see him before he went in for his treatment. I did not message her back after that, but I did go to the wake. When I showed up at the wake, everybody was very surprised. I had only told my sister that I was going, so nobody else knew that I was there. And I would've walked in and she saw me, and she just walked up to me and hugged me. And she said, I know that there's stuff that we have to talk about, and I promise that we will, but thank you for coming. How'd that feel? It felt like what I was waiting to hear. Because it felt like an acknowledgement for the first time that there was a role that she played in the way that our relationship had unfolded over the years. Yeah. Because before it was, I have nothing to say. There's nothing to talk about. I said what I said. This was the first time it was Yeah, there's some messed up stuff that we need to talk about. Yeah. But also just the acknowledgement that we could both put that aside for the sake of my godfather's wife, who's my godmother, and my mom's best friend, and for the family, and that we had both reached that place where, okay, yeah, stuff has happened. But that's not the focus right now. That's not a place we had ever been before. It was always so tense that we couldn't even be in the same room with each other.

Mhm. Did y'all ever talk? Yes.

But, to be honest, I did not bring up a lot of the stuff that I thought I was going to because When we got to that point and we got to deciding that we were going to talk, I realized that I had already dealt with it. I had already let it go. I had spent, at this point, 12 years in therapy dealing with all of this. In therapy on my own, in therapy with her, I had gone through so much. And I just wasn't the same person anymore. And I didn't see the purpose in bringing everything back up when I knew already what the miscommunication was. I knew where it came from. I knew the backstory and I had pieced together over the years where everything had happened and how it got to that point. And I didn't feel like there was anything else to talk about. And I was just tired of bringing it up over and over again, that I was just like, I don't even want to talk about this anymore. Let's just move on.

Yeah. And that felt good for you. Yeah. Was her behavior different? Has it been different?

Completely different. I think my behavior is also different. So there are boundaries that I still have. That, there's certain things that I am not, I probably will never feel comfortable letting her in fully into certain areas of my life. There are boundaries that I have and that I keep, and I would say that she respects those boundaries. Okay, even better. And she no longer pries or tries to direct my life or tries to, even I would say that she respects the boundaries. She no longer tries to impose her vision for my life, which I think is one of the biggest struggles that we had. And I feel like we communicate with each other on a more equal footing than we did before.

Yeah. Okay, so communication's better because boundaries are respected and your life is your own.

Yeah. I also feel that she may have gone through her own healing journey. Now, this is not something I've ever asked, but I did notice that The way she interacts, not just with me, but also with my siblings, and also with my stepfather, is very different to how it would be before. There's a lot of stuff that she just lets go of, and I always say in my family, roasting is a love language, but she never took that well before. But now she will take her roast and be like, okay, whatever. You guys will always say this about your mom and we'll move on. It's all fine.

Yeah. Okay. Playful teasing that she couldn't really manage before.

Yes. Playful teasing. Before, the playful teasing would very frequently escalate into an argument.

On her end, because she didn't like it. Yes. Got it. Did she ever join in when it was someone else's turn to get roasted? Always. Okay, but she couldn't handle it when it was her turn.

Yes. And she still can't, to be fair. But the way that she handles it is much more constructive and healthy. It's more okay, alright, yeah. Not too much enough is enough

Okay. That's healthier than turning them into arguments. Yes. And starting big fights. Okay. So it's safe to say you have your mom back. I

have a vision of my mom back is what I'll say. I don't know that I will ever have the mom that I had. In my UK days and earlier, I don't know that I would ever have that relationship back because there is a level of trust that is gone that I'm not sure will ever return. Especially when it comes to my romantic relationships, that is one of the hard boundaries that I have where I no longer introduce her to my partner. Information about my relationship is very Guarded, and I have a very strong boundary in terms of what she knows. Is allowed to know. Same with my space. I usually have a very open door policy with my home where anybody who I love and who is part of my circle can stop at any time. I do not have that policy with who I need to know when she's coming beforehand. And it needs to be discussed and planned in advance.

Those are good boundaries. What would happen, so how do you enforce that? What would happen if she showed up to your home unannounced?

For better or for worse, I have cultivated a reputation for not answering my phone. So it's not strange if someone calls me. And I don't answer. Usually it's because I'm busy, but I will admit that sometimes I use it to avoid people who I don't want to speak to at one point in time. So it has happened before where she has shown up and she called to tell me that she was outside, but I just pulled out the cameras and realized, okay, she's outside, and I just didn't answer the phone.

Did that create any kind of Negativity or animosity between you two, or?

To be honest, unless she listens to this episode, she may never know.

Okay, let's not share this with mom.

But yeah, I, sometimes I just don't answer the phone, because I'm like, okay, I am not in the frame of mind to take this conversation. I know that even though we're in a good place, We still don't always speak the same language, and if I'm not in a headspace to really have those kinds of interactions, I just won't answer, and I'll call her back later when I am in a better headspace.

Okay, so you have a version of your mom back. You understand this may be the only version. You get, because who she was in the UK, something happened, she hasn't shared, maybe one day she will, but something happened and she wasn't the same. But, it was something along those lines of, you've come to terms that you won't have the mom that you had before. That the UK mom was gone. Oh, I think I know what it was, or like where we were getting that. She has never said what happened. Maybe she never will, or maybe one day you will learn what caused this big shift in like her personality and how she responded to you.

Yeah, it is my deepest hope that someday I do find out, but I think I have come to peace now to a space of it's okay if I never find out, and understanding that there are a lot of things that went into the way our relationship came and was constructed and was created after that point in the UK. I do think there's a little bit of grief sometimes, especially when I look at how her relationship with my sister and my brother, both of whom are 10 plus years younger than me. And sometimes there is that eldest daughter thing of I wish I had softness, I wish I had that vision of my mother. And sometimes there was a little bit of a resentment where I felt that they were benefiting from the pain that I had to experience. And they didn't have to experience that, but I was eventually able to let that go and understand that, okay, this is how it is. And it sucks sometimes, but it is how it is. And I do feel that I still had more freedom than my sister had. In

some kind of weird way. Sometimes my sister would tell me what she does, and what she's not, quote unquote, not allowed to do.

And

I feel like Really? She's an adult now, right?

Yes,

but even

before, so she's in university now, and even before when she was like 16, 17, she would be telling me things. And you let that stop you?

She's Mom won't let me do this. And I'm like, Anne, I'm a little bit of a bad influence on my siblings.

Why is that stopping you?

She's she won't like that. And I'm like, okay, Anne. She doesn't like a lot of stuff. And there were some of those conversations that I had with my sister that made me realize,

Oh yeah, okay, this is why we had friction.

Yeah, okay. Your rebelness, maybe.

Yeah, and I think coming from a situation where I had a lot of freedom into a situation where I felt like I was older and more responsible but had less freedom made me rebel even more because of you didn't tell me what to do when I was 12 and now when I'm 17 you want

I needed this person at 12, not at 17.

I'm still gonna go to this thing that you don't want me to go to.

Yeah, and she probably did not like that. She

didn't. I feel like, I always say that I feel like millennials with a large generation who had a certain degree of freedom to Do things that our parents didn't necessarily approve of, but we got around it, in certain ways, because we would go stay at a friend's house and then we would do this, and there weren't cameras everywhere. And we didn't have phones and nobody was recording everything and putting it on social media all the time. So we had a little bit more freedom to do the things that our parents didn't approve of without them seeing that we were doing

Nothing is a secret.

Yeah. And mom, I apologize if you are listening to this, but I will tell you this story. My house where I grew up, we didn't always have security cameras because it wasn't really a thing when we were growing up that everybody had security cameras, but now it is. And I was speaking to my sister and she was talking about having a little get together with her friends and. She was like, mom wouldn't like this and whatever and She said and I can't even sneak out because we have cameras everywhere And I was like, yeah, I used to sneak out and sneak people in There was even a situation where I remember I snuck someone in And they weren't home at the time, but then they came home earlier than they expected and I snapped them out while my parents were in the house, which was a feat.

I am so proud of myself for the fact that I was able to pull that off because I

swore I was gonna get caught and I was never gonna have to, I was never gonna be allowed to leave my house again. But I did it. I did it successfully. I never got caught. And if my mom listens to this, they'll be the first time she hears about it. And I apologize. Sorry, mom.

And it's over now. I never snuck out. Really? No, but so we didn't have security cameras, but I essentially couldn't sneak out if I wanted to. Because we had this alarm system and the alarm turned on every night when we were going to bed. And when you turn the alarm off, it had this loud, like beep, beep to let you know the alarm was off. And that was right next to my parents bedroom. And it was loud. There's no way you were getting out of the house or getting back in without the alarm going off. So there was no way.

So you see, I was innovative because we had an alarm system as well. And we had a keypad downstairs and one in my parents bedroom. So it was like, there's no way. So if I knew I wanted to sneak out. I would conveniently stay the night at my friend's house and then we would leave from there. But it wasn't strange because I would always be at my friend's house.

Yep. So if I ever wanted to sneak out in the middle of the night, if that alarm was on, there was no way I could get out of the house because there was an exit button, but I couldn't get back in the house.

Oh, so you get caught on the way back. Yeah. So there was no point in leaving because it just couldn't happen. That is so funny. That's so funny. But yeah, I was, I was a little bit of a rebellious teen in that way. The thing is, I never had to sneak out when we lived in the UK. I just used to go. I used to be like, hey mom, I'm gone. I'll be back soon. And it

was never a problem. Wherever you were headed, take a cab at 12?

Yeah, I would say probably at 13 is when I really started, taking the cab and stuff. But I guess because we lived in a really safe neighborhood, she knew all of my friends. And it was never someone who had a massive friend circle. It was like Six of us, and we would just hang out in each other's houses all of the time. So once she got to know them, it was never really an issue. She would ask like basic questions like, who am I going with? What are we gonna do? What time would I be back, kind of thing. But it was not to the point of almost the surveillance that I had after because even if I was coming back late it was just a text like mom I'm running late or the movie finished late or it's too late to get a cab back so I'm just gonna stay the night at whoever's house and it would just be a matter of speaking to their parents just to confirm and it was never really an issue. As opposed to, you can't go here, and you can't go there, and you can't go here unless I drop you. And that was just really strange to me, because I had never experienced that before.

Yeah. And then, into a rebellious teen?

Yes.

And then, the strain of the relationship begins.

Yes. And, I don't know if anybody listening to this is into astrology, but I'm a Leo, and my mom's a Taurus. Those two don't really go well together in a lot of ways because we're both very stubborn and we would butt heads a lot and I was a really sensitive, expressive child and I liked to write and I would write letters and I would write little poems and I would give them to her to read and she wasn't really into that's not really her thing. A lot of times she wouldn't read the poem, and she wouldn't read my letters, and I would feel very un listened to and unheard. Like, why don't you want to read my stuff? I also would have found out that she would read them, but she would read the ones I didn't want her to read. The ones that were in my diary. Ah. And when I found that out, which I found out by accident, it was just a conversation and she would have mentioned something and I was like, how do you know that? And when I look back, I realized that the only place I had written it was in my diary. And I was like, Oh, okay. So you read my diary. What else do you read? And there was this kind of sense of, I don't have any privacy here. And if you grew up in a Caribbean household, you would know that they say there's no such thing as privacy. You get privacy when you don't have privacy in my house. So you get privacy when you pay some bills.

I didn't grow up in a Caribbean household, but yes, I understand.

I feel like Black households and Caribbean households are very similar.

Yes, there are some similarities, some crossovers, because that is not your house.

It's not your house. You don't pay any bills here. You don't pay the mortgage, your name's not on the deed, you don't have privacy in my house.

So my rules.

Which never really sat right with me because writing is such a private thing. And it's so vulnerable. Yes. Yeah. And writing is a young teen.

So And for you to write to her and then she not read, and maybe, I'm gonna bet she was reading them. She just wasn't responding to you. But then to read your diary, when you were already sharing your writing with her. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is one of the ultimate betrayals a parent can do to a teen girl, is to read her diary. Because those are things that she wants to keep to herself, or things that she is still processing on her own, or feelings that are not for the world. And it's like you stepped inside her head without permission.

Beautifully, because that's exactly how it felt. The things that I would write in my diary were often musings about myself and how I interacted with other people. A lot of the stuff that I looked back on was me trying to understand the world as an undiagnosed autistic girl. Which I did not realize until I was diagnosed two, two and a half years ago. And then I went back into my older diaries and I'm like, Oh, this makes sense now. Yeah. And it felt I always felt that I explained myself better through written words, at least at that age. I don't think that's the case anymore. But there were things that I would try to say to my mom that I could not say in words because I would get so overwhelmed and I would often cry in conversations with her, even though I wasn't sad, but it was just crying from the overwhelm of trying to explain myself and not being understood. So I would write it. But then I wouldn't get the response from it and then to know that my diary was being read and I remember I even started hiding writing underneath my mattress Because I didn't feel like it was safe in my diary anymore but then finding out not even that was safe because When I wasn't home, when I was at school, and the housekeeper would make the bed, she would pull the stuff out, and she showed them to my mom. Why don't you just put it back? And I was like, why would you do that?

It's obviously there for a reason. Mind your business, read it if you want, but put it back where it goes. Just make the bed and put it back.

There are parts of me that I was not able to safeguard, that I was not allowed to have boundaries around. And I don't think I would be able to have the relationship that we do have now if I didn't have those boundaries.

Yeah. And so your boundaries today are about emotional safety.

Emotional and physical to a degree. Because while I don't truly believe that any physical altercation will happen again, It's fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

A third time.

Third time.

So you can't let your guard down in that area.

So it's a very strange dynamic, I'm not gonna lie, that we have now. If you had told me a year and a half ago that we would be speaking and going to events together and taking pictures, I would have told you no way that's not gonna happen. It's never gonna happen, but life has a way of working out sometimes. Mhm. And As much as I will grieve the relationship I was not able to have with my mother, I feel like now we have the potential to create something that is uniquely us. Because I do feel that in some regards, she was trying to recreate the relationship that she had with her mother, and the two of them were very close. But we are two very different people.

Okay, so it didn't work out in the way that she was attempting, like what she was attempting to do.

Yeah, so ironically, my grandmother was born the day after me. As in, obviously years before, but Right. Our birthdays were the day and the day after. Two consecutive days. And my grandmother and I were really close. But my grandmother and my mother were, like, tight, as in speak every single day, tell each other everything, that was like her source of support, but I never had that relationship with my mother. I was never the person who would call you every day. I'm still not that person who will call you every day. I'm not the person who is going to divulge everything and ask for advice because I'm very self sufficient as a person and sometimes I don't feel like I need to ask for advice, especially if I feel like you don't understand the situation. Like I'm not going to ask you for advice for you to give me advice that doesn't work for me, and I rely a lot on my community support system rather than my familial support system because I always felt like a black sheep in my family and I was the one who went a different way and was always about social justice and talking about the things that nobody in family chat wants to talk about but I'm gonna bring it up anyway. Your uncle is saying those weird racist things and everybody just ignores it and I'm like okay no but that's racist don't say that. Yeah. So I always had that sense of being apart from my family. So we never had that relationship that she had with her mother that I think she wanted to have with me. And we did have at a point in time, but whatever happened when we transitioned from living in the UK to living back home, it just didn't translate.

Yeah. Sounds like y'all could have had that if you didn't return to Trinidad.

To this day, I like to say I live a life with no regrets, but that's not true. To this day, I think the worst decision we made as a family was coming back to Trinidad. I don't think we should have come back. I know my life would have looked very different. I know all of our lives would have looked very different. But we shouldn't have come back. We should have stayed.

Yeah.

But it's done.

It happened. It's years ago. But, would you say you're happy with the relationship that you can have today? It's not ideal, but it's what you can have. Would you describe yourself as happy with that? Or, what emotion would you tie to that?

I don't know if I'm happy, but I would say I'm content. I'm content to not have this. feeling of, looking over my shoulder all the time or walking on eggshells around my mom. I am happy that we can joke together again. I do feel like, I feel at peace. Mhm. With what we can have and what we have created, and I do feel like, I don't know if this is an emotion, but I feel like I have come to terms with my own responsibility as the oldest daughter. That I really didn't want before. I was like, somebody else is going to deal with that, when they get older. That's, that, they have two other children. That's their problem, but really, that wasn't something that I'm okay with. If I was honest with myself, deep down, I was never really okay with passing off that responsibility to my younger siblings. Especially because they're so much younger and I want them to live their youth and be able to experience things. without having to worry about taking care of our aging parents. So I have come to terms with in certain ways that is a role that I'm gonna have to play and I am happy that I don't have to play it reluctantly because if we still had the relationship that we had before and I had to step into that role for whatever reason it would have been, I wouldn't have done it or I wouldn't have done it well. And I would have resented my parents and my siblings for having to do it, whereas now I feel like it's okay. Yeah.

It's not weird. Yeah. And you're speaking of a caregiver role.

Yes. Because I have to acknowledge my parents are getting older, and as much as they don't want to think that they're getting older, they are. and they're not going to be able to do everything themselves forever, so it is okay that there are going to be times where I have to step in that role, and I am happy to share that responsibility with my siblings rather than pass it off to them.

So that's what I

would say. Okay.

You're content, and there's some relief there to not leave your siblings alone in the future. The stage of caregiving. Yeah. What, if anything, did you need from your mom growing up that you did not get?

Emotional support. I think I had a lot of Monetary and material support, so we didn't grow up rich or anything But I was well cared for. I went to really good schools. I had the opportunity of leaving my home country And living abroad, not just once, but multiple times over the years. And I was brought into that decision. So they would have asked me, Hey, do you want to go? Or do you want to stay with your dad? And I said, I want to go. So I had the fortune of doing. That I'm having some really cool experiences of traveling the world, but the emotional care and the emotional support is what was missing for a lot of times because I don't think I ever really felt safe to feel or express my feelings.

And if there is a woman listening to this that relates to your story in any way, whether it's, she's also Caribbean or grew up in a Caribbean household, physical altercations between her mother or finding a way to be content with the mother she is given and creating healthy strong boundaries around that, what do you want to tell her? What would you leave her with if she's listening?

I would say stop waiting for an apology from your mother to live your life. Because you may never get an apology. And that sucks. It's, it hurts. And I know it hurts because sometimes that is really all you want, an apology and an acknowledgement of what you went through. But you may never get it. And if you, waiting for that, is stopping you from living the life that you want to live and going after the things that you want to go for. It is not worth the waiting. And sometimes the best thing that you can do for yourself It's to let go of that expectation, let go of that waiting, let go of that desire for the apology, and move on.

I don't even have a response to that. I completely agree though. It's probably never coming. If you're still waiting on it, it's probably never coming.

You know what was funny for me? It was the moment that I stopped waiting that I got the apology. I spent 10 years, 12 years actually. Waiting for an apology. And it was when I let it go, when I went to the wake with no expectation of getting an apology, no expectation of having a conversation, just to be there for my family, knowing that they had lost someone really close to them. And really close to me. That was when the apology came.

Yeah, so you have to live your life for you. Make the decisions that are best for you. And it may come, it still may never come. But, that's where the power is. Yep.

Being okay with not ever getting that acknowledgement. is probably both the hardest thing and the most rewarding thing that you can do.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and with the listeners.

Thank you so much for having me and for holding space for these stories. I feel like This is something so many women go through. It's something that I see even in my clients a lot who are often Black women or Caribbean women. And this relationship with our mothers, it really affects us to the deepest level. So I'm happy that I can contribute to that healing by sharing this story. Yes, thank

you.

That's all for today's episode of the Mother-Daughter Relationship Show. Thanks so much for spending this time with me. I hope you picked up some valuable insights that you can start using right away in your own relationship to create deeper connection and understanding. If something from today's episode resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with the mother or daughter in your life who needs to hear this message. And while you're at it, please consider leaving a rating. And review so we can reach more families and transform the way mothers and daughters relate to each other. For those ready to take the next step, you can visit my website to learn more about my private coaching programs and my program designed specifically for mother-daughter pairs. Whether you're dealing with communication challenges, life transitions, or just wanna strengthen an already good relationship, I'm here to help. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you in the next one.