When I was 12, Ima had an intense psychotic episode, and my parents separated. I lived with my father.

Who spoke of mental illness in those days? In our close-knit community, absolutely everyone spoke about it… behind their closed doors. Did you hear about Mrs….? But no one spoke to me about it. I went to school as usual, turned in my work on time. I was fortunate to excel in my studies.

Things are so different now; students with difficult home situations are monitored by the administration, the principal, the teachers. There are social workers, art therapy, drama therapy, you name it. But to me, back then? There was a code of silence. As long as I kept my head down and out of trouble, I was just like everyone else in the class.

I wrote Ima off in an emotional sense during my teen years. If she couldn’t give me what I needed, I didn’t need her. I visited, held perfunctory conversations by phone. Hi, how are you, I’m okay, are you okay? Mission accomplished.

I poured all my efforts instead into presenting the world with a put together, making-life-work girl.

I graduated and got a job. Hashem blessed me with great friends who became my lifeline; from them I learned how to do everything from shop for clothes to the best way to iron my hair. I had fun, I had a social life. I was busy. If underneath it all there was a little girl crying for a mother, who had time to listen? Definitely not me.

Thinking of shidduchim and my future scared me. Who would even want me? What kind of life did I want? There were so many questions that I had in the dead of night, but I would shove the doubts away with the sun’s appearance, and focus on getting on with life, and getting it right.

I must have been a good actress, because I was introduced to my husband before I turned 20. The best part? I’d be moving thousands and thousands of miles away to America. I could forget my life in Israel and start anew. No one had to know who I was or where I came from. I could be a nobody! New name, new life… there was so much to look forward to.

Out of courtesy, I involved Ima in some of my wedding preparations. She came with me to one or two appointments, but she never had a big say in my purchases. The thought would float through my mind every so often that this was the time mothers and daughters bonded most. We should be walking through the streets laughing as we schlepped bulging bags. We should be flopping, exhausted, onto pizza shop stools after hours and hours of shopping, and excitedly talking about color schemes and dresses. Instead, I shopped with aunts, cousins, friends. Instead, I kept my pain pushed far, far away, and focused on getting to W-Day with everything I needed.

We were like distant acquaintances. I showed Ima some of the gifts I’d received. I discussed the guest list with her. But it was like she was a minor prop in the play of my life. As I had told myself over the years — she’d given up mothering me. She didn’t even like me. I didn’t need her.

There was one time that the mask dropped. Ima wanted to give me a brachah before my wedding. She placed her hands on my head and blessed me. And as I said Amen, she lowered her hands and choked out a sob. I was so taken aback; I could barely ask her what the matter was.

“I’ve been such a bad mother,” she whispered.

I was completely unready for such a statement. I patted her arm and murmured, “Oh no, Ima, you’re fine. It’s okay.”

And then I pushed all of that away.

A

merica was a shock. Marriage was an adjustment. The language was hard.

But I threw myself into it as I had always taught myself to do, and slowly, slowly started building a life. I pushed myself to speak English even when I didn’t have to. I made friends. I made myself learn about cultural nuances and the American mentality.

I spoke to Abba daily. To Ima, once a week to wish Shabbat Shalom. She’d ask how I was, and I’d tell her I was doing okay even on the days I was very much not doing okay.

And then I became a mother.

It was the hardest thing I had ever done — and I had no prototype to work off. It was also a trigger. All the things Ima had told me about myself were coming true. Fatigue turned me bad-tempered and stubborn. All Ima’s prophecies about the slob I was, about the mess my house would be, were borne out in front of my eyes.

I would hold my baby and cry. What kind of a mother would I be? I didn’t want to make any mistakes. I went to parenting classes. I read any and all reading materials on parenting I could get my hands on. And still Ima’s voice would echo in my mind. You’re not fit to be a mother. You’re a bad person.

I’d also sometimes hold my baby and have questions. Did Ima always hate me? Did she ever hold me in her arms and look down at me… and love me? Was there ever anyone there… before… before illness robbed her of normalcy? Before I knew her?

But who could I ask? What good would reviving the ghosts of long ago do?

I went to therapy. I built myself up. I affirmed and confirmed and mantra-ed. I was a good person. I was a fit mother. I was doing a great job.

Still, every time I saw Ima, when we flew in for a simchah, or for chagim, the self-doubt would be fierce and unrelenting. She’d look at me and at my baby, and I was sure I could read her mind. What are you doing with a baby? You’re not a nice person.

Ima didn’t have to say anything. I knew. And believed.

I had more children, which made traveling to Israel basically impossible. I called Ima every once in a while, in the same detached way. I’m fine, the kids are fine. Baby had an ear infection but now he’s okay. Shabbat Shalom!

Then, as my children grew, as I weathered parenting challenges and questions and doubts, a new thought started growing alongside. Was it fair for Ima to spend her life so far away from the grandchildren she loved because of what seeing her did to me?

Because Ima did love my kids. Whatever demons in her mind painted me, her daughter, as a villain were silent when she hugged her grandchildren. Why should she sit with her sister’s family every chag instead of joining us?

I discussed it with my husband again and again. Could we do this? Should we do this? My husband knew about my history with Ima, but not how she still had the power to destroy me with a single sentence. How her voice still echoed down to me every time I made a bad choice.

We invited Ima for Pesach. I was terrified.

Imagine inviting the ogre of your childhood nightmares to stay in your house. Most of the time I told myself to stop exaggerating — no one was going to get eaten, beaten, or hurt. But ask anyone who has had a childhood trauma, and they’ll tell you that triggers do not listen to rhyme or reason. I spent that Pesach on more metaphorical eggshells than real ones. I calculated every move. I bit back more words than I let out of my mouth. My children loved their time with Savta, but I couldn’t relax. If I told them to go to bed more than once, would Ima call me out on being too strict? If I told them to bentsh? That they’re not getting a treat unless they clear up?

By the time I escorted Ima to the airport, I was a wreck.

“Thank you so much for hosting me!” she said. “I had a wonderful time! I can’t wait to come again!”

I went through a torturous few weeks, trying to separate facts from feelings. Was I blowing things out of proportion? Was I reading too much into every gesture of Ima’s? Every word?

Was everything I had ever believed about me and about Ima true? A lie?

But then she told me on the phone that I was too harsh on my five-year-old and brought ten proofs to support her evidence, and I knew that I wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a lie. It was as though she had a firm narrative in her head about the person I was, and every example she found — she searched for — reinforced that belief.

There was nothing I could do to change that.

I would never invite Ima. Ever again.

But… my heart wouldn’t allow it. I’d sometimes watch my kids and a quick flash of sorrow would pass through me, a deep sadness for my mother, who was missing out on these adorable human beings. I’d suddenly feel deep compassion for a woman who had demons controlling her thoughts, demons that had forced me, all of us, far, far away from her.

And then reality would hit, and I’d go through the whole cycle again. I could host Ima for chagim. I couldn’t. I could. I couldn’t.

The thoughts went around and around.

Did it say in the Torah kabeid es imecha only if she’s a healthy person? If she gave you the childhood you deserved?

Did I need to honor her less because she gave me less?

Should I not be a good daughter if Ima wasn’t a good mother?

I

invited her.

It wasn’t any better. She’d compliment my husband for being such a wonderful person to me, and five minutes later tell me all the ways I was failing him as a wife. It felt like the KGB was in my house, studying my every move. Leave them to play longer, she’d tell me. Why are you in a rush? Put the lid on that pot, your kneidlach won’t cook properly. These pans are junk, I like the other company. I couldn’t even take her compliments — they were laced with incredulity. The kitchen was so clean (can that be you, slob daughter of mine?), the food was so delicious (who would have believed?). I’d walk into my room to scream silently… and remind myself of Dama ben Nesina and his crazy mother, who tore his robes and spat in his face in public. If he could stay silent in the face of her abuse, so could I.

Again, Ima left and I was a wreck.

Again, I promised myself never again.

Again, time passed and my sense of duty, of compassion woke up. I pushed it down, tried to ignore it. But somehow, it won.

One year, I was struggling postpartum after a difficult pregnancy, with an extremely unsettled baby. My husband suddenly turned to me and said, We can’t invite your mother for Pesach. He knew how hosting Ima took it all out of me, and was genuinely worried for my mental health.

What could I say? He was right, I knew. But I couldn’t bear the thought of Ima sitting at a Seder table with my aunt or uncle, searching for invitations because her daughter wouldn’t host her.

Yes, I was irrational and more than a little hormonal. My husband went to speak to our rav.

“The rav said we do NOT need to host your mother. Al pi halachah, that is. But he also said that if we stretch ourselves, and both of us agree… it’s a such a big mitzvah we can’t fathom….”

We spoke about it. And spoke about it. Discussed ways we might make it easier. Ways it might be intolerable.

And invited Ima.

It was one of those impossible Shabbat/chag/Shabbat years. My nerves were stretched thin. I wasn’t sleeping. And Ima was shadowing me. Once just before candlelighting, under stress to get there in time, I raised my voice to scold the kids who hadn’t done their chores. Ima swiftly raised her voice right back at me to tell me to stop being mean to my kids. I lit the candles through my tears, the memory of a little girl sobbing over a puddle of oil searing through me as I wondered if I would ever get it right.

But then there was this: one day in my kitchen, Ima holding my squalling baby as I tried to get going with the cooking.

“When you were a baby,” Ima suddenly said, “Savta used to yell at me for holding you. She said I was making you spoiled.”

I turned around, spoon in hand.

“Yes! You’d even be calm, and I couldn’t put you down. I loved you too much!”

The world stopped spinning; the sun, moon and stars froze in their tracks. I loved you too much.

I could not sleep that night, the image of a young Ima holding tightly to a baby she loved too much to put down. It threatened the foundations of everything I had ever believed to be true.

I pushed away the thoughts, the questions. When did you stop, Ima? When did it turn so bad?

And just held that image as I rocked my own baby. I loved you too much.

That image built the tiniest, flimsiest shield against the next barbed comment. It stopped the wound cutting all that deep. I held it; tried to bring it into focus when the going got so tough I thought the end of it would never come.

The years passed like this, and I became quite adept at adjusting to the status quo. And then, as my children grew into their own amazing personalities, I had the thought that even what I was doing by inviting Ima for Yom Tov wasn’t enough. Why should she miss out on day-to-day life with her grandchildren just because we were oceans apart?

I am neither an angel nor martyr. But that thought pounded at me again and again — I could be what a daughter should be, even though Ima wasn’t the mother she should be. And who was to say what “should be” means? If Hashem gave this mother to me, this was the mother I was meant to have. I was determined to try my very best to honor her with the resources I had available, to focus on the benefits and not the costs.

So I started calling Ima every day.

Sometimes it was just hi and bye. You okay? I’m okay. Sometimes I asked her for recipes. I shared the most mundane aspects of my life — this one was cutting a tooth and the other had lost one. We were having the house painted. So-and-so got engaged, our neighbors were moving. And Ima shared of her life, too — news about people I had known, where she was going, who she met at the makolet.

I was wary. Treading cautiously, never knowing what might prompt words I would not be able to bear. As long as I kept the conversation superficial, I was on safe ground.

This was not a normal mother-daughter relationship. If anything, I was now slowly taking on the role of advice-giver, of worrying for her health and well-being.

Yet it made her so, so happy.

On the days I forgot, or had no time, although they rarely occurred, Ima would tell me the next day that she had missed talking to me. I felt that she genuinely did.

I’d put my children on the phone. They’d send pictures and drawings to Savta, and she’d compliment them effusively.

The more I called, the more I built the relationship, the less I saw of her demons.

Oh, they were still there. Sometimes I’d think they were just waiting for one wrong move of mine, one slip of the tongue, and I’d be banished forever into my past.

So for those five, ten minutes of daily conversation, I selected vignettes of my day, selected slices of my life that I knew would make her proud. And astonishingly, she was proud.

And then one day, ending a conversation, Ima said, “I love you.” And I mumbled something in response….

I could not reconcile those words I had always yearned to hear, to feel, with all the layers of the other words that had caused me such anguish. The words I still had to sometimes fight against, the words I had to tell myself were false, were the product of a sick mind.

This “I love you,” felt meaningless. It felt fake. It felt so many things I didn’t want to think about. So I didn’t.

After that first time, Ima would regularly end phone calls by telling me she loved me. I would regularly say “okay” or “thank you” or “speak to you tomorrow!” before hanging up. I could not bring myself to reciprocate the sentiment.

When we hosted her, I was still on guard. Ima was freer with her compliments; she was delighted with the kids. But she still hovered in the background, waiting to catch me messing up. And I had to stop myself from thinking that, and remind myself again and again to separate the demons from the essence. The demons want to catch you messing up. Ima wants to love you.

It was excruciating. After one explosion I ran to my room and punched my pillow so hard I missed the top of it, hit the headboard and almost broke my hand.

But still I pushed on, knowing I was doing the right thing. And seeing Ima happy most of the time — knowing that I was the one who had facilitated that — made up for the nights I cried myself to sleep.

Day after day I called. Sometimes it felt like Ima’s guard was down, and we’d discuss a little of her childhood. We never discussed mine. I was scared of what it would trigger. I was frightened of what I would hear. But most of all, I didn’t want to cause Ima pain. What if she had forgotten about how bad those years were? Or maybe she remembered but felt bad about it? Who was I to make her upset just to satisfy my curiosity?

Maybe one day the time would be right, but it wasn’t now. So I kept our conversations full of all the bits and pieces that made up my life.

A

nd then she was gone.

My uncle called me early one morning. Ima had suddenly passed away. I made it to Israel, blind, deaf, and dumb. Completely numb. I sat shivah and mumbled platitudes to the people who came to visit. I flew back home, still numb.

How to mourn a life that was so… confused? Tortured? How to put a relationship like this into context? I lost a mother. Maybe not society’s idea of a mother, but a mother nonetheless.

How to reconcile the way Ima behaved toward other people with the way she behaved toward me? Which was real? Which was her voice? The voice that told me I’d never be a good mother, or the voice that told me she loved me?

To debride my wounds to find the truth hurt so much.

But the salve was the way I could look back at the relationship I had built with Ima. For Ima.

At least I do not have to regret abandoning her. At least I do not have to regret depriving her of enjoying her grandchildren. At least I do not have to regret the alienation that would have been so easy.

I do not have to regret any of it, because I poured heart and soul into giving Ima nachas. The nachas she deserved simply because she was the one who brought me into this world. Ima gave me life, and even though that life sometimes seemed too difficult to bear, I know she did the best she could with the tools Hashem gave her. By reaching that knowledge, I could reach a place of forgiveness even though she never asked for it.

In an age where so many children and so many parents are walking wounded; where so many relationships cause agony and trauma and irreversible damage, I’m grateful that Hashem gave me the strength to rise above it and create something out of nothing.

I have endured unbearable pain. But looking back at the string of days when I put myself on the line in a literal and emotional sense gives me a modicum of comfort.

It’s from this place of deep understanding that I can tell anyone who has had to turn away from someone who should have nurtured and protected them and instead has wounded them irreparably — you can do something to create a new beginning.

For what is love? If the root of ahavah is hav, you can give. If your pain is too great, you can say a perek Tehillim for yourself to heal, and a perek Tehillim for the one who hurt you — to pray that they can heal, too.

You can do a mitzvah and dedicate it to healing — yours and theirs. You can send a short gut Shabbos message. You can build a new relationship out of nothing. It may be a parody of the thing it should have been, but it will be better than nothing.

It doesn’t mean your trauma isn’t real. It doesn’t mean you’re ignoring the shattering damage that was done.

It means you’re going in His ways.

It means that one day in the future you will have no regrets.

Or at least, very few regrets. For I will always regret the final hurdle I failed to clear.

If only I could answer that one last time…

Ima, I love you, too.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 974)