When Closure Is the Only Kindness Left: Why I Chose to Walk Away from My Mother - Rachel Wilks

I didn’t write this to be cruel. But I know it may hurt. That’s the nature of truth when it’s been buried for decades—it doesn’t surface gently.

My childhood was a mosaic of instability: five house moves, four school changes, and the slow, painful unravelling of my parents’ marriage. By the time I was ten, I had already learned how to pack up my life and start over—again and again. I lost my father not just to divorce, but to silence. When he died last year, I grieved not only his absence, but the years of emotional distance that preceded it. I hoped my mother might offer comfort. She didn’t.

Instead, I was met with indifference. And that moment—so sharp, so final—confirmed what I had long suspected: I was never emotionally safe with her.

She was sixteen when I was born. I understand that she was young, perhaps overwhelmed. But her youth does not excuse the emotional immaturity she continued to display throughout my life. Being a young mother may explain some things—it does not justify decades of neglect, dishonesty, and cruelty.

I was introduced to new partners, step-siblings, and half-siblings without acknowledgment of what I was losing. My father’s access was gradually reduced, and eventually handed off to his parents. I was chastised for expressing distress, taught to swallow pain, and made to feel like a burden in my own home. With rare exceptions, my stepfather’s family treated me with hostility and distrust. I was expected to endure it quietly.

I have no toys, no books, no photographs from my childhood. Nothing physical remains. All I have are memories—many of them painful, many of them shaped by her absence.

And I know she has lied. Clever lies, easy to conceal, some told only to me, some told about me to others, until her final lie, that came so soon after I learned of my father’s death.  That final lie, the lie of illness, like so many others, was a manipulation. I see it clearly now.

I want nothing from her—not reconciliation, not understanding, not even forgiveness. This isn’t a doorway. It’s a closing.

Her other children have had different experiences. One remains close to her, and that is her choice. The other, like me, has chosen distance—because for her too, the emotional burden of our mother, compounded by the demands of raising autistic children, is simply too much. The impact of our mother’s behavior reaches further than she likely realises.

She rarely initiates contact with me, and I don’t expect that to change. This is not an invitation. It’s a final statement of truth. I am done carrying the weight of this relationship.

For anyone reading this who has felt silenced, unseen, or emotionally erased by a parent: you are not alone. Closure is not cruel. Sometimes, it’s the only kindness we can offer ourselves.

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 Rachel Wilks