I do Try to Enjoy My Mother...I do...
Tuesday, January 20th, 2026 06:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amarie24Trigger Warnings: Fatphobia, Internalized fatphobia, Body image issues, Generational trauma
Even when I try…to enjoy spending time with my mother, to enjoy my mother’s company…it’s the little things that remind me of just how I became so severely burnt out with her…
We went to the store Friday evening after she picked me up from work (still can’t drive until March (God willing) bc of medical issues…dunno if I told anyone that). I had changed out of my scrubs and into a pair of my light blue jeans and my favorite off-shoulder, peach-colored sweater from Savage Fenty, with a dark maroon tank top underneath.
It keeps me warm, too.
Kept my work shoes on. They went with my sweater.
It’s one of 4 off-shoulder sweaters I own. It’s not as long as the hem as I like, nor can I roll up the sleeves, as I typically like to do with all my tops, be they sweaters or not. It’s still comfortable and much-beloved.
And…going to the beauty supply shop and our favorite grocery store…it was fun to be with my mother, yes.
But it also…slightly triggered me for all those years when I didn’t have a car and, to get out the house, had to rely on an unreliable mother who was agoraphobic (and likely manic depressive) and staunchly refused to seek mental health treatment.
She still refuses to this day.
Anyway! We get done, drive home, unload the groceries from the car…and I shoulda done knew the question was coming.
I done knew the question was coming.
“Amarie, how are you so confident to wear a sweater like that? It looks great on you, by the way-you look so beautiful! But how are you confident?”
I answered, likely sounding tired, “Mama, I’m not…confident. Just comfortable. I see something I like and can afford and…I wear it. I’m just comfortable in it.”
“Oh…” she said, with that predictable, uncomprehending glaze in her eyes.
I had bit my tongue just in time to keep from shooting back at her, “And what is it about me means I need to be confident to wear this?”
I just…
My mother is a woman in her mid-60s and it still amazes me how she can be so stunted and co-dependent in her view of self/body-image and overall self-esteem.
So stunted that there’s times when she looks at her own daughter and can’t pull the glove inside-out. By which I mean, “Mama, would I need ‘confidence’ to wear an off-shoulder sweater if I was skinner and lighter-skinned?”
My mother doesn’t mean it, but it’s “Amarie, you’re fat and black-but still beautiful to me! Still, where do you get the gall to wear such things? And where can I, who’s also fat and black, find the gall to wear such things too?!”
I've written in an earlier post called “Confidence is a 4-letter Word for Me” about how growing up with this kind of talk ad nauseum-and I truly do mean ad nauseum-jacked my and my sister’s own self-esteem and self-images straight the fuck up.
Sometimes I wish I could believe that it would do any good to tell my mother that…neither confidence nor comfortability is truly given by having a certain body type and thus achieving some arbitrary permission given to you by arbitrary beauty standards.
Sure, it is not completely divorced from outside influence/reaction. (For example, if enough people openly stared and sneered/cringed/winced at my stretch marks when I wear off-shoulder things, then I admit I would likely stop wearing them. Sure. Yeah). But I try to believe that the base fundamentals of it starts with a core of permission within yourself.
That’s just a permission my mother never gained and so she couldn’t pass it onto her daughters.
I’m still healing and recovering every day. And my wearing such sweaters (and other clothes) via just simple pleasure and permission that I give myself is part of that.
I’ve long since given up wishing my mother could be mentally and emotionally healthier. Instead I’ve kept true to a mantra of Love Her Where She’s At…and Accept Yourself Where You’re At With Her.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exhaust and sometimes outright trigger me.
Lord forgive me, can’t wait to get back in my car come March.
Truly I can't.
Even when I try…to enjoy spending time with my mother, to enjoy my mother’s company…it’s the little things that remind me of just how I became so severely burnt out with her…
We went to the store Friday evening after she picked me up from work (still can’t drive until March (God willing) bc of medical issues…dunno if I told anyone that). I had changed out of my scrubs and into a pair of my light blue jeans and my favorite off-shoulder, peach-colored sweater from Savage Fenty, with a dark maroon tank top underneath.
It keeps me warm, too.
Kept my work shoes on. They went with my sweater.
It’s one of 4 off-shoulder sweaters I own. It’s not as long as the hem as I like, nor can I roll up the sleeves, as I typically like to do with all my tops, be they sweaters or not. It’s still comfortable and much-beloved.
And…going to the beauty supply shop and our favorite grocery store…it was fun to be with my mother, yes.
But it also…slightly triggered me for all those years when I didn’t have a car and, to get out the house, had to rely on an unreliable mother who was agoraphobic (and likely manic depressive) and staunchly refused to seek mental health treatment.
She still refuses to this day.
Anyway! We get done, drive home, unload the groceries from the car…and I shoulda done knew the question was coming.
I done knew the question was coming.
“Amarie, how are you so confident to wear a sweater like that? It looks great on you, by the way-you look so beautiful! But how are you confident?”
I answered, likely sounding tired, “Mama, I’m not…confident. Just comfortable. I see something I like and can afford and…I wear it. I’m just comfortable in it.”
“Oh…” she said, with that predictable, uncomprehending glaze in her eyes.
I had bit my tongue just in time to keep from shooting back at her, “And what is it about me means I need to be confident to wear this?”
I just…
My mother is a woman in her mid-60s and it still amazes me how she can be so stunted and co-dependent in her view of self/body-image and overall self-esteem.
So stunted that there’s times when she looks at her own daughter and can’t pull the glove inside-out. By which I mean, “Mama, would I need ‘confidence’ to wear an off-shoulder sweater if I was skinner and lighter-skinned?”
My mother doesn’t mean it, but it’s “Amarie, you’re fat and black-but still beautiful to me! Still, where do you get the gall to wear such things? And where can I, who’s also fat and black, find the gall to wear such things too?!”
I've written in an earlier post called “Confidence is a 4-letter Word for Me” about how growing up with this kind of talk ad nauseum-and I truly do mean ad nauseum-jacked my and my sister’s own self-esteem and self-images straight the fuck up.
Sometimes I wish I could believe that it would do any good to tell my mother that…neither confidence nor comfortability is truly given by having a certain body type and thus achieving some arbitrary permission given to you by arbitrary beauty standards.
Sure, it is not completely divorced from outside influence/reaction. (For example, if enough people openly stared and sneered/cringed/winced at my stretch marks when I wear off-shoulder things, then I admit I would likely stop wearing them. Sure. Yeah). But I try to believe that the base fundamentals of it starts with a core of permission within yourself.
That’s just a permission my mother never gained and so she couldn’t pass it onto her daughters.
I’m still healing and recovering every day. And my wearing such sweaters (and other clothes) via just simple pleasure and permission that I give myself is part of that.
I’ve long since given up wishing my mother could be mentally and emotionally healthier. Instead I’ve kept true to a mantra of Love Her Where She’s At…and Accept Yourself Where You’re At With Her.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exhaust and sometimes outright trigger me.
Lord forgive me, can’t wait to get back in my car come March.
Truly I can't.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-21 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-21 03:05 am (UTC)March is coming. :)