Chapter 9 - Therapy and Hard Truths
To my absolute shock, she actually went.
Maybe it was the finality of the locked door. Maybe it was the reality that she was missing her granddaughter's first months. But my father confirmed that she had started seeing a family therapist twice a week.
For six months, I kept my distance. We exchanged brief, polite texts. She sent a gift for Lily’s three-month milestone, but mailed it instead of dropping it off. It was a small, respectful gesture that I noted.
Eventually, her therapist asked for a joint session. I agreed, driving to the neutral office with a knot in my stomach.
Sitting across from her in that sterile room, I listened as my mother did something she had never done in my entire thirty years of life: she took accountability.
“I made your pregnancy about me,” she said, reading from a piece of paper, her hands shaking. “I masked my need for control as excitement. I violated your boundaries because I felt entitled to you. I am deeply, truly sorry for stealing your moments.”
It wasn't an overnight fix. There were still defensive slips. There were still sessions where I cried out years of frustration. But the woman sitting across from me was trying. She was doing the grueling, painful work of unpacking her narcissistic tendencies because she realized the alternative was losing us forever.
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We established strict rules. Visits had to be planned a week in advance. No posting photos of Lily online. If she overstepped, the visit ended immediately.
She agreed to every single one.
