She used to be my safe space.
There was a time I told her everything. Trusted her with every joy, every heartbreak, every embarrassing confession. I saw her as a kind of hero—not the flawless kind, but the fierce kind. The kind who made things happen. The kind I wanted to be like.
And maybe that’s why it cut deeper when she became the one I had to protect myself from.
This isn’t about blame. Or even betrayal. It’s about the slow, silent grief of watching someone you loved so completely become someone you can’t let in.
When I was twelve, she left. Not for the market. Not for a retreat. She left the country. One day we woke up, and she was gone. No warning. No explanation. Just… gone.
My older sister knew. I didn’t.
She had fled from the violence. The house was loud with rage back then—my father’s, mostly. Hands raised in the name of discipline. Bruises explained away with silence. We all knew fear intimately. So maybe I can understand why she left. But she never told me. She just vanished.
I waited for calls. For letters. For answers. None came. Later, I found out she had been imprisoned during her time out of the country. That she had limited phone calls. That most of those went to my older sister. Still, no one told me. Not even when she came back. Not even today.
By the time she returned, I was 16. We weren’t the same. I wasn’t her person anymore.
She confided in my elder and younger sisters. I was left outside the circle, expected to read between lines that weren’t written for me.
Fast forward a few years. I got a job through an internship at a multinational. She helped me get it. At least, that’s what she said. Later, I found out she was sleeping with my boss. That she walked into my interview because she didn’t trust me to handle it. That she told people, “You don’t know what I had to do for her to get that job.”
I never asked her for that. If I had known, I would have declined.
Then came the car accident. I crashed my dad’s car while he was living abroad. She insisted I shouldn’t use insurance, that it would increase my premiums. Told me to pay 120,000 KES. Later, the mechanic told me it only cost 60,000. When I confronted her, she twisted it into a morality play—about my ingratitude, about how much she’d sacrificed.
I went silent.
And she kicked me out.
On a Monday night. Without notice.
I had to move into my aunt’s house. I had to leave the car—the same one I paid to fix. That was the beginning of the end. And the start of a different kind of grief.
My mother, the woman who used to braid my hair and hold my fears like they were her own, began to see me as an opponent. A threat to her version of the story.
She asked for money constantly. Claimed she needed it, deserved it, was owed it. She spent recklessly, hoarded needlessly, and blamed everyone else for her lack. She used guilt like a leash—and when I pulled away, she cried victim. Said I had a black heart. Said I was ungrateful.
She borrowed money with no intention to pay it back. And if I asked her to, she’d say, *”You think I like being broke? You think I enjoy owing people?”
But no one ever asked her to be accountable.
When I complained, the family said, “That’s just how your mother is.”
So we all adjusted ourselves around her.
Even now, she takes up all the space in the room. Her feelings come first. Her narrative is the loudest. Her needs are the most urgent. And if you dare to make space for your own grief, you’re accused of being cold. Dismissive. Unfilial.
So I stopped trying.
I haven’t spoken to my mother in over five years. Not because I don’t love her. But because loving her was costing me everything. Because I had to learn that boundaries aren’t just a luxury—they’re survival.
I still remember the version of her I loved. I still miss her sometimes. But I don’t miss who she became in my life. I don’t miss the confusion, the guilt, the shame of not being her favourite, or her puppet, or her project.
I miss being a daughter. But I don’t miss being disposable.
This isn’t the mother wound I asked for. But it’s the one I carry.
And for now, the only way I know how to heal it is to tell the truth.
Even if it hurts.
Even if it goes unread.
Even if it makes me the villain in her story.
Because for too long, I was silent.
And this is where I speak.