Mother, the Monster

You put the phone down and your hands are shaking, and then you tell yourself you are being dramatic.

You have read the other books. They explained your mother beautifully, made you cry for two days, and then stopped — leaving you knowing exactly what happened to you and with no idea what to do on Sunday when she rings.

This one is the other half.

Mother, the Monster is a gentle, body-first workbook for the adult daughters and sons of a mother who was cold, or cruel, or frightening, or simply never quite there behind her eyes. It does not diagnose her. It will not tell you what to do about contact — and it says so, twice, on the page.

What it does is give you something to hold.

Every single exercise ends the same way. Feet on the floor. One long breath out. Today’s date, and one thing you can see. One true sentence. Two minutes, and you are back in the room. By the fourth time you will be doing it without reading it — in a car park, in a corridor, with the phone still going in your hand.

Inside:

• The Mother Moments — thirty-eight real situations, one page each, indexed so you can find yours in ten seconds at eleven at night. She rings and rings. A guilt text arrives. The silent treatment. She arrives unannounced. She asks for money. Someone says but she’s your mother.
• The Sentence Bank — the actual words. Short, non-defensive, British, for saying out loud with your heart going.
• The Contact Dial — contact is not a switch, it is a dial with six named stops, and this book has no opinion about where yours should sit.
• Thirty days, ten minutes each, that ask almost nothing of you.
• My Own Manual — the one page readers photograph and keep.
• Written for the UK, including Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the routes and the numbers that actually apply here.

Every page is tagged for where you are — she is in my life · we are barely speaking · we are not speaking · she has died. Nothing in this book assumes she is on the phone.

This will not fix your mother, and it does not try. It will not tell you to forgive her. It will not tell you not to. What it will do is stop you losing the whole evening to a two-word text.

It is not for everyone, and it says so early. If what you are carrying is severe childhood trauma, there is a page near the front that says so plainly and points you somewhere better suited. That page is there because the wrong book at the wrong moment does harm.

You were not too much. You were small, and you did what small people do, which is adapt to the weather you were given.

Go gently.