My mother was a genius, but she made my youth hell. Why do many women my age have the same story of ‘brilliant’ parents who can only make us miserable?

Arriving after her dance class, seven -year -old Susan was able to smell the freshly baked cookies that were on the counter.

The kitchen was spotless and her mother was flawlessly dressed with no her misplaced when she started preparing the fresh ingredients for a nutritious evening meal.

Although everything seemed calm, Susan sat on the edge of a knife when she took a cookie off the board for the time being.

Every moment now …

“Susan, go to your room!” Her mother screamed. “Your room is a mess – go clean!”

After her up the stairs, she started to open the dresser drawers and throw clothes in the room. ‘To see? It’s a mess! Now clean it! ‘

Before her mother started throwing clothes, the room had not been a mess at all. But Susan knew what caused her mother’s eruption – a single pendant, in the wrong direction.

Susan was used to this. Her mother was a brilliant woman in many ways. She can be warm, creative and friendly; She was brightly intelligent and a brilliant cook. She even read stories about Susan Bedijd and took her shopping for new toys.

‘Mama had the skills of Martha Stewart. She offered herself for the fundraisers of the church and was the first to help a neighbor, ‘Susan, now 65, tells me.

“But she would dive away for no reason.

‘As children, she really cherished our wounds, our emotional side, but then she would turn around. Her eyes would change as if she left her body and I knew she was not the same person at the time. ‘

These frightening mood swings, this constant tension, was always there. Susan even remembers it as a toddler.

She remembers ‘abandoned’ for hours in playing when she was 18 months old.

Susan remembers screaming, crying, her face red hot while the tears flowed down her cheeks.

“I was so alert and when my mother finally came to find me, she didn’t shower me with love .. Let’s just say that,” she adds.

Growing up in Pennsylvania in a city of only 2,000 people, her family looked like a normal household in the suburbs from outside.

But behind closed doors it was ‘chaotic and tense’.

Susan’s father, a ‘brilliant’ astrophysicist, fights against his own demons and was usually never at home. When he was that, Susan noticed that she was trying to spread arguments between her parents.

‘I was the middle child and my role was to play the negotiator, but I was able to tailor myself to my mother. I knew she would blow, I just didn’t know when, “she says.

Susan and her brothers and sisters also endured physical abuse by the hands of their mother, who would beat them malignant.

‘Once when I was four, she bathed our children one by one. When it was my turn, I was excited and I jumped in, splashed around.

“She grabbed my arm and started shaking me and then hit me until I got brown. Today I can still feel her tight grip.

‘I believe she had a personality disorder such as schizophrenia because of how quickly she changed as a person. But she was never diagnosed, “Susan adds.

When Susan was 12, her mother told her that she would “become a problem now.”

“I just wanted to come out of that house and I was on a mission to do it,” she tells me. “I would look at heaven and wish someone could save me.”

When she was too young to escape, her favorite thing to make creeping to the basement, lying on a beanbag chair and watching Barbara Walters on television.

Listening to the stories of the life of others helped her to forget her own.

When she was 17, Susan graduated from high school. She went home, packed her suitcases and left the parental home forever the next morning.

“I lived locally and didn’t go back home much. I didn’t want it. Two years later my car was loaded and I moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. I didn’t go back for three years, “she says.

But as she got older, Susan began to wonder more about her mother’s whimsical behavior and whether there might have been a deeper reason behind it.

When she was in the late twenties, she sat down with her mother, who has since died, and encouraged her to open up.

“Mama was very quiet and seemed really sad, as if she were depressed,” she says. “We had a deep chat.”

Her mother revealed that she was abused by a priest and abused by a family member, who in turn had also been abused.

Susan eventually found compassion for her mother and began to understand the deep layers of intergenerational trauma.

Later in life they renewed their relationship. Susan’s mother died a year ago, and in the months prior to her death, Susan was able to forgive her for what she had done.

“I told her how much I cherished her and how difficult it must have been. It was brutal what she experienced and I don’t think she ever received a treatment of mental health, “says Susan.

“I forgiven her and told her that.”

After her mother died, Susan did her best to pay tribute to the woman with whom she had so loaded, had a complex relationship.

“Her gardening had been left in the Irish countryside – she had booked a trip and couldn’t make it, so my sister flew there to fulfill a final wish.”

Despite everything she has experienced, Susan says that she is grateful for the role that her parents have played in her life, despite their mistakes.

“Isn’t that weird? I have gratitude for the two because it really helped me to transform and evolve as a soul in this life, “she says.

Regarding Susan’s message to others? Know that your life is yours, and not someone else to take.

“Find beauty in your heart and live from the inside, instead of outside,” she says.

“And you don’t have to forgive anyone – but I decided.”

In 2023, Susan published a book entitled Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma in adult freedom to share her story and to help survivors of family trauma.