My Mother Told Me She Wasn’t My Mother

“You ain’t even my child!”

Her words pierced me like a sharpened sword heated over the hottest coals. My mother wobbled up the cold block in the early hours of the night. The only things awake were the streetlights, casting small circles of light on the dark street every few meters. Her drunken aura frustrated my already restless mind. We weren’t even arguing or disagreeing when she blurted out those forsaken words—a few months after my 21st birthday.

“You ain’t even my child!”

The phrase kept repeating in my head as I tried, tirelessly, to get my drunk mother safely into the house. It had all started about an hour earlier. I was in my room at my grandparents’ house when I heard a commotion. My grandfather stormed out. My grandmother explained to me that my mother was having one of her “fits” over her younger ex-boyfriend. I shook my head in frustration. Many people had no idea my mother was a drunk—including her.

I expected a big blowout when my grandfather and mother returned, but he came back alone. He explained what had happened to my grandmother, who was growing more and more frustrated with their grown child by the minute. My mother had gotten out of the car and refused his help. My grandmother asked me to go get her, and I hopped to it. I hurried down the dark street and found my mother a few blocks away, across the main avenue that stayed relatively lit.

I walked her home, listening to her cry and try her best to explain her hurt.

“You don’t know what they put me through. Nobody knows what they’ve done to me,” she sobbed.

Growing more empathetic—and scared—I did my best to usher her up the street toward home. She kept stopping in the middle of the road, snapping, getting louder. I just wanted to get her home safely. I was fully prepared to stay up all night with her, just to listen. I began begging her to keep walking as she grew more hysterical. I had a bad feeling about being outside so late. If trouble didn’t find us, the cops would—and there was no telling what she might say or do in front of them.

“Mom, please come home. We can stay up all night and talk. I hear you, I do,” I pleaded, desperate to keep her moving toward safety.

She kept ranting—obviously drunk, but also clearly hurting—and I empathized with her. So I pulled out my best card: the mommy card.

“Mommy, please come home. For me,” I said in the sweetest voice I could muster.

She took a step back, looked me up and down, and with a curled, aggressive sneer said,

“You ain’t even my child!”

I froze. The way she looked at me alone triggered a self-defense mechanism. But this was my mother—I wouldn’t dare hurt her or leave her alone like that.

“Mom, come on!” I demanded.

In my heart, I’ll never believe she didn’t know exactly what she said the moment it left her lips—especially when she saw the hurt smash across my face. My chest hurt so badly. After everything I had been through with this woman, hearing—in that moment—that she wasn’t my mother could have destroyed me.

I finally got her home and into bed, doing my best to help her avoid any further altercations with my grandparents. I remember a few days later, I asked my grandmother why my mom would say something like that. My grandmother grew angry—not the kind of angry that protects, but the kind of angry a liar gets when their truth is exposed. She and my mother argued about it, and the issue quickly disappeared.

I worked hard to forget about it. I wasn’t in a mental space where I could carry that truth, even if it was the truth. Maybe I brought it up privately from time to time, but I never mentioned it to my mother again—until almost eight years later.

God revealed a woman to me who I looked way more like than anyone in the family that raised me. Not only did we resemble each other—we liked the same things, did the same things, and shared very specific health conditions. The kind of health conditions that are passed down genetically—usually maternally.

When I connected with—and was later denied by—that woman, I reached back out to the mother I knew. I spoke to her woman-to-woman about the feelings I had surrounding this new, painful belief that she wasn’t my biological mother.

She didn’t fight for me the way I had hoped. Maybe she thinks she did—but to me, she sounded more conniving than convincing.

I finally asked her directly why she said she wasn’t my mother when I was 21.

She had the nerve to say she never said it.

It was heartbreaking to watch the family I knew fall back on the same old gaslighting and manipulation tactics they used to raise me.

“I did not say that,” she insisted.

“Please don’t lie to me. I’ve worked too hard to forgive you for saying it in the first place,” I said, holding my heart in my hands—cutting my fingers on its broken pieces.

I called once more after that to wish the family a Merry Christmas and express my love. In obedience to God, I haven't spoken to them since.