Trigger Warning: This chapter contains references to childhood sexual abuse, trauma, and familial neglect. Reader discretion is advised.
Even after everything, my parents kept trying. Especially my mom.
She had her flaws, like we all do. And it took her a minute to get used to the idea of being a grandma before she was even forty. But when Ashton was born, something shifted. She loved that little boy unconditionally. And in loving him, she found a new way to love me.
It didn't happen all at once. It came in small moments. Quiet cups of coffee. Soft check-ins. Random acts of showing up. But during this time, after the counseling sessions, after the big reveals, my mom and I started healing, too.
And one day, we had a conversation I'll never forget.
I told her the truth.
We were in the car, just the two of us, driving a few hours together. The kind of long stretch of highway where silence gets loud and conversation wanders into places it normally wouldn't.
We started talking about eighth grade.
I don't know why I brought it up. Maybe because I was tired. Maybe because I was finally ready. Maybe because we were both looking ahead at the road, and not at each other.
I just said it.
"Our friend hurt me."
The thing I hadn't said for years. The thing I had carried since I was twelve. I told her what happened to me when I was a preteen.
I told her everything. Every time it happened. Every pinch, poke, and prod I didn't want. How it escalated. How it grew teeth. How it clawed at me until one day he tried to rape me.
I didn't tell anyone. Not at first. I just existed. A little less real every day.
I finally told my sister Marie, Jane, and our cousin Alana. All the girls who knew him. All the ones I needed to warn. I told them when I was fifteen. Three years after it started. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. To protect them. To make sure they didn't get the same version of him I did.
They believed me. No questions. Just hugs and quiet horror and the kind of shared anger that only women who've survived can offer each other.
But telling my mom?
That was different.
Because for so long, I thought it was me. That I was dirty. Not good enough. Ruined. Damaged goods that no decent man would ever want. I thought if she knew… she'd look at me like I was broken. Or worse, like I deserved it.
And still, somewhere deep down, I think she already knew.
She was there the first time I tried to end it.
I was in eighth grade. I took a bottle of pain relievers and locked myself in the bathroom. I don't know how she knew. Maybe it was a mom instinct, maybe it was the silence, but she came in, grabbed me, and forced me to throw up. She held me down over the toilet while I screamed and sobbed and spit out whatever I had left.
She didn't say anything that night. No lectures. No judgment.
Just her hands on my back. Her voice trying to stay calm. Her fear hiding behind urgency.
She saved my life.
And I still didn't tell her why.
How could I? I didn't even have the words. I didn't understand how deeply I had been violated. I just knew I hated myself. I wanted out of my own body. I wanted the memories to stop replaying.
That was the first attempt.
There was another one a few months later.
That time, no one caught me.
I didn't leave visible scars. I made sure of it. The pain was private. Hidden under long sleeves and thick hair. I pulled it out by the root. I bruised myself where no one could see. I smiled when people looked.
The truth is, I didn't start changing on the outside until the damage had already rotted through the inside.
I thought I had hidden it so well.
But maybe not.
Maybe she always knew something was wrong. Maybe that's why, when I finally said the words years later, our friend hurt me, she didn't ask a single question.
She just cried.
And it broke her heart.
She told me she always suspected something was wrong. She remembered how I pulled away at that age. How I seemed angry, distant, guarded. She and my dad had wondered. They'd even looked for signs. But I had never told them.
And that's the part that shattered her.
She apologized. Through tears. She told me she felt like she had failed me. That she should have protected me. That she should've known.
And I looked her in the eyes and told her the truth:
She didn't fail.
I would have never told anyone. Not back then. Because I thought it was my fault. Because I never said no. Because I didn't even know I could.
She reached for my hand. Held it like it was both fragile and sacred. Like she was afraid of breaking it and breaking me.
Then, she said something I'll never forget:
"I am so sorry. Not just that it happened. But that you went through it alone."
And we just sat there.
Two women in a parked car, on the side of a random highway, holding hands across the center console. Crying for who we used to be. And for the girls we never got to protect.
That conversation opened a door.
And through it, my mom shared her own story.
I had known pieces of it. But I didn't know the whole truth. Not until I was old enough for her to say it out loud.
She was the second of five children. Her father, my grandfather, was doing unspeakable things to her and her sister. The same things I had been through but worse.
One night, my grandmother packed all five kids into a car and left in the dark. No plan. No money. Just a need to escape.
She worked multiple jobs to keep food on the table. Waitress shifts at every diner that would take her. No education. No support. Just grit. Just survival.
My mom told me she grew up so poor, she didn't even have shoes for school.
One year, she missed the first week of school because she had nothing to wear. The principal came to the house to check on her. And when he found out why she hadn't shown up, he asked for every child's shoe and clothing size. He bought them all clothes. He bought them all shoes. He made sure they could walk into school with dignity.
That story still guts me.
My mom's side of the family has their own issues, every family does, but we're close. Always have been. My cousins practically lived at our house growing up. They weren't just cousins. They were siblings. A chaotic tribe of sarcasm, hand-me-downs, and inside jokes.
Even now, we're still close. We talk. We check in. We show up. Because family meant something, even when we didn't always know how to say it.
My mom had every reason to close off. To become bitter. To keep repeating the cycle. But she didn't.
She showed up.
She stayed.
And when I was finally ready to tell her the truth, she listened.
Healing didn't start with me. But it's continuing through me.