A battle I didn’t ask for
A darkness I didn’t expect
A door I never knew existed
Prologue: the lie I believed for over 50 years
I didn’t know my mother was a narcissist when I moved to Florida in September 2020 to care for my elderly parents while the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing.
Not because there weren’t signs. Not because the abuse wasn’t real. But because I had spent over fifty years gaslighting myself into believing it wasn’t.
I told myself I was being too sensitive. That I just needed to try harder. That other people had it worse. That it wasn’t that bad. That I was the problem. That she was the way the was. That she was having a bad day.
Half a century of self-erasure, denial, and internal war just to survive a mother who was slowly destroying me on purpose.
Had I known then what I know now, there is no way in hell I would’ve moved into their house…
The move that felt like love (until it didn’t)
The decision to move to Florida felt so right it hummed in my bones.
August 2020: my husband and I packed up everything—literally everything—and placed it into a storage unit near our hometown in Ohio.
We filled our SUV with only the essentials and our two small Yorkies.
Dropped our youngest off at her college dorm for her junior year. Said goodbye to our adult kids, the city we love, our routine, and began the three day drive south toward my parents’ house in Florida.
I was energized and hopeful. I honestly felt like I was answering a sacred call.
My 79-year-old dad wasn’t healthy and needed help with doctor appointments. My 76-year-old mom was struggling with daily tasks and was exhausted from taking my dad to his multiple weekly doctor and physical therapy appointments.
And caregiving, especially when it comes from love, has always been a strength of mine. Acts of service is one of my love languages and I envisioned taking care of my parents during the covid pandemic as something beautiful and sacred.
I imagined preparing meals they’d love, easing their burdens, and bringing them comfort.
I felt like I was finally stepping into the good daughter role on my own terms with my heart full and my arms wide open.
I even heard spirit whisper during the final days of packing:
“You’re going to be shown why you are the way you are.”
I didn’t question it because I thought I knew what it meant, plain and simple.
I didn’t know. Not yet.
When we pulled into their driveway that early September day, I was flooded with warmth and nostalgia. Palm trees (my favorite!), ocean breezes, and the usual little lizards skittering across the walkway like they were welcoming us home.
But the moment I opened the front door, everything shifted. The air inside their house was thick. Stale. Stagnant. And something darker that I couldn’t name yet slowly seeped into my chest like dense, choking smoke.
My mother was in her usual chair. My dad in his. They didn’t get up. They didn’t smile.
Her scowl hit me first. That familiar, hateful expression etched deep into her skin like it had been carved there by time. Because it had.
I knew that scowl. I spent a lifetime memorizing it. Studying it like weather and trying to predict if today would bring a storm or silent treatment.
Today that scowl carried something more intense.
My dad looked like death warmed over. Defeated, frail, and sick. His emaciated appearance shocked me when I saw him sitting in his chair right next to the front door. He hardly carried 135 pounds on his six-foot frame.
This is the first thing my mother defiantly said to me (yes, I wrote it down right after she said it because I was shocked):
“This might sound mean, but I stopped feeding your father because he needs to get up off his ass and feed himself! His cardiologist said he needs to walk more, so I figured if he’s hungry enough, he’ll get up out of that chair and walk to the kitchen to fix himself something to eat!”
Did she just confess to starving him? It sure looked like he had been starved.
I felt absolutely nauseous hearing this as I was soaking in my dad’s malnourished appearance, but what I didn’t know was that everything would get much worse as the days and weeks progressed.
He lifted his head just enough to meet my eyes. There was no welcome there like there usually was. Just a flicker of something that looked like exhaustion laced with unbearable shame.
Still, I tried. God, I tried.
For months I cooked, cleaned, encouraged, smiled, cheerfully offered help. I laughed too loudly and chatted about meaningless things to keep the air light just like I did when I was a child, trying to shift her mood so she wouldn’t turn the whole house sour with it.
But the mushroom cloud had already billowed. There was no shifting this energy. No softening the hardness and cruelty. And it broke my heart that I couldn’t fix it.
The longer we lived there, the worse it got
What began as noticeable tension the moment my husband and I opened their front door escalated into something far more sinister that neither one of us was prepared for.
Before our first month was over, I was documenting everything by writing in a journal and recording videos on my phone. The fear, the unpredictability, the walking on eggshells—it all intensified week by week. And I couldn’t figure out how to stop it.
It was like my mother became more comfortable revealing her true self in front of me and my husband. Less careful. Less performative.
She dropped the mask more often and when she did, the cruelty hit harder. The scorn was sharper and the hatred became impossible to miss or excuse.
And still, I didn’t say a word
Not because I didn’t notice. Not because I didn’t want to (also because I didn’t want to). But because the little girl inside me who had endured this since birth was still tightly gripping the wheel.
She was terrified. And she knew the rules: stay quiet, don’t challenge her, don’t make it worse. If you confront her, you’ll pay for it.
Even at 53, it was my inner child still calling the safety plays. She’d kept me alive all these years and she wasn’t about to risk everything now.
So I nodded. I looked down. I retreated. I stayed silent. Just like I always had.
I could feel a storm building, but I didn’t know it would come for the very bones of my identity, tearing through every survival story I still clung to.
The day the truth arrived (December 20, 2020)
It happened on a quiet Sunday. December 20, 2020.
I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when the thought slammed into me so hard I nearly dropped my toothbrush: she’s abusive. She’s always been abusive. She’s a covert narcissist. She’s still doing it to him. And she’s still doing it to me.
The word narcissist didn’t come from nowhere. Earlier that day, a stranger messaged me through the Instagram account I’d been using to document my caregiving journey and the toxicity I was experiencing in the house. They said, “This sounds like maternal narcissism. Look up covert narcissistic mothers.” They sent a few links and vanished. Their account disappeared soon thereafter.
But it was enough. Divine intervention disguised as an Instagram DM.
I started looking up info and as I did, the recognition didn’t gently unfold. It fully detonated!
I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced. I gripped the sink, trying to steady myself against the truth that had just broken free.
This wasn’t just a realization. It was a violent and cellular dismantling! Yes it was clarity, but boy did I collapse under its thick weight.
And just like that, Spirit’s whisper from four months earlier returned with razor-sharp focus:
“You’re going to be shown why you are the way you are.”
And now I was being shown. The anguish was immediate. My brain fought to shove it all back down where it had been hiding.
But it was too late.
I could no longer pretend her sneers weren’t abuse. That her manipulation wasn’t intentional. That her cold glances, her palpable resentment of my care for my dad, her cruelty, her starvation of his needs weren’t acts of abuse.
I had tried so hard to be the good daughter. And now it felt like I’d fallen through the weak floorboards of my own life. Because I had.
That day, I moved through the house in a daze. The woman who drove to Florida filled with light, hope, and proverbial casseroles had become a ghost, deeply trembling beneath a truth she didn’t want, but couldn’t unsee.
That proverbial casserole I brought with me unknowingly carried generations of hope and trauma bonding. My mother scorched it on sight.
I was grieving the mother I thought I had, the daughter I always tried to be, and the childhood I worked so hard to normalize.
And worst of all, I was painfully grieving in silence just feet from the source!
The next morning, I sat next to my dad for our usual coffee time. This sweet morning ritual was our small sanctuary inside a house that felt like a dark prison (um, it was a dark prison).
I didn’t know how much to say to him, but I had to try. I discreetly hit record on my phone, needing to capture the moment and anything he’d say because I was desperate for validation and understanding. Then I began gently describing her behavior.
That’s when he looked at me and breathlessly said:
“I think the biggest problem is… she sees herself losing some control now that you guys are here. She’s panicking. She’s scared she’s going to lose the 100% control she had.”
I stared at him through the steam rising off my mug. Because in that moment, I knew he saw it, too! He had always seen it! And even though he’d never said it before, that small admission was my lifeline. The first breadcrumb of validation I’d ever received from him in 53 years.
But, knowing he saw it didn’t bring comfort. It brought horror and grief because now I understood how much we had both been surviving.
Together.
Separately.
Silently.
I have always been sensitive. Not delicate or weak. Sensitive in that I feel people’s energy. My whole body picks up on tension, fear, sadness.
When I walked into that house on day one, I felt two storms—one raging, one collapsed. My mother’s fury filled the space like thick, choking smoke. My father’s pain and shame were quiet, steady, and unspoken. They hung in the air like the pressure drop before a hurricane and I was standing between them, drenched in both.
What made it unbearable wasn’t just that she was cruel. It was how deeply I could physically feel the emotional and psychological toll it was taking on him. And how, as that realization sank in, I began to feel the toll it was taking on ME.
I couldn’t escape the emotions in that house—not mine, not his. And, maybe not even hers. Was I picking up on her chaos, too? Her bitterness, her panic, her rage? It makes sense that I would. I think I always did.
Every glance she gave me. Every sneer as I helped him up from a chair or brought him a glass of water. Every single one of them sliced into me. And I could feel him flinch, too.
He and I had always been emotionally attuned in this quiet, invisible way. We didn’t talk about it—we just knew.
The compassion that made it unbearable
I always loved him with a kind of fierce, quiet reverence. And now, standing witness to how she treated him physically, mentally, psychologically in his most vulnerable state—I wanted to scream! I wanted to take him and run! I wanted to undo it all. Alas, I didn’t know how.
I spent some time just watching him. His sunken, defeated posture. His careful, exhausted movements. His once-strong arms now thin and trembling from muscle loss. He never complained. He never asked for anything. It crushed me!
She would snap at him for the smallest, stupidest things, including shaming his use of the toilet. She fed him cruelty and control instead of food and compassion. She justified neglect with medical logic, twisted through the lens of dominance. Every single time she spoke to him it was to shame him, humiliate him, or beat him down.
And it worked every fucking time.
There were no soft words from her. No affection. No curiosity about his needs or feelings. Just cold correction, humiliating mockery, screaming blame. Cruelty she enjoyed, thrived, and fed on.
She fucking disgusted me!
Every time it happened I could feel it in my chest as my body was absorbing the blow alongside him. Watching him wilt under her voice felt like watching love die in real time. Not that love was ever there in the first place.
She didn’t just abuse him. She made sure I witnessed it!
And now I carry that witness like a wound.
Photo Captions: (Top) My poor dad trying to withstand her abuse. (Bottom) My mother’s toilet shaming, intended to force my dad to clean stains only she saw.
He never fought back. He just barely existed under her rule. And I, his eldest daughter, the caregiver who came here full of proverbial casseroles and kindness and hope, couldn’t stop any of it. That kind of helplessness doesn’t just ache deep. It tears apart your soul in slow motion.
What haunted me most was this: we were both trying so hard to protect each other. Me, quietly stepping in with meals, kindness, comfort. Him, never speaking too plainly because he was afraid to hurt me with the full truth of what he’d endured throughout their 59-year toxic AF marriage.
It made everything feel sacred and sickening at once.
We were two sensitive souls trapped in a home ruled by her totalitarian grip—emotional, psychological, and energetic. The atmosphere she created wasn’t just toxic. It was a living system of punishment. No wonder my inner child was still driving the safety bus at age 53!
And the painful reality was that neither of us could save the other.
The moment I knew I had to leave
It was the end of January 2021 and I was visibly a mess. My husband and I were sitting at a Starbucks in Florida, just a few miles from my parents’ house. I stared into my coffee like it might give me the answer I was too afraid to say out loud.
He sat across from me—patient, kind, gentle, protective.
I don’t remember how long I stayed silent before the tears came. But when they did, they came fast. I blurted out while trembling, “We have to go back home. I can’t do this anymore. I have to protect my emotional and mental wellbeing. She makes me feel like I don’t want to live anymore.”
It wasn’t a dramatic declaration. I was just spent and lifeless.
It felt like a death sentence to the part of me that had been trying to stay. The part that still hoped and still wanted to be the good, helpful daughter. The part that believed maybe, just maybe, if I loved hard enough, showed up cheerfully enough, brought enough care and softness, then something would shift.
But nothing was shifting and every ounce of me was dying by the day.
We made the decision that afternoon while sitting outside on Starbuck’s patio. I grabbed some paper and a pen from the car and we made a list of things to take care of before we left. We chose our departure date: February 15, 2021.
Plans were set in motion. In-home nursing was arranged for my dad. Official documentation was created for his medical team outlining the emotional and physical abuse she was inflicting on him. New tires for our SUV. Supplies purchased.
I was in survival mode yet again, except this time it wasn’t just about surviving her.
It was also about surviving the horrible guilt of leaving him behind.
Photo Captions: (Top) Storm brewing over the ocean the day we made the decision to go back home to Ohio. (Bottom) Me flipping off my mother from outside their house where she couldn’t see me, five days before our departure.
On the morning we left, I felt sick and gross and guilty and nervous and.just.done. So done.
My mother and father were standing side by side next to the garage door. A juxtaposition that made my skin crawl.
She wore that familiar sneer. That smug, tight-lipped, disgusting expression she reserved for moments when she felt powerful. When she thought she’d won.
It was sickening!
I’d seen it so many times before.
And every time, I felt the same sick, inner-child ache.
My dad looked so defeated standing there, shoulders rounded uncomfortably forward. Bent under the weight of something invisible and unbearable. Was he scared?
The air was thick with dread and so much guilt I could barely breathe.
This wasn’t just a goodbye.
This was abandonment and I fucking knew it: I’m leaving him here with her!
That thought lodged itself in my throat like a stone I couldn’t swallow.
And it would stay there until I talked to his spirit during a channeling session the following year and was able to finally clear it.
We moved through the goodbye motions like actors in a play none of us had rehearsed.
I walked toward my mother first. Not because I wanted to. Because I had to get it over with.
“Goodbye, Mother,” I said, with all the emotion of a stone wall. I didn’t smile. I didn’t hug her like I usually did.
Her presence repulsed me and I wasn’t going to fake one more thing in her house!
Then I turned to my dad. My poor dad!
His body was still frail even though he’d put some weight back on from the meals we’d made for them over the past six months.
I had to reach up to hug him. And as I wrapped my arms around his bony shoulders, I felt something die inside me.
“Bye, Dad,” I whispered, choking back hot tears. “I’ll let you know when we make it home.”
I wanted to scream!
I wanted to throw myself at his feet and beg him to come with me!
I wanted to promise I’d fix everything That I’d get him out! That he wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore!
But I couldn’t.
And it killed me because I couldn’t save him from her!
There was no way logistically or practically we could bring him back with us to Ohio. He didn’t want to leave Florida anyway.
And I couldn’t stay in Florida.
I was choosing myself. My sanity. My emotional survival.
And it felt like betrayal!
PHOTOS: (Top) Our packed SUV, ready for the drive back to Ohio. (Middle) Winter storm brewing, affecting our travel route. (Bottom) Our two little Yorkies in our SUV, ready to leave the toxic environment. My mother would pit her bigger dog against our smallest dog.
As we stepped outside and softly pulled the door closed behind us, I felt like the worst human being alive.
How could I leave him with her?!?
How could I walk away knowing exactly what she was capable of?!?
What kind of daughter does that!!!
I cried for hundreds of miles in the backseat.
First silently. Then in sobs that hollowed me out from the inside.
I imagined her unleashing on him the moment the door quietly clicked shut behind us, her voice like a blade and her rage aimed straight at him, telling him it was his fault I left.
Just like I knew she would because she always fucking did. Later, my dad’s spirit confirmed it all during a channeling session. Every fear I had was real.
I’ve never felt so brutally ripped open and annihilated by guilt!
I knew I had to go.
I knew if I stayed, she’d finish what she started in me decades ago.
But I also knew I was leaving someone I loved in the hands of someone who didn’t know how to love at all.
And still, beneath the guilt, the grief, the fury, and the helplessness, I knew something even harder:
I was not meant to save him.
I was only meant to SEE it.
To witness the full, brutal truth I’d spent a lifetime ignoring and trying to survive.
“You’re going to be shown why you are the way you are.”
This was the seeing.
This was the war zone.
And when that knowing I was only meant to see it landed, it didn’t bring peace.
It brought collapse. And this time, I didn’t get up right away.
We left central Florida behind and headed north, stopping in Savannah, Georgia for two nights to avoid the winter storm looming over our route home.
The first afternoon, I felt something I hadn’t felt in months since moving to Florida—JOY.
Walking the quaint cobblestone streets through the moss-draped squares. Holding hands with my husband as we strolled carefree. Seeing the joy of exploration in our two dogs. I actually laughed and smiled and breathed. I felt the flicker of lightness return.
I thought maybe, just maybe, the worst was behind me.
But that night night, everything I had pushed down came roaring to the surface in one fell swoop.
I disintegrated into a million fucked up pieces.
I collapsed on the safe hotel bed (I didn’t have to use furniture to barricade the door at the hotel like I did in Florida) curled into the fetal position, and sobbed so violently I could barely breathe.
The anguish was volcanic and there was no stopping it.
Six months of terror, betrayal, and psychological torment came flooding out and the unbearable truth that I left my dad behind with my mean and hateful mother nearly quickly swallowed me whole.
This wasn’t just crying. It was wailing. Grieving. Breaking.
It was the exhale after holding my breath for too long in a toxic house where breathing wasn’t allowed.
That drive back home to Ohio was the beginning of my descent.
A slow-mo free fall into the deepest collapse of my life into what I later called The Hollow Passage.
It would take time, therapy, spirit, channeling sessions, and grace to crawl my way back into self-reconstruction.
But on that day, in that moment, I was just a daughter, deeply broken.
And he was a father I couldn’t save.
That was the day I went no contact with my mom.
February 15, 2021.
I would never speak to her again because she died late that summer.
What no one told me is that choosing yourself sometimes feels like failure.
The worst failure.
PHOTOS: (Top and middle) Feeling joyful and carefree in Savanna, GA. (Bottom) Collapsed on the hotel bed to deal with the grief and pain while our littlest dog lays nearby to comfort me.