
By Bridey Thelen-Heidel
Cutting the cord
There was never a good time to leave because my mother always needed me. Even one room away was too far when she was crying, wounded, and abandoned by another monster she moved in—another man she gave everything to and left nothing for herself or for me.
My mom told me I was the only one who could save her, the only one she trusted, the only one who made everything better—so I stayed, even when she became one of the monsters, because I was as addicted to rescuing her as she was to needing it.
But it wasn’t codependency because that “co” implies we need the abuser as much as they need us. I didn’t “need” my mom. She was a parasite, clinging to me for her life, and I couldn’t shake her loose because she hung onto places out of my reach—my heart where the love I had before she became a monster lived—and my brain where a few happy memories of holidays she didn’t ruin waited to be forgotten.
I wasn’t dependent on her because she wasn’t dependable. I was stuck, tethered, tied, bound–a conjoined twin who felt my mom’s pain, desperation, rage, and struggles–that hurt (and mattered) more than my own. Fused together, we both believed separation would kill us. But I was a child who didn’t know that was a lie. She was the adult who did.
My mom held the surgeon’s scalpel to separate us—although it wouldn’t be a clean cut because the wine and pills made her hand shake. There would be blood: Mine. Hers. Ours.
I didn’t leave when I could have or should have because leaving was hard, and I knew everything—and everyone—was going to fall apart.
I was right.
But staying was hard, too, because I’d seen normal life on television—sitcoms where every problem was solved by the end of the episode, and the family hugged with a laugh track playing in the background. Normal was possible, and I not only wanted it but dared to believe I deserved it.
Going “no contact” meant reminding myself that I’d been brave enough to stand up to the monsters, so I was brave enough to stand up for me. I’d been resilient, bouncing back no matter how hard she knocked me down, and I could pick myself up—without anyone’s hand. And I was ridiculously optimistic because my mother conditioned me to believe the grass was greener anywhere but where we were.
When I chose my hard, it was the least popular decision I’ve ever made. For blocking her number, emails, and Facebook messages, I got called selfish, ungrateful, rude, and—of course—a bitch.
But I never got called back.
My mother never asked me to come home. Never called to apologize. Never admitted there might be a reason I left. She didn’t wonder what I was thinking—because she knew.
If you’re going to leave, you’re going to lose something—maybe a lot of somethings—but you’re also going to find the most important something of all: Yourself.
And just like that, I wasn’t stressed, depressed, barfing, bleeding internally, or waiting by phone for the call to rescue. And I lived happily, ever after—with a laugh track playing in the background.
Mothering is a mutha.
“Are you ready for her to like me more than she likes you? You know, like you are with my mother?”
My mom asked me this while standing over my sleeping baby girl who wasn’t even a day old.
I wasn’t going to become a mother—ever.
I didn’t want to be a mom because I hadn’t grown up being mothered as much as smothered—in drunk perfume and dangerous choices.
My mother had also forced me to be a father when I was eleven. Pregnant with one of her monster’s babies, she gave me the choice whether or not we should “keep the baby”—although I had no clue what that meant. We’d hide the baby from the monster and raise her ourselves.
“But I’m only ten.” I reminded my mom. “And I’m not even a boy, so how can I be a dad?”
She said I’d make a great dad, but it was really about revenge. I’d stolen her life, so she stole mine.
When I finally decided to have a baby, it was because I married a sweet boy who loved me and didn’t deserve to have his choices determined by my past.
Terrified I might mother the way mine did, I searched for books to help and found advice for parents who were expecting, who had children with ADD, ASD, and allergies but no advice that answered my question: Should the kids of fucked up parents have kids of our own? And if we do, are we bound to fuck them up because we don’t know any different?
An online search gave me sites about dealing with dysfunctional parents or children of dysfunctional parents but not the children of the children of dysfunctional parents.
I was on my own.
—except for my husband who parented with me, his mother who answered my questions, and my own intuition to do everything exactly the opposite of what my mother had done.
—and never let her anywhere near my daughter. Ever.
Robbing the trauma and stealing back my life: A TEDx Talk.
The blog “The Upside of the Downside” I published in October 2022 felt like the start of a TEDx Talk, and when readers began sharing their “upsides of the downsides” with me, I realized what I’d written about healing our trauma triggers and CPTSD was more universal than I thought.
Serendipitously, a TEDx was scheduled in my community for the following October, so I researched writing a TEDx proposal andsent in “ROB the Trauma: Steal Back Your Life.”
ROB was an acronym that developed while writing about the traits that helped me to survive life with my narcissistic, abusive mother and the monsters she moved in. The “upside of the downside” was the resilience, optimism, and bravery (ROB) she forced me to have because even though they were terrifying to learn, they became strengths to heal the triggers that often dropped me to my knees and dragged me back to the past.
Fear lived in my house when I was little, shouting in my face, shaking me awake in the dark, and shoving my body around. Although I eventually evicted fear with tears, bargaining, begging, and even praying—before I understood what that was—I knew no matter how hard it banged on my doors or knocked on my windows, that kind of fear would never be allowed back in my life.
“ROB the Trauma: Steal Back Your Life” is a reminder to myself—and other survivors who’ve been tricked by trauma into believing the past is the present or the future is fragile—that our resilience, optimism, and bravery are superpowers that were hard-earned and hard-learned, but now we get to use them to thrive instead of just survive.


ABOUT THE BOOK: ‘Bright Eyes’ (She Writes Press, September 24, 2024) is about the indomitable spirit of a young girl forced to be brave, required to be resilient, and conditioned to be optimistic, and how she ultimately uses the same traits that helped her to survive her mother’s chaos to create her own happily ever after. Bridey is tethered to her mom’s addiction to dangerous men who park their Harley-Davidsons in the house and kick holes in all their doors. Raised to be her mother’s keeper, rescuer, and punching bag, Bridey gets used to stuffing her life into black trash bags, hauling them between Alaska and California, and changing schools every time her mom moves in a new monster—or runs away from one. Desperately seeking the normal life she’s observed in sitcoms and her friends’ families, Bridey earns her way into a fancy, private college, where she tries to forget who she is—until her mom calls with a threat that drops Bridey to her knees. Watching doctors and police interrogate her mother at the hospital, Bridey realizes her mom has become a monster herself… and she doesn’t want to be saved. But Bridey does. ‘Bright Eyes’ is an astonishing narrative of Bridey’s tenacious spirit, commitment to optimism in the face of unspeakable trauma, and dedication to breaking cycles of abuse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bridey Thelen-Heidel’s chaotic upbringing meant changing schools between Alaska and California more than twenty times. A Lewis and Clark College graduate, she lives in South Lake Tahoe with her husband and daughter and teaches at her alma mater. A TEDx speaker and frequent podcast guest, Bridey performed in Listen to Your Mother NYC and has been published in MUTHA Magazine. A fierce youth advocate who’s been voted Best of Tahoe Teacher several times by her community, Bridey’s work with LGBTQ+ students has been celebrated in Read This, Save Lives by Sameer Jha and the California Teachers Association’s California Educator. Find out more about Bridey at her website. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram.