TWOB The Hollow Passage: the place I never expected to be
The Hollow Passage isn’t a term you’ll find in psychology books or survivor group. It’s what I call the place I unexpectedly landed in after I went no contact with my mean narcissistic mother, then again when she died six months later.
I named it The Hollow Passage because there was no other word for it.
Grief wasn’t the right word.
Freedom wasn’t either.
Because when she was gone, I didn’t feel free.
I felt something no one warned me about.
I thought her death would be the end of the nightmare.
Instead, it was the beginning of something darker. Much darker.
This is The Hollow Passage
I didn’t just visit it. I lived there for a while.
It’s the space between who I was under my mean narcissistic mother’s rule and who I am without her shadow.
It’s the aftermath of a life lived under a tyrant and the wreckage she left behind.
It’s the cold, silent void where I realized no one prepared me for this complex, confusing type of grief and betrayal experience.
The Hollow Passage swallowed me whole.
It was relentless, merciless, dark, sticky, hazy.
It stripped me down until I was raw and exposed, challenging everything I thought I knew, and left me alone with the wreckage.
It wasn’t just confusing grief, it was the weight of every belief my mean narcissistic mother instilled in me, pressing down like an anvil.
I had only eight months to process what she was before she was gone forever (it took me 54 years to accept that she was a mean narcissist).
And when she died at the end of the eighth month, I wasn’t ready.
I never stood a chance!
For a while, I didn’t know if I’d ever make it out of The Hollow Passage.
I didn’t even know if it was possible to make it out.
The Hollow Passage tore me apart in ways I never could have prepared for
But what I didn’t realize at the time was that The Hollow Passage was tearing away the shit that needed to be torn away.
And when I finally did emerge, I wasn’t the same.
I didn’t get out because time healed me.
I didn’t get out because the confusing grief followed some predictable path.
I got out because I fought:
I fought by turning toward the pain instead of running from it!
I fought by questioning everything I had ever been told!
I fought by letting myself break, knowing that I couldn’t rebuild until I did!
I fought by seeking the answers no one else could give me, even if it meant looking beyond this world!
I fought for my freedom after she was gone!
If you’re in The Hollow Passage, you already know how dreadful it is.
And if you haven’t reached it yet, you need to know what’s coming because no one prepares you for this part.
But I will.
Validating your experiences,
Carole
Therapy helped, but nothing helped like hearing her tell me why she abused me and why she was the way she was. See what she said after she died.