The Eggshell Mother: Where Was Your Maternal Instinct?

For as long as I can remember, I've been homesick for a mother who never existed.If you grew up fed, clothed, and cared for on paper, yet somehow always anxious, always careful, always bracing, I wrote this book for you.Maybe you remember reading the atmosphere of the house before you'd taken your coat off. Learning what the sound of slamming cupboards meant. Waiting for the front door to close behind visitors so the real version of your mother could reappear. Crying quietly, because tears were met with irritation. Trying to earn love with a clean bedroom, good behaviour, a drawing left on the kitchen table... and still feeling like too much and never enough at the same time.And maybe, like me, you've spent years talking yourself out of all of it. You weren't badly beaten. You weren't starving, skin and bones. So what's your problem?Here's the truth: being kept alive is not the same as being loved. The damage runs quieter than bruises, and it runs deeper.In this book, I walk back through childhood and say plainly what happened there. The moods that ruled everything. The mask my mother wore for guests. Being labelled a "problem child" at seven, when I was simply surviving. The gifts that came with price tags, the words that still echo decades later, and the exhausting performance of trying to be a daughter she could finally love.This book is to help you understand that you weren't too sensitive, needy, bothersome, problematic, or any other word used to describe you.I wrote this book to help you finally believe it.Book 1 in The Eggshell Mother series, for adult children of emotionally neglectful, cold, or unpredictable mothers.