“Don’t worry, you can write about your mother when you grow up. She took revenge on me,” my mother told my growing son, laughing so hard that she had to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes.
My children and I visited him, just before my son went to college. He had shaved his head completely bald, and I was gently trying to tell him that I preferred his regular haircut. He looked at me and said, Mom, please stop talking.
Mom watched them exchange on the couch, smiling.
“He used to do that to me all the time—” he said to my son “— he is very angry with me for the things I say to him.” Now he’s written a whole book telling everyone how bad I was.”
It’s become something of a family series, he calls it “my revenge book.” And I laugh again, but there’s a reason it stays, because it’s completely wrong.
Five years ago, after decades of dreaming about it, I began writing a book about growing up with a mother who desperately wanted me to be thin. As I wrote this book, I shared its details with my family, including him. Everyone knew that this book would have echoes of my complicated, and sometimes dark, relationship with my mother. Then two years ago, I got a book deal, and since then, excitement about it coming out today has been mixed with joking that it’s “my revenge book”.
Although this book is not technically a memoir, its emotional skeleton is my life. Shyness, obesity, high expectations – real. Like a mother who believed that being thin equals beauty, and a daughter who believed that she should find her love by reaching for it.
When I was 13, my mother told me, “I love you, Rebecca, but I don’t love you. We had been fighting for months. I ran to my room, took out my diary, and wrote I HATE MOTHER in all caps, followed by a full page of exclamation points. At that moment something broke between us. I was not the daughter he wanted. And she wasn’t the mother I needed.
She had grown up in a world and era that told her that a woman’s worth was determined by the shape of her body. For him, one of the worst things a woman can do is to be fat. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I was. He put me in food, held me on the scale, tried bribery, threats and tears. I understood everything as a message: You have gone too far. It’s too big. You are not like this.
I have never lost weight. Instead, I settled into my American-sized body and learned to love myself and accept the way I was. My happiness changed him. It didn’t erase the past, but it reframed it. He stopped seeing my body as a problem and started seeing me as the woman he loves. I became a lawyer, got married and had children. We found a way to talk about our experiences without judgment. We worked to heal our wounds and love each other in a way that felt wider and truer. Two decades later, I started writing my novel.
Then something happened that felt the opposite of revenge.
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I saw my phone vibrate. It was my mother. We FaceTime every day, sometimes for so long jokes it’s like we live together. I tell him about my work and my children; she tells me what she and my father are doing. But today was different.
An article I wrote about the two of us was recently published on the website of the “Today” show. It went viral, and there were thousands of comments pouring in on their social media pages. I couldn’t wait to tell her how touching our story was – how women and men of all ages said it made them see and understand their mothers or daughters.
I answered the FaceTime call expecting to see his 72-year-old wrinkle-free face. Instead, the screen was filled with puffy red eyes and a quivering mouth.
“Don’t do that again,” she cried. “Don’t … do that again. Don’t write about me.”
“What? Wait, what’s going on?”
“Margaret called me. After that Leila. They asked me if I was okay. They said this piece made them feel very sorry for me. Like I was some kind of … monster. They asked how a daughter could write such bad things about her mother.”
“But we’ve been talking about writing about it for two years,” I said. “I read you an article. You were right about it. I’ve written about this before – in the New York Times, The Washington Post – ”
“That article.” He cried. “Bad, did you write that?”
The title was, “As a Girl, My Mother Taught Me That Being Fat Was the Worst Thing a Woman Could Be.” It stayed at the top of the “Today” show’s homepage all day, along with articles about the Met Gala and Tina Fey. But none of that mattered.
“I never said that,” he insisted. And it’s true. He didn’t have to say it. He showed it – in his disappointment, in his desperate attempts to change me, in the sadness that filled the room when I stepped on the scale. But this was no time to rehash the past.
“I didn’t write the article,” I told him. “And if they read the whole episode, they would know that it’s not about you being a bad person. It’s about you being a person, doing the best you could at the time, about us getting back together. It’s a love story.”
“I’m not … I’m not a monster,” he cried.
His pain consumed me. I have been writing this book for two years already, not as a payment, but to understand myself and to help women who have grown up in the same system, women who are taught that their worth depends on the size of their bodies. I thought my mom and I were on the other side of this. You are healed. It’s safe. Now here we are again, both shattered.
“Okay,” I said. “I will not write about you.”
“Good,” he whispered, wiping his face. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
I sat in my closet-sized office, heart pounding, wondering what to do. Writing was more than a job; it was my intention. My way of making sense of what it means to be a woman in a world that doesn’t allow you to be at peace with yourself.
Was I a monster for sharing our darkest parts and worst moments?
Hours later, my phone rang again. It was him.
“I don’t care what anyone says. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Go follow your dreams,” she said. “I love you. Keep writing.”
“Are you sure?” I asked surprised.
“I’m sure. After re-reading this piece, I realized that what hurt me the most was not the story or the topic. It was when you wrote there that I don’t love you unconditionally. That’s not true. I loved you unconditionally.”
“You never told me that,” I whispered, a lump forming in my throat.
“Well, it’s true. You’re my daughter. You’re my life. My love for you was always unconditional.”
And there was. The sentence I had been waiting all my life to hear.
Hosted by Rebecca Morrison
That’s real love — the dirty, hard-earned kind that keeps showing up, even after the damage. Even then the damage it’s a story.
I told her what I truly believe, that no matter how much the struggle has hurt us, no matter how much heartache was inside that child and that mother, and also, in many ways, the child when she found me, there is always a chance for healing. There is hope for reconciliation. With love.
If one of us had refused to overcome our pride – if we had always been stubborn – we would not be here now, able to make a joke about something very difficult, serious and, in a way, very beautiful.
He is calling it my revenge letter. And I’m fine with that. But we both know better.
I didn’t write it to get back at him.
I wrote so that we understand. Track the damage and see what’s left. I wrote because you let me. He gave me the space to tell the truth, even if it stings. That is strong love.
So yeah, maybe it started as a revenge book.
But it ended up being a love affair.
Rebecca Morrison is the author of “The Blue Dress,” a novel based on her childhood as an immigrant in Iran trying to fit in with her homeland and conform to her family’s expectations of beauty. You can find her at rebeccakmorrison.com.
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