I divorced my mom

and I’ve never been more successful.

December 2024. I was on medical leave and in the depths of clinical burnout. I’d been working in crisis services for the ten years prior — being on call 24/7 and literally functioning as a first responder to family violence, and I was on the edge of catastrophe. When the police or EMS were called, I was called. When there was abuse in the home, I made the CPS report; I attended the investigations, and interviews, attended the court hearings, led the intervention meetings.

I’d talked hundreds of children and adults away from the ledge and now I was edging closer to it myself.

I didn’t set up a christmas tree (I never do), but I had a box of unopened gifts mailed by my biological mother staring me down (I now refer to her as JAB). Our relationship at that time was tenuous but still had a tether—occasional texts, sporadic phone calls.

The box sat in my living room unopened for about six weeks before I begrudgingly opened them after receiving a text from JAB prying a thank you from me.

I already knew what would be: things I didn’t want but would feel guilty enough to keep around. Items that cleary did not make sense for me or my life. That’s how she gave gifts- an Easy Bake Oven when I was 25, a unicorn stuffed animal in my 30’s. She opted for objects that would clutter my life and my space, a constant reminder of my failing to be a ‘good daughter’ and to just ‘be grateful’. Why wasn’t their loved good enough for me? What did I have to do to make it feel good enough for me? Why must I be so difficult.

I didn’t have the energy for the guilt that year. I simply did not, so I explicitly asked for nothing.

And what I got was another box of guilt. Another boundary crossed, but this was nearing the final fucking straw.

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I hit a new low, Spring of 2025 in a city full of ‘friends’, I realized I had no one to pick me up from the airport . It became self evident, through more than I care to articulate in one paragraph, that each of these people truly just wanted me in their lives when it was convenient for them. It wasn’t a real connection, it wasn’t a real relationship.

This was a new fucking low. Something snapped in me. I would rather be alone and than have low hanging connections with losers that just want something from me.

I stopped managing conflict and began being confronfuckingtational.

I started a mass annihilation of rotten people from my life.

I wrote my parents a letter stating: I am sick of having mommy and daddy issues. You’re about to have Mistee issues.

I legally changed my last name, removing theirs. How dare THEIR last name be attached to me and all the cool shit I do.

I had moved again and I didn’t give my address to anyone.

I cut off ‘friendships’ that had been 20+ years long, and those that hadn’t even made it four months. Done. Fucking done.

Then I just put my head down and worked my ass off. I force myself to eat (my appetite can be a real issue when I’m preoccupied), got my ass back in the gym. I got a new job with higher responsibility, lower stress, and more flexibility.

Nearly a year has past since I went no contact with my family of origin, and these ‘friends’. It’s been lonely. I am so alone, more than most of the time. Its been a real come-to-Jesus moment, realizing I’d allowed so many shitty people to be in close proximity.

Last year, I spent the holidays alone and it was fine actually. This year I will probably do the same and it’ll probably also be fine.

I don’t know what my new normal is, but I do know that I actually felt relief last Christmas- no shitty guilt-gifts staring me down in my living room.
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JAB has always been skilled at attempting to induce guilt. She knows, as do so many like her, I wouldn’t be ensnared in a relationship with her if I didn’t feel GUILT. January, 2026— I knew I needed to cut the cord in its entirety. I bought a plane ticket at 3am and boarded it at 10a. When I landed, I met her at her work, and took her out to dinner. It would be the last time she’d ever see me but she didn’t know that yet.

JAB remarked that my sister had asked why I hadn’t told her I was in town yet.

I knew this was a was a lie. There was no way my sister could have known I’d flown in less than 24 hours earlier, and even if she had, she and I have never been close.

It was just a dig. Fucking classic.

I let her have it. It would the last.
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When I don’t know where to start, I just imagine myself jumping off of a cliff. All you gotta do is close your eyes, breath, and leap.

That night, I sat her down at dinner and told her she would never see or have access to me, or my future family ever, again.

I didn’t know everything—but I knew enough. Enough about my childhood. Enough about the abuse she’d allowed, encouraged, and even assisted in. Really heinous stuff, to be honest.

I told her I know where the scars on my body came from and even though I hadn’t always remembered, I knew to never ask her where they came from or how I got them.

Her countenance fell in a way that looked not quite human. Her eyes seemed lost somewhere between shocking horror and profound grief, like a child realizing they’ve been abandoned at a rest stop intentionally. Her face was entirely colorless, not white, colorless. She like she wanted to cry out, but the emotion was too archaic, preverbal, there were no words, no sound. nothing to make it right.

It was the most horrifying expression I’ve ever witnessed.

Then she said,

“Your scars, what do they look like?”

Doubled over the steering wheel, shaking with tears, hood over her head, that was the last time I ever saw her as I pulled away in the dark.

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One month later, I made a post that went viral about being a psychic medium.Two months later, I was very quickly and very entirely self employed.

Six months in, I’m entirely nomadic, have expanded to include a personal assistant, and I’ve been waitlisted since starting my business, the business I started when I didn’t even have a Zoom subscription

. I’m only here today because I allowed myself to be angry enough to no longer self abandon. And at this point, it is very clear I am meant to help other do the same.

I have easily seen hundreds of client’s with stories like mine.
“What is wrong with me? How do I build the relationship I want with my mom, I know she loves me but…”

But I can see, she’s not just your mom.

She was a foreigner feigning sickness that attacked you when your weapon was sheathed.

She was the best friend that ‘loved you’ but was filled with so much hatred and envy, she ended both of your lives in a car accident in a fit of jealousy.

She was the priest governing the school that force fed you a foreign god, religion, and language, all in the name of ‘love’.

You have been going around and around and around with her since. Trying to convince yourself what she has to offer you is love. And still, you cannot convince yourself of it. Because it is not love.

Love doesn’t make you ask, what is wrong with me? Why cannot I not just be ‘good’ and accept this? Meanwhile. your developing endometriosis, PCOS, and eczema.

It’s not love.

And you can get off the merry-go-round, but you do have to jump first.