Things I Wish My Mother Had Taught Me

I had to figure out most things on my own. My mother wasn’t the kind of person to offer guidance or reassurance. She was angry, unpredictable, and often drunk. My father was gone before I was old enough to understand what that meant—I was taken from him when I was two, and after that, it was just me, her, and my older sister

I still saw my dad a couple of times a year. Those visits were a break from the tension at home. He wasn’t around every day, but we talked on the phone a lot. In those moments, things felt normal—like I had a parent who cared, who wanted to know how I was doing. But the calls and visits weren’t enough to fill the gaps in my life. At home, I didn’t have a father figure, and my mother worked overnight shifts. Even when she was physically there, she wasn’t present. She either locked herself in her room or passed out drunk. She didn’t ask about my day or teach me how to handle emotions. She was completely unavailable in every way that mattered.

There was no one to teach me how to navigate friendships, emotions, or even the basics of feeling safe. I learned early on that I couldn’t rely on her, so I had to rely on myself. I watched other kids and tried to copy what seemed to work for them. I pieced things together through trial and error, making mistakes that could have been avoided if someone had just told me what to do.

This book is about those lessons—the things I had to teach myself. Some of them were small, like how to cook a meal or manage money. Others were bigger, like how to trust people, how to set boundaries, and how to separate who I am from where I came from. These are the things I wish my mother had taught me.