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My adult son confided in me that my adult daughter had told in him I was abusive to her growing up.

As he shared, I was perplexed. We stood at my kitchen counter, I was wiping off the crumbs from the granite onto the floor with a rag, so I could sweep them up before mopping. Dinner was over, a pile of dishes waited for me. 

"How?" I asked. 

He relayed that she had shared the horror of how I locked her in her room for hours once and wouldn't let her out. She had to sit on a chair and could only leave it to use the bathroom. 

He waited for me to deny it.

I thought for a moment and said; "Yeah. I did that." 

He was aghast. 

"Did she tell you why she was in her room?" I asked, nonplussed. 

"No." he admitted. 

"She was around ten years old and didn't want to go to school. You were five, and Tate was a newborn. She refused to leave the house- I had to get you to kindergarten and take the baby to the doctor. Realizing I couldn't drag a ten year old child out the door and into the car- I grounded her. 'If you think you can skip school and play video games or watch tv- you're wrong. If you won't go to school, you will sit in your chair in your room with books to read. I will bring you lunch and you can only leave to use the bathroom. When school hours are over- you can leave your room.' I told her."

My son's eyes widened with mirth and understanding. I was loading the dishwasher by now as my story continued. 

"The person who got traumatized most was probably me. When I came home from running errands, I went upstairs to check on her and cracked open the door. At a glance, I saw she was covered in blood. I screamed. It turned out, that she had obeyed me, but had gotten a bloody nose while I was gone. Not daring to leave the chair, she used her shirt to stop the flow of liquid. I thought she had been murdered."

My son began laughing at me. 

"I let her out of her punishment and never did it again. She never refused to go to school again."

I rolled my eyes and continued cleaning the kitchen. Abusive. 

I remembered the way that my mother would make me sit in a chair for one hour if I refused to practice piano. I can't even count the number of times I chose that option over plinking ivory keys. I was so stubborn, my daughter was similar. 

As a veteran mom of twenty five years, I may not have handled that situation the same now. But- maybe I would. I couldn't possibly imagine that she would interpret that as abusive and I sit here wondering if it was. 

Perhaps now I would look deeper into what was wrong that she didn't want to go to school that day- now, I don't have two other small children and was most likely battling postpartum depression- my tolerance was probably low. Now, I would recognize that she was having a hard time adjusting to a new family dynamic as much as I was. 

But what I did, is alienate her. I ruled instead of communicated. It didn't work. It created a childhood trauma for her. 

I validate that. 

And, I did what I thought was best. 

That's how motherhood ultimately goes. Doing our best, mucking it up and reflecting. 

Age old, as long as time has existed.

I partnered with other women to tell their stories of motherhood, the stories that aren't shared with badges and ribbons, in a book titled Unspoken Motherhood. Stories of PostPartum, Miscarriage, Child loss, adoption, and more. 

See it here:

Unspoken Motherhood