“Motherhood brings you to your knees in a way that doesn’t leave room for you to judge others. It makes you see that there’s no ideal – a constant struggle, constantly compromising, but ultimate love.” –Maggie Gyllenhaal

My son got married last weekend to a wonderful person. The celebration was joyous and funny, and I did not, as I feared, cry more than I might because he was glowing with happiness and that has been my entire goal in life when I knew he was going to be born, let him be happy. Help him be happy. Let him find his own happiness. The log line on me as a child was that I was very cheerful until I wasn’t and then the temper tantrums were supposedly epic. When staying with my maternal grandmother during my parents’ trip to Mexico I apparently had fits that required a semi-frozen washcloth to be thrown into my face. My mother said I smiled all the time until I had to be put in a room to scream and then I emerged, smiling again.

This description of my toddler self was unnerving because, I witnessed acts of violence committed by my father towards my mother when drunk and deep in my gut felt this strong pressure to make sure everyone was happy. I did not include myself in this. In fact, my ability to enjoy whatever scenario resulted in other people’s joy was severely lacking. I had frequent dreams that my mother was dead. As a young child I tried to disappear constantly by getting lost and by drinking myself nearly to death by the time I was in my mid-twenties, and something told me to stop.

I always wanted to be a mother. I loved babysitting and my longing was not to duplicate myself or seek to be loved by a child but to give a child what I never was given, a feeling of safety and unconditional love that might mean he or she would avoid some of the terrible things that happened to me as a result of my drinking and my intense longing to please my parents. I had two abortions, both alone and both heartbreaking because I believed I would never have a baby, The first was when I was deep in my addiction and there was no question, I could be anyone’s mother. The second was a terrible accident, a mere month after my oldest sister was killed by a drunk driver and while I had been trying to get sober, I was on prescribed drugs, suicidal and clinically depressed.

I stopped drinking in 1984 and nine years later had my son. In that time, I attended AA meetings daily, and found the psychiatrist who saw through my positive façade and actually believed me when I warned her my plan was to commit suicide as soon as I was sober. She did not enumerate all the reasons for my continuing to live but instead told me I had to continue to go to AA and see her twice a week. Therapy was very hard. I walked across Central Park to the East Side on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sat in her office, afraid to look at her because I was afraid, afraid she would die like my best friend had when I was twenty, and my sister when I was twenty-six. I talked about my family and the tantrums and the getting lost.

“How old were you when you were lost on Fire Island for nine hours?”

“Four. Everyone was asleep and I left the house. My parents were hung-over.”

“They lost you,” she said. “You didn’t lose them.”

After therapy I walked back to my apartment on the West Side stopping at a gelato store on the way. That gelato had such power that one day I had an argument with a policeman who was guarding the sidewalk next-door after a gangland murder of a famous mafioso. The gelato store was blocked by yellow crime tape. The victim’s body was outlined with chalk. I needed that gelato. I had spent the previous hour describing my rape at fifteen and subsequent decision not to tell my mother because she was too fragile to hear such a thing.

It was hard to accept the neglect, the gaslighting around my father’s drinking, the narcissistic behavior of my mother when I returned from my friend’s funeral and finally told the truth.

“I’m an alcoholic,” I said. “I need help.”

“No,” she screamed. “It’s that boy! I own you.”

I met my son’s father in New York City, we fell in love, and I was immediately pregnant at thirty-five. We married and moved to London and after a very long labor, seventy-two hours, Luke was born, silent and clean, eyes open and I knew him immediately.

Becoming a mother, his mother, changed everything. While I grew up with sisters and an overbearing mother, Luke was a boy and boys despite the multitude of men I had known, were a mystery. He taught me how to be his mother with intense passion for me as a baby and toddler followed by being so independent, he loved all pre-school teachers and babysitters especially if they were young and pretty. His affect was happy but with a healthy awareness of when he was being ignored or unfairly treated. I tried to make sure he understood how the world worked and why it was important to be kind to everyone if possible. There were times I lived in terror because he was a wild teenager and if I lost him, I knew I could not survive that loss.

He will be thirty at the end of October. I take little credit for his courage, compassion and work ethic but I’d like to believe I helped him accept love and always know that my love was unconditional and limitless. I think my parents wanted this for us, but their own hard childhoods made it too difficult and while they were very successful and found one another, my sisters and I had to find a way to survive alone.

We danced to the Beatles song Your Mother Should Know at the wedding, his choice. I’m not sure what I knew or know. I see that he has found his other and while I will always matter very much to him, I could not be happier.

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach

FOLLOW AND READ MORE: