My Mother’s Spirit Revealed the Truth About Her Narcissistic Rages—And It Shook Me to My Core

⚠️Trigger Warning: This post discusses emotional abuse, unpredictable rage, and traumatic experiences with a narcissistic mother. This post also mentions rape. If these topics are sensitive for you, please take care while reading.

I spent my entire life gaslighting myself about my mother’s abuse.

I excused it. I ignored the red flags. I convinced myself it wasn’t that bad.

Even in adulthood, I refused to see what was right in front of me.

This is one of those moments. Keep reading.

A birthday ruined by rage

About 25 years ago, my husband and our young children went to my parents’ house to celebrate my birthday.

My mother had set the scene beautifully—the dining-room table was decorated with several vases of the fresh-cut yellow daffodils that filled their backyard.

The handmade pink birthday runner, a tradition from my childhood, was on the table, it’s pink fabric holding up well despite its age.

My parents had made my favorite, simple foods for dinner.

They even had my favorite wine.

It was shaping up to be a lovely, lighthearted spring day.

But then, the energy shifted out of nowhere while we were eating dinner.

My mother’s joyful, celebratory mood soured without warning.

Her face tightened.

Her voice took on that familiar, sharp edge.

By this time, my kids were old enough to sense that the shift wasn’t a good thing and I felt my primal mama-bear instinct kick in.

I spent years trying to protect my kids from the bad side of my mother I was all too familiar with—this day was no exception.

As the minutes passed, my mother’s anger escalated.

She turned on my father, spewing venomous words, her voice rising into a full-blown rage.

I panicked.

I tried to placate her, distract her, reason with her.

Nothing worked.

She was a ticking time bomb whose time had expired.

And there was nowhere to hide.

In the chaos, my instincts took over.

I turned to my husband (who still remembers this event) and yelled over her screaming:

“Put the kids in the car! NOW!”

He didn’t hesitate, even though we were in the middle of dinner.

He scooped them up and rushed outside while I scrambled to grab my purse and their belongings, following him out the door as quickly as I could.

All I wanted to do was get us out!

Get us tf away from her!

It doesn’t matter if it’s a major holiday or a birthday—a narcissistic mother will drag it into the trenches.

The truth I didn’t know for decades

For over five decades, I told myself this was just who she was.

She was unpredictable. Explosive. Impossible to please. Type A personality.

I never considered that there was a deeper reason—something dark lurking beneath the surface.

However, during a channeling session with my mother’s spirit in August 2023 (two years after her death), her spirit dropped a bomb that left me gasping.

Her spirit told me the truth about what had driven her explosive rages all my life.

She called it “the beast within.”

She described it as a force she couldn’t control when she was sober.

A force she tried to keep at bay with daily alcohol and prescription painkillers.

A force that took over when the craving for power, superiority, and dominance became unbearable.

I spent my entire life cowering before something I didn’t even realize existed.

I cowered as a young child before something I didn’t even realize existed—no wonder I was so afraid of her that I thought she might kill me.

I was eight years old when I asked my dad if there were any guns in the house because I was small, vulnerable, and terrified.

At eight-years-old I was already calculating survival—I wasn’t just a child scared of being yelled at; this was life-threatening terror for my young self.

I questioned including this intense fear in this blog post, but it’s my truth. My fear wasn’t irrational; it was my body trying to protect me. If eight-year-old me was brave enough to ask my dad that question, then 57-year-old me sure as hell deserves to say it out loud.

Asking my dad if there were guns in the house isn’t just a memory. It’s evivdence:

• evidence that I didn’t feel safe

• evidence that my fear wasn’t irrational

• evidence that my mother’s beast within wasn’t just a feeling—it was real enough to make an 8-year-old child think about death.

I wasn’t being dramatic, exaggerating, or too sensitive.

I was a little girl trying to survive a mother who made me question whether she might kill me.

8 year old me with Pepper, our border collie/husky mix dog. 1975. That dog was my lifeline until he died in 1983 when I was 16 years old.

The night I recognized her beast within for the first time

I thought my mother’s rages were just part of who she was.

Until the night I saw something else.

It was October 2020.

This was two months before I would finally understand she was a narcissist.

Two months before I would finally learn the truth about everything.

That night, I calmly talked to my mother about her abusing my defenseless 80-year-old father.

I say calmly because I knew never to agitate her. Never ever.

And that’s when it happened.

She changed.

It wasn’t just rage—it was something else entirely...or maybe I noticed it was something else entirely because my awareness was in full swing that night in October 2020, witnessing her at her worst (my mother’s behavior worsened massively as she aged; one of the reasons why is because she saw me as a threat to whom she lost control while my husband and I lived under her roof as a caregiver from September 2020 thru February 2021).

Her body shifted as she hoisted herself on her forearms.

Her voice deepened into something literally raw and guttural.

Her eyes locked onto me, dark and predatory, as if she were something more—something other than—my mother.

I froze on the spot!

My mother, who always prided herself on control, on appearances, transformed into something else right in front of me!

I didn't even know she was a narcissist yet, but I knew what I had just seen wasn’t right nor did it feel safe!

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the last time I would actually see the physical beast I never realized existed.

I told myself I had imagined it.

That I was exaggerating.

Almost three years later during that August 2023 channeling session I mentioned above, my mother’s spirit confirmed what I saw that night.

She admitted she couldn’t control the beast within her.

She told me what it felt like inside her when it took over.

And her spirit said something during this channeling session that made my blood run cold with fear:

“It was almost like a possession that came over me when I got to a certain point.”

I stiffened in my chair because I wasn’t anticipating hearing something as scary as that during one of our channeling sessions.

Did she mean… possession possession?

As in, something evil?

Something demonic?

I asked Demi (my psychic medium) with trepidation: “When she said possession, did she mean a demonic or evil possession?”

I was afraid of the answer and had every reason to be!!!

“No, it WASN’T an external entity,” Demi quickly reassured me. “We all have this darkness inside of us. Hers was an aggravated version of the shadow self—anchored in frustration and anger.”

Even with that explanation, my body remained tight, charged, bracing for what could come next during our session.

Because I just then realized I had spent my childhood and teenage years facing a beast I didn’t realize was there!

And now I know it had been real all along!

No wonder I never felt safe enough to tell her I was raped when I was 18.

Her beast was always just beneath the fragile surface.

And, deep down, I must have known that the last thing I needed after being sexually violated…was to be vulnerable with someone like her.

Cue the memory free-fall…

What the beast within said to me next is inside The Conversations We Never Had

That night at my birthday dinner was just one of many, many times I ignored the truth about my mother’s personality and actions.

Obvious red flags so obviously big.

I gaslit myself into believing it was normal, manageable—something I could fix...and, boy, did I always try to fix- and help her (spoiler alert: it never worked).

But in August 2023, my mother’s spirit revealed the full truth.

How deep it ran.

How it started.

How it consumed her.

And why my father and I were her only two targets.

That full conversation—her spirit’s confession, my raw reaction, how she wants me to feel now, and more—is inside The Conversations We Never Had.

This is just one of many revelations my mother’s spirit shared with me during multiple channeling sessions.

COMING SOON: 🔗 Access to this channeling session’s full, one-hour transcript + 8 more one-hour channeling-session transcripts.

How this post fits into the weight of belief

This post is the definition of The Hollow. It’s the horrifying reckoning with who my mother truly was and the aftermath of her presence in my life. (TWOB The Hollow)

But it’s also a spiritual confrontation. In my every channeling session, my mother’s spirit revealed truths I never saw coming, ones that shattered my understanding of her rage and her personality. (TWOB Soul)

And beneath it all is the psychological war I waged against myself. The gaslighting, the self-doubt, the buried trauma that I spent years convincing myself wasn’t real. (TWOB Heart & Mind)

This is what healing looks like.

Unraveling the lies, facing the ghosts, and finally—finally—allowing yourself to believe the truth.

For the daughters who never felt safe,

Carole

A gentle note to the reader: I don’t know if my mother’s spirit’s description of her beast within applies to all narcissists, or if this was specific to her. I share this experience because it is my truth—and because for years, I gaslit myself into believing her behavior was normal. It was never normal. Never! And if this resonates with you, maybe it’s time to start questioning what you told yourself was normal, too.