When her mum called her, stress would ring through Marie’s body like an alarm going off. So “I stopped answering the phone,” she says. She forms the words purposefully, as if reading from a script. This was one of the “boundaries” she discussed carefully with her therapist three years ago when she reached a point of crisis in managing her maternal relationship.
She has never explained her decision to her mother, but it followed a lifetime of what Marie, who is in her 40s, feels has been rejection, shaming and feeling like the “black sheep of the family”. Marie’s mother, she says, would always make everything about herself. “Everything I did was just … everybody has it worse. You know, I’d say, ‘I don’t feel very well’ and she’d reply: ‘Yes, well, I’ve got diabetes.’ I was scared to have a voice.”
