How I Survived the Cult of Mom

A letter to my narcissist parent

Dear Maa,

For four years I have remained silent. Not as a way to punish you, as much as you want to believe that. For four years I kept my distance so I could get closer to myself. Find my own voice. Build my life brick by brick without your approval or dissatisfaction. In that time, I gave myself permission to heal, to venture into the unknown, to confront the cage I shaped myself into for so long, so I could prioritize your needs.

I traveled alone, something I never imagined I could do because of your incessant fearmongering any time I mentioned exploring the world on my own. And yet—I did. Through the cool and quiet aisles of a dusty bookstore in Chicago. Along the dimly lit streets of Rome, gelato dripped down my hand, past sunset. Across the rolling hills of Tuscany where I ate my weight in pasta. Into Oaxaca, where mezcal, ghost stories, and cool waters awaited me.

Toward the end of my time in Oaxaca, I visited a mezcal distillery and saw rows and rows of agave plants. Some stood taller than me, their pointed ends sharp as little swords. Hours later, as I walked back to my hotel, tipsy, I felt a prick in my shoe. I assumed it was a pebble, shook the shoe out again and again, but the pain only deepened. Finally, I thought to look beneath the sole and there it was: a small thorn from the agave, lodged so firmly it pierced through to my foot.

I pulled it out and held it like a prize, a symbol of victory. I carried it in my palm even as it began to hurt. I wanted to show someone—to prove what I had endured and overcome. My stubborn need for the wound to be witnessed outweighed the sting of holding on.

And then, with a sudden gust of wind, the thorn slipped from my sweaty hand. I searched the street in vain. The thorn was gone.

In that moment, it was as if an angelic voice split through the haze of my mind: the wound you insist on holding onto for validation is the very thing keeping you stuck.

So, why do I hold on?

Children of narcissist parents understand how challenging it is to have a narcissist parent. For me, one of the hardest aspects may be the fact that no one else sees their truest self but the child. How our publicly charismatic and charming parents unmask at home. How they make us feel small in private, and yet flaunt our victories in public, as if they were their own.

Like how you stonewalled me for almost two months while I was in college. Why? I wanted to teach English in India, my birth country.

You told me it was too dangerous, but I think the real reason was because you felt you were losing control. But once I came back from my trip, having planted trees and helped graduating students secure jobs, you didn’t hesitate to flaunt those achievements to others.

Your love was always conditional, and your support wasn’t guaranteed. After a while, this type of love started to wear on me. It dimmed my light and made me unsure of myself. You sowed so much doubt and insecurity into a kid who was otherwise so bright and bubbly.

The painful truth, though, is even as I write this letter to you, I gaslight myself. I struggle to name exactly how you harmed me. You only beat me when I was too small to defend myself. I remember the first time I grabbed your hand at 14 years old. I saw the flash of fear in your eyes. You never raised your hand against me after that.

You didn’t starve me. From the age of 8, you only reminded me that I need to lose weight and not eat too much.

You never cast me out of your home. You just reminded me that if tomorrow I were to end up on the streets, none of my friends would care for me. Not the way you did.

So why go no contact with my own mother—the woman who gave me life? It wasn’t that bad . . . was it?

You just convinced me that no one else would ever care for me the way you did. That I would be nothing if I were not in service to you.

I imagine it’s like being buried alive, or birthed into a cult. The Cult of Mom. I felt suffocated. Every part of my being felt watched—as you normalized reading my diaries out loud in front of me as I sat on my bed, frozen and confused, down to my dreams, my innermost thoughts. I was being suffocated and there was no escape.

There was no glinting three-foot sword that you wielded against me. Instead, you used a million little thorns to tear me down. That’s what they call “complex trauma.” Not one event, but countless small cruelties that accumulate over years. Their weight carves pathways in the mind, leaves scars that don’t show, alters the trajectory of a life.

When I first started writing this letter four years ago, I wanted it to be a list of every hurt you caused me over nearly three decades. I wanted to wear the letter as a badge of honor, a testament to surviving the parent who stayed but never nurtured. I wanted someone—anyone—to see the thorn I carried, lift me by my shoulders, and wipe the tears from my eyes.

I wanted the mother I was always meant to have to appear from a sparkling gust of wind so I could lay my head in her hands. But no matter how many times I showed you my wounds, you never transformed into the mother I needed. Because that is not how narcissists operate.

It was always an excuse or an insistence.

“I did the best I could.”

“You don’t get a guidebook on how to be a parent.”

“When you have a child, you’ll understand.”

While all those things may be true, when I gave you opportunities time and time again to do better, you chose not to take them. I see now that no matter how much I undress my hurt, it will never be enough. It will only be an opportunity for the wound to be salted again.

Trying to love and reason with a narcissist leaves invisible scars. And now, as I write, I understand: Holding the thorns, having them dig deep into my palm, is my way of feeling vindicated in the struggle between us. It has been my proof for so long. But how long will it serve me?

I see now that I have clung to these wounds like evidence, proof that I wasn’t losing my mind through the years of gaslighting. Proof that the parent who stayed also caused me harm.

But shouldering the burden of being abused doesn’t spur healing. What I’m learning now is how to memorialize what happened without glorifying it. How to let go of the thorn, and walk away, even if the pain ebbs and flows.

For four years, distance gave me room to breathe, to continue the slow work of healing. I still feel the pain sometimes, buried deep beneath my skin. But now, it’s only one part of me.

You know what has helped? Somatic therapy, which addressed the pain my body carries. Dialectical behavioral therapy, which encouraged mindfulness and emotional regulation. Crying, a lot. Finally feeling my feelings and not bottling them up, which is known to happen when the body finally feels safe enough to come out of a flight-or-fight response.

After nearly four years of silence, I am reconnecting with you through scheduled calls, because, eventually, shutting you out for the rest of my life felt like I was only running away from my healing, and not towards it. You don’t get access to my inner world, but I don’t pretend you don’t exist either.

This is a slow journey, but one that requires courage, all the same.

At almost 30 years old, I’m building my life for me, which is one of the best things I can do for myself.

Yes, I’m a child of a narcissist, but I’m not a victim. I have power and agency, and with those things I walk my path of healing and self-discovery. So I will keep walking, one step at a time, for the rest of my life.

A life fully my own, Maa.

Join Open Secrets Magazine, ena gangula, and writer Shanetta McDonald on Tuesday, November 18 at 7 pm ET for a Substack Live Q&A on the reality of family estrangement. Watch via this link or in the Substack app.

ena ganguly is a soft-spirited Bengali femme, born in Bihar and raised in Texas. Their work focuses on collective memory, grief, surveillance, and sensuality and has been featured in USA Today, Palette Poetry, BBC, BuzzFeed, amongst others, and won Breakwater Review’s 2024 Peseroff Poetry Prize. ena has facilitated countless writing workshops for survivors, queer people of color, students, and healing practitioners and edited anthologies for marginalized writers. To follow ena’s work, please visit her website at: enaganguly.com and follow her on social media @enaganguly.