Reuniting with my estranged mother after six years: Will she disappoint me again this Christmas when meeting her granddaughter?

Admitting that you’re not a fan of Christmas can often lead to raised eyebrows and puzzled looks. For me, the reasons behind my dislike of this holiday season range from the excessive consumerism to the repetitive and often cringeworthy music that seems to play on a loop.

Trying to shake off my inner Scrooge persona, I would typically attempt to make light of my feelings with a casual joke. In many instances, I would choose to escape the festivities altogether by jetting off to another country. However, despite the outward appearance portrayed in my cheerful Instagram posts from a sunny beach in Mexico, the reality behind the scenes was quite different.

A big part of the reason I’ve always hated Christmas so much is that I was estranged from my mother.

The holiday season can be an especially challenging time for the countless adults who find themselves estranged from a family member. In the UK, research conducted by the charity Stand Alone reveals that approximately one in five families are impacted by estrangement – a situation where all communication has ceased.

In the US, a study from Ohio State University found 6 per cent of respondents were estranged from a mother and a staggering 26 per cent from a father.

Although lots of us feel under some sort of obligation to see someone we’d rather not spend time with over the holidays – from a tricky uncle to a monstrous mother-in-law – being utterly cut off from a parent is a completely different emotion.

In December I would often feel like an alien, as friends talked warmly of looking forward to spending time with their parents and what they’d buy for them. I felt completely cold.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a turbulent relationship with my mother. We were never close – whether it was because of her long hours at work or because we had very different personalities. Although I was close to my older sister and got along well with my dad, my childhood was punctuated by my father’s drinking and a lot of dysfunction.

As a child, I always dreaded Christmas because it seemed to highlight the gap between what I saw on TV and my own set up. My only memories of Christmas are the traditions we had at school – a play of The Nutcracker, making cards and giving them to teachers.

My parents divorced when I was 11 and I initially lived with my mother in the home I’d grown up in – but we led largely separate lives.

When I was 14 she met a new partner who I didn’t get on with and I saw even less of her.

A year later I came home from school to find a ‘For Sale’ sign outside our house, and when I asked my mother about it, she said she was moving to a new city to live with her partner. She told me I could join them, but I didn’t want to leave my friends and school to be uprooted to a place where I knew no one.

So I went to live with my dad and although I still saw my mother, our meetings were often strained and sad. I felt abandoned and angry. Even when I could see she was trying to make an effort, I struggled to reconcile that with the uninterested mother I had known growing up.

I remember one Christmas Day it was just me and my father in his cramped flat with a ready meal. As I grew older, I tended to spend Christmas with my boyfriends’ families. I learned to bat off questions about what my own family were doing for Christmas, and give vague responses about why I wasn’t seeing them.

Over the years, my lack of a traditional family Christmas has led to some unusual December 25ths.

I have eaten dim sum with Jewish friends, spent it volunteering at a homeless shelter, and once completely forgot it was Christmas Day entirely as I was hiking in the Himalayas.

But wherever I was in the world, as soon as I saw the first decorations in the shops, or heard the first Christmas songs on the radio, I would feel a looming sense of unease. It’s a season where family togetherness is rammed down your throat in every advert or movie.

Some years, I would try to make the effort to see my mum around the holidays and we would exchange presents, but it always seemed like we were going through the motions.

When I met my now-ex-husband in 2005, his huge family were big fans of Christmas and I was happy to be enveloped in their long-standing traditions – walks in the countryside, old movies on the projector. 

He was overjoyed that the tricky dynamics with my mother meant that we got to spend it with his family every year, rather than alternating like most couples. But occasionally I would look up at the smiles and affection around the table and feel a pang of sadness that I had never known this kind of Christmas growing up.

Ultimately the stark difference in our backgrounds and childhoods was one of the reasons my ex and I proved incompatible. When we got divorced in 2018, I made some big changes. After many years of therapy, I realised I was never going to get the emotional support I needed from my mother. Following one particularly stressful meeting, I decided it would be our last.

I cut off all contact with her – deleting her number, ignoring her emails, blocking her on social media. I wasn’t sure how long it would be for, but as the weeks turned to months, I felt much lighter without the obligation to see her.

Around this time, I met my current partner and we quickly moved in together. He struggled to understand how I could have no relationship with my mother at all and was saddened by it. But I quickly got used to this reaction from friends and colleagues.

Having an estranged parent – particularly your mother – can feel very lonely. An absent father most people can understand, but having no relationship with the woman who gave birth to you is incomprehensible to many.

I found some comfort in a Facebook group for people with estranged family members, where thousands of us would share our experiences and offer advice. Sometimes it felt like these strangers understood me more than my closest friends or even my partner.

In 2020, our daughter was born. Our first Christmas was spent at home with just the three of us. Because of the pandemic, this wasn’t unusual. I revelled in the fact that, for once, I wasn’t an outlier on Christmas Day, I was just like everyone else. Although when friends wept with sadness that they couldn’t see their parents, I tried hard to empathise.

Of course, having my own child has brought up lots of complicated feelings about my mother. But the most surprising one was that falling in love with motherhood made me feel pity for her. I don’t think she took much pleasure in us, and I felt sorry if she missed out on this joy. The thought of my own daughter one day cutting off contact with me made me feel physically sick.

I would sometimes get messages or letters from my mother, especially around Christmas. She would apologise for what had happened. I felt really sad when I read her words, but I knew that nothing had really changed. I chose not to respond and to focus on my own family.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t wish things were different. New friends and colleagues would ask if I was seeing my parents at Christmas, and when told them I was estranged from my mother they were shocked.

‘But she’s your mother? And it’s Christmas?!’ they’d say. As if the mere fact of it being December 25 could undo so many years of hurt and toxic behaviour.

There’s a perception in our culture that we should put family first, especially at Christmas. But for some families that’s just not possible, and protecting yourself from more hurt is the only sensible course of action.

I remember once arguing with a friend who had lost both her parents, as she urged me to make amends with my mother while there was still time. Although I understood that it came from a good and well-meaning place, some families can’t just kiss and make up.

I tried to enjoy Christmas on my own terms, and make new rituals and traditions for my own little family. After decades of not understanding why you could cut down something lovely in nature and plonk it in your living room, in 2021, I got my first Christmas tree.

Seeing my daughter’s face as the lights went on and she put the star on top made me see Christmas in a new way. After a lifetime of ‘Bah humbug’ I had caught the Christmas spirit. But I’d still find myself thinking about my mother – despite not having spent a Christmas with her in decades.

I would wonder where she was and what was happening in her life. I’d feel sad that she wasn’t there to watch my daughter unwrap her gifts or to send her pictures of the school nativity.

In 2019, my father was diagnosed with dementia and as his illness progressed he would often ask how my mother was, forgetting I was no longer in touch with her. My dad’s worsening condition made me confront the fact that my mother also wouldn’t be around for ever.

I would occasionally wonder if enough time and space had passed and we could have a relationship again. But I wasn’t sure how to open the channels of communication after so long. It had been six years, I couldn’t just text her and say ‘Fancy a coffee?’

Despite our difficult childhood, my sister had always managed to maintain some kind of relationship with my mum.

Although they also had periods of not speaking, she would occasionally tell me about meeting my mother at Christmas and I would feel conflicted. Relief that I didn’t have to go through that, but also envy that she was able to have a mother in her life, that her children had a grandmother.

When my father died earlier this year, I knew I would see my mother at his funeral. I felt more anxious about this than I did about giving the eulogy or seeing my father’s coffin.

We said brief hellos, and she told me that my dad would’ve been really proud of my eulogy. She met my partner for the first time and it was a hugely emotional day. 

Although my mother and I didn’t get much time to talk, I felt like a pathway had been opened for us to have a relationship again. My father’s death had made me see him in a new light – as a complex person in his own right. I realised that I was able to start to see my mother like this, too.

I realised that life is complicated, and she did the best she could. As I approach 40 and with my own experience of motherhood, I can finally appreciate that she had her own reasons for the choices she made – something I always found difficult to comprehend when I was younger. 

A few tentative emails later, initiated by her, and we met for lunch a month ago. I was very nervous about seeing her again, but it instantly felt like no time had passed at all.

We made polite chit-chat about where we were living now, but when she said, ‘I hear you’ve had a daughter’ I broke down in tears. It felt like so much had happened in my life and I didn’t even know where to begin. I felt overwhelmed with sadness for everything we’d both missed out on.

That day felt both incredibly mundane and hugely significant. I came away feeling that I’d like to see her again, and that I’d like for her to properly meet my partner and my daughter. 

Since our meeting she has been respectful of my boundaries – allowing me to set the pace. I’ll always be grateful that she has been able to give me the time and space I needed, and that she still wants to try to have a relationship. 

We arranged to see each other a few days before Christmas, to meet her granddaughter for the first time. But the day before, she sent me a text cancelling, saying she was ill. Although I was disappointed, I wasn’t surprised. I have had a lifetime of being let down by my mother.

I was hurt that she had cancelled, but I was happy that I hadn’t said too much to my daughter about meeting her grandmother. Perhaps a part of me knew she would probably end up not coming – even though it seems unfathomable to me. If I was meeting my grandchild for the first time, it’s hard to think of much that would prevent me from showing up.

She suggested we find another day to meet up, but I’m not holding out too much hope. Every time I do that with my mother I set myself up for sadness.

I would love to give her the benefit of the doubt – it is flu season after all or perhaps she feels nervous about meeting up and it has manifested as an illness. In a way, I feel vindicated that my partner has now seen her baffling and confusing behaviour first- hand, because I sometimes found it hard to explain why we were estranged. 

Occasionally, I have even doubted my own recollection of the past, almost gas-lighting myself into wondering if she was really that bad.

But it seems she hasn’t changed all that much. I tried to enjoy the day with my own family. I felt grateful that although it would be another Christmas without my mum – and my first without my dad – I have a lovely family of my own now, and I am much less affected by her being unreliable.

I have many memories of being the last person to be collected from school, countless missed parents’ evenings and having to stay at friends’ houses because she didn’t pick me up at all.

Christmas is just another day – it wasn’t going to magically heal all wounds. There was no exchanging gifts with mum and no heartwarming ending to this story, but by creating my own traditions with my family, this time of year does feel special to me.

Even before the arrival of a man called Jesus, people rejoiced in a celebration of light, rebirth and renewal. The worst of winter is hopefully behind us, and it feels like there’s a lot to look forward to.