My mother is searching for love, while I’m drowning in the weight of motherhood.
My mother, Margaret Whitmore, has erased me and my children from her life. I’m left juggling the endless demands of two little ones, while she, their own grandmother, won’t lift a finger to help. The hurt gnaws at me—how do I handle this loneliness, this resentment?
Why is she like this? I can’t figure it out. We grew distant when I left home at eighteen, moving from Manchester to start my own life. Since then, our calls have been few and fleeting. I hoped my children might bring us closer, but every time I ask her to visit or just listen, she cuts me off: “Emily, I’ve got things to do.” What could be more important than family?
Mum always drilled independence into me. “You have to stand on your own two feet,” she’d say. And I did—scraping by in a tiny flat, counting every penny, working jobs that left me exhausted. I managed, but at what cost? Now that I’m a mother myself, I just want a shred of the support I never got. But she’s nowhere to be found.
Instead, she’s consumed by men. Like a schoolgirl, she flits from date to date, chasing “the one” in her fifties. I want her happy, but not at the price of forgetting us. My children ask why Gran never visits, and I’ve no good answer. She’s always got an excuse—busy, tired, or “meeting someone interesting.”
Last week, I snapped. After yet another refusal to come over, I rang her and blurted everything out: “Aren’t you ashamed? At your age, you should be with your grandchildren, not gallivanting about!” She lashed back: “I wasted my youth on you—worked myself to the bone raising you alone. Now it’s my turn, Emily! Your kids, your problem!” Her words stung. Yes, she sacrificed for me—but does that mean she gets to walk away?
She’s slipping further away. In the last two years, we’ve barely seen her once a month. She’s colder now, almost a stranger. Even her voice lacks the warmth it once held. I don’t expect her to drop everything for us—but would one visit a week be so hard? Just to sit with the children, to let me breathe? I fear soon we won’t even be family anymore.
How do I make her see? Life isn’t just candlelit dinners and new admirers. Family—her flesh and blood—should matter. I’m tired of fighting, tired of feeling like an afterthought. Part of me thinks: fine, let her find her happiness, maybe she’ll remember us later. But deep down, I fear “later” won’t come.
I don’t want to lose her. But how do you hold on when someone keeps pushing you away? I’m sinking under the weight of it all, and she doesn’t even seem to notice. Am I selfish? Or has she forgotten what it means to be a mother?
