Toxic Mom Toolkit

I survived my 40th high school reunion yesterday without embarrassing myself too much or giving in to the group surge of “Let’s only talk about funny-fun stuff we did!”  It was the very first invitation I had received from the school where I spent three anxious years during pretty much the worst years of my life.

I arrived as a sophomore, which was rare for a class that had bonded as little girls at Catholic grammar schools spread out all over San Francisco.

While I was away at summer camp, My Toxic Mom had thrown out all my clothes hanging in my closet, replacing them with two red-white-and-blue plaid skirts, four white Peter Pan collar style shirts, a few pairs of knee socks and one scratchy wool sweater. That’s how I knew she had enrolled me at Mercy.

Immediately exempted from attending chapel or other religious events, I was told to read in the library. And because no one ever said I couldn’t, I started reading whatever I wanted. I would lay on the carpet several hours a day and read biographies mostly, searching for lives that mirrored mine in some way.

My home life was so chaotic and unbearable that I had trouble focusing on any organized study effort. I had no understanding of cycles of a school year, that study led to quizzes and semesters meant finals. Every day was a distinct event, unconnected to the previous day or creating a path to other days. Quite frankly, because I was living in a terror-driven home, each morning I arrived at school I took a deep breath of relief that I had survived the night.

I was that kid that sat in the back, looking out the window. My low grades reflecting my state of mind. I can see how some teachers could write me off.

I had very few friends then, none of which I had kept up with. So, imagine my surprise when a woman sidled up to me like a former con I had served time with. She spoke out of the side of her mouth, telling me quickly who else might show and that she had saved some seats for us — in the back.

We were all wearing name tags with our enlarged senior photos. While we bought drinks to get through the lunch I stared at hers. I knew who she was, but didn’t really remember her very well. But she remembered me. At one point she said that she always thought that I had a hard time in school.

“Well, yah. But I had a terrible home life. I really wish I had embraced school more, but I just wasn’t able to. All the girls seemed so connected and I wasn’t part of that,” I said with a smile.

“I think you alluded to your home life once, but I had no idea it was really that rough,” she said.

“Well, kids get through it because they have no perspective. They have nothing to compare it to. It’s a blessing really,” I replied.

We kept talking about our lives now and the things that we’re passionate about and we ran into a couple of other girls who used to be part of the little group of misfits that sat on the lawn to smoke and trade stories about boys and bands and stealing our parents cars. Two of our group had babies early. I realized while we were talking that most of the girls I knew then were outsiders, one way or the other.  They had a common history of showing up randomly, looking lost, being brought into the circle, and then either leaving school suddenly, or drifting off like I did. I had forgotten that we’d flirted with guys in motorcycle gangs, that we used to hitchhike in our uniforms, that we rolled our skirts up so high the hems sat rigidly atop the seats of chairs.

All around us at the reunion, gaggles of women in groups of five or six or seven, linked their arms and bodies together and jumped up and down squealing with delight at simply being in each other’s company.  We sure didn’t. The noise and energy got to be too much for me so I walked down to the girls bathroom, the scene of so much former teen drama. The expression of reunion happiness was nauseating me.

I managed to get through a very nice chicken salad lunch with warm (cat-piss) chardonnay and a PowerPoint “in memoria” presentation of about a dozen girls in our class of 223 that have died. Then there was another show of snapshots of all the fun our class had at school plays, dances, and ski trips that I never attended. I wondered if I had been capable of signing up and showing up could I have changed my high school experience?  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a certain sister (not a sister anymore, I heard) who once told me that I should set my sights on a career in retail. She was sure I could get a job at The Emporium Dept. store.

I went to the bathroom again.

As I stood there combing my hair I was composing the hallway speech I would give to the sister informing her of everything I had accomplished in my life despite never being helped or supported or even seen  in any way. It took me awhile, but I found my life path and had built a grand life — she needed to know.

The group photo was scheduled for a few minutes hence and several women were fixing their faces. One said she couldn’t take the NOISE in that room and I agreed. As she opened the door, she turned to ask me “Are you going back in?”

“I’m not really sure I can.” I said with a smile.

But I did head back to the assembly room just as everyone was heading out double doors to the front of the school to have a professional photograph taken on risers under the school banner.

I took a few steps to join the group but stopped short. I realized that nobody needed to hear my speech, least of all the person who had never really seen me in the first place.

“I can’t do this.” I said to myself. “And I don’t have to.”

It wasn’t until I was outside near my car that it suddenly hit me that, because of the way I had parked,  I literally had to drive past the entire class of 1973 posing in the blustery cold. Everybody – or nobody – would see me leaving and I didn’t much care.

I was meeting my husband in North Beach to listen to live jazz at the Savoy Tivoli. It was our anniversary and after dinner we’d go to see Sam Shepherd’s “Buried Child” at the Magic Theater. I had faced the past and that was enough. It was time to get back to the best years of my life.

I’m two weeks into the Amazon.com publishing process with an anticipated six weeks to go before my first book, “Toxic Mom Toolkit” will drop, so I figured, why not?  Why not go to my local expo, Petaluma Palooza, which invites everyone and anyone to set up a space and talk about what they are passionate about.

I started writing my book in 2010, after leaving my newspaper reporter job of nearly a decade. I wrote my book because I always said if there was a topic that I knew better than anyone else, I would have to write a book. Guess what? This is my topic. After surviving a toxic birth mother and toxic adoptive mother, I know a little bit about all sorts of Crazy Mom behaviors. I somehow managed to turn out (as Scout would say in To Kill a Mockingbird”) “PRETTY” normal. I was a mature, happy woman, with some free time and it was time to do it.

I had been told that you should also start a Facebook page when you start writing a book, to build your audience and let them watch how you do it. Which, in my case, included a lot of procrastinating, worrying and second-guessing. We started with 33 of my friends “Liking” Toxic Mom Toolkit, and, last time I checked, attract 250,000+ to the page EACH MONTH.

I was sick with nerves the night before and day of. How did I explain it to people? Real people from my town who might also see me in the market or the movies? How did I explain this mission without scaring them?

“Hi, I’m Rayne Wolfe,” I said. “I’m a Petaluma journalist and for the past three years I’ve been writing a book that will be published in six weeks. It’s called Toxic Mom Toolkit. It’s for adult children of SUPER toxic moms. It’s sort of a survival guide and part of a movement that’s moving out of the shadows.”

And then I smiled and held my breath. And here’s what people told me:

“That must have been very healing for you. Good for you. And good for helping other people.”

“GOOD LUCK with that. I know people that need that.”

“My mother… She was a WONDERFUL mother. But HER mother? Oh, what a piece of WORK,” an older man told me pointing to his wife a few feet away. “To be a young newlywed and have a mother-in-law like that? Oh, man!”

“Congratulations on giving birth to YOUR book.”

“My friend runs the Petaluma Mother’s Club. They have a book club. I’m going to tell her about your book.”

“Good luck. I really mean it. Good luck with that.”

“I grew up with a toxic mother – she was mentally ill. She was very cruel to my older sister her whole life. It was very damaging.”

“Sometimes I think my mother. She was toxic. She was very old-fashioned and stern. I try to be less so. I’ll need two copies. Do you have a card?”

“I will talk to my friend at Barnes & Noble. She runs the whole thing in the Bay Area.”

“You’re going to be HUGE! You’ll do SO well,” I was told by a local and very successful romance writer. She swore by self-publishing.

Some conversations were long, so people sat with me. Like the nurse, originally from another country, who has seen toxic mothers in the hospital controlling every aspect of either their daughter’s care or their own. She told me she is writing a Ph.D. thesis on how mothers in certain cultures are partly to blame for drug-cultures…. meaning that some mothers approve of whatever their sons do as long as they make money.

Then there was the young middle eastern photographer who walked away with two bracelets and my card. His girlfriend has a very toxic mom, he said. We had a long talk about how setting boundaries doesn’t have to be mean or stern and can include parental respect no matter how toxic the individual. That was important in his culture.

And then there was the conversation I’ll never forget with the lady whose mother was very toxic, but especially to an older sister. The mother controlled everything up to the end, even asking this woman to get suicide drugs for her. The daughter refused. The mother ended her life with assistance/information from The Hemlock Society. But before she died she recorded a two-hour tape full of anger and curses for the older daughter.

“Our mother died and a few days later my sister received this really mean tape. We both knew what it was. We had received them all our lives. She asked me, did she have to listen to it? I told her no, destroy it. Rip it up, burn it. You don’t have to listen to her any more.”

Should you take money from your Toxic Mom?

I was reading Toxic Mom Toolkit emails one Sunday morning before church. I was in a little bit of a rush, but I like to check the Facebook page several times each day – just in case someone is in crisis or asking for urgent advice. Not that I love giving advice, I actually don’t think I should MUCH, but I do, because people trust me and I try to be so very, very careful.

A Friend of Ours wanted to know what she should do about an envelope she had just received from her super Toxic Mom. She said that her mother had ignored her for most of the summer, but on her daughters birthday she mailed a card. Our friend knew that there was a check inside. Should she open it? Should she send it back unopened? Should she take the money? Or should she send the money back? Money is deep stuff in terms of setting boundaries with Toxic Moms. I was sort of glad to have the time to think about it.

In allowing myself to just sit with this question, I found a solution I would be happy with and I shared it with our Friend.

The thing about money is, it is a currency. Money has power. Money is fuel. Money defines if you are rich or you are poor. Sometimes, people use money to show you how they value you. Parents write checks for college bills. They might send money when you are ill. And when these monetary deliveries are given freely, with love and best wishes, it can be such a Godsend. But what if you have a Toxic Mother or parent and know that money is given or taken with malice? What if your parent uses money as a control tool?

For me, the challenge was to strip the power from the money without doing it in such a way that it would give a Toxic Mom “currency” for stories about the “ungrateful” or “hateful” daughter.

And here’s what I wrote:

Money is a form of control, if you take it you have to thank her. It’s hard to simply or genuinely thank a TM for money when you can feel that there’s some sort of control issue behind the money. So, what to do? Whatever you do don’t sent it back. That’s just giving her ammunition to focus her negative energy more on you. On the face of it a daughter returning a gift of money could be described as ungrateful or mean or rude, or whatever. In a sense you allow your TM to turn that money into story currency about how bad YOU are.

Here’s what I’d do:  Do you love a local charity? Do you give money to a church or a homeless shelter or any group that helps others? If it’s a check, sign it over and put it in the donate box. If it’s cash, walk into the senior center or boys & Girls club or WHATEVER and say, please use this money for something you need. And pat yourself on the back for taking something negative and turning it into something positive for your community.

THEN, pick out a pretty thank you card and thank your mother for the gift and tell her what you did with it. I would put something like: I’ve been meaning to support (this entity) for a long time and your generous gift made it possible. Thank you so much Mother.

I’d like to see her turn THAT into something negative or tell people how mean and selfish you are with that material. Plus you are creating good karma from bad and the universe always rewards that. Also, it instantly takes all the control and power out of her gift. Once she realizes that you really don’t value her money, maybe she’ll stop using it as a tool to control you.

What do you think?