Engulfing/distant Nmothers

I've been reading a lot of posts lately that were written by daughters of engulfing Nmothers - so different from my experience that it almost seems like a different personality disorder.  Although my NFOO was enmeshed to a ridiculous degree, Nmother was extremely distant, cold,  unattached to her children, and so obsessed with Nfather and his behavior that we were all a distant, distant, distant second.  The GC, of course, received a lot of attention, but we can hardly call that love and we all know what that attention led to...

I don't remember my mother ever telling me she loved me - until W1 decided to "model parenting" for her (when Nmother was in her 80's) and explained that she should say this to her children.  It was the weirdest thing - she said it, but it never went seemed to mean anything to her.  It was a bit like telling a child to apologize - the result is never quite right.  It was a bit off, like when a smile doesn't reach the eyes.

When I was in high school, I started to call Nmother the "Ice Queen"  - she really did have the lip-pursing, one eyebrow raised, stop you from across the room stare down.  The woman had 7 daughters and took no joy in them at all.  None.  She had to be the thinnest, the prettiest, the most elegant, the most sophisticated female in attendance.  Of course, she also had to be the quintessential farmer's wife, the most down-home of them all.  It created some distressing dissonance.  Who was she, really?  Which persona was going to be dominant in any given situation?  I don't think she could possibly teach any of us how to discover who we were - she'd never done it herself.

Her relationship with Nfather was perplexing to me - one minute, she was nobly defending him - he had a lot on his mind, he worked hard to support us.  And the next minute, she  was poring out all the things he had ever done wrong, blaming him for ruining her life, for not getting along with her family, for her not having a career, etc.  There was a time I remember when she'd talked for hours one night about how she couldn't take it any more, she was thinking of leaving him, she didn't know how she'd survive (Mind you, there was no mention of how her children were going to survive!).  The next morning I said something to her about Nfather and she slapped my face and told me that I should show some respect for my father.  Very confusing to a 15-year-old.  Those long talks around the kitchen table never revolved around my angst - they were always about hers. 

So "engulfing" she was not - she didn't hug or kiss anyone past babyhood - and even babyhood was foreshortened by the arrival of yet another sibling.  She spanked, slapped, shamed, belittled, and terrorized her children.  Her flip-flopping was epic - was she elegant or country?  was she pro-Nfather or anti-Nfather?  (This affected us a lot - her being pro-Nfather meant that she'd report all "bad" or "childish" behavior to Nfather so that he could abuse us.)  Every parental task was a visible hardship for her - she brushed our hair to the point of real pain, going shopping with her ranks amongst my worst memories, and even putting children to bed seemed to bring out the harpy in her.  From my point of view as a child, she wanted nothing more than to get away from us as quickly as possible.  (The irony of this is that when Ngrandmother left her money in her will and she could have left, she didn't.)

I've read enough and talked to enough ACON's to know that there's no such thing as a good Nmother, that the type doesn't matter - the problems are a bit different, but the root is the same and the result is the same.  Shaming is shaming, no matter how it's done.  Not loving is not loving, no matter if some Nmothers want to appear loving.  Their daughters end up feeling unloved, unwanted, shamed, blamed, angry, confused, and with a lot of shit to work through.  Here's to getting to and through that hard work!