If Your Mother Is Perfect, Don’t Read This.
Author, Marcela Gómez at an event in Nashville, TN in 2004.
This isn’t a feel-good tribute to a sainted mother. If that’s what you’re expecting, I invite you to stop reading here, bless your heart, and go back to your social media of choice where your friends are posting angelic photos of their mothers with captions like “My forever best friend.”
This is for the rest of us.
This is for the daughters who’ve sat through a thousand stories meant to guilt, shame, silence, or erase them. It’s for the grown women who are still spoken to like they’re five years old. It’s for the ones who were told not to cry. Not to contradict. Not to remember.
This is my truth—unfiltered, unedited, and 60 years in the making. Writing this didn’t come easy. Living it was harder. But the moment the balloon burst—the moment my body said “No more”—was the beginning of something sacred: my freedom.
What follows is not fiction, exaggeration, or revisionist history. It’s the lived experience of a daughter learning, finally, to choose herself.
PART I: The Balloon Bursts
It all started the day after Thanksgiving 2021. I was sitting in my sister’s living room in Miami, minding my own business and playing a game on my phone. My mother was on the sofa nearby, either watching TV or on her phone. The house was still in disarray, and everyone else was either asleep or working in another room.
Out of nowhere, my brother-in-law walked into the kitchen and said, "I don’t understand how Catholics can be pro-choice."
Now let me explain something: most of my family are born-again Christian, Republican, and pro-life. They also know that I’m pro-choice. But I didn’t engage. I knew it wasn’t about me, so I kept my eyes on my game.
That’s when my mother said something that cracked everything open.
"It’s like Oscar," she said, referring to my father, who passed away in 1996. "He forced me to have an abortion while he was having a child with another woman."
I froze.
I knew about the abortion. But another child? Another half-brother? That was new.
My brother-in-law looked at me, stunned, and asked, "Marcela, did you know that?"
I responded, "I knew about the abortion. I didn’t know I had another half-brother."
My mother shot back angrily, "Yes, you did. You told me you met him."
I corrected her. The half-brother I met was born after my son. Was she suggesting my father forced her to an abortion after she left him?
She snapped, "Okay, no. That’s not it. But that man was a monster. I was like a slave to him."
And that’s when it happened.
I felt a sharp, physical pain—like a needle plunging into my soul. I felt like a huge balloon inside me had burst. My body went weak. I felt dizzy, shattered, disoriented. I froze.
This moment was more than shocking. It was catalytic. It unlatched every suppressed memory, every cruel word, every painful silence that had ever come from my mother. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
PART II: The Retreat
I had already told my mother I would spend a few days with her at her apartment. I kept my word, but I couldn't speak. I packed up, got in her car, and we drove to her home mostly in silence for 45 minutes.
I spent three days in the second bedroom, coming out only to get food to take back into the bedroom and to use the bathroom. I was like a wounded puppy hiding behind a door. I was 57 years old.
Eventually, my sister showed up. She opened the door playfully and said, "What are you doing in here?"
I couldn’t answer. I was so surprised to see her. I was so happy. It felt like a rescue mission.
She said they came because the air conditioning wasn’t working, and her husband came to fix it. I told her I didn’t want to come out of the room. She must’ve seen something in me because she said, "Come with us. Get your stuff. Come home with us."
We went out for dinner first. At a Cuban restaurant in Pembroke Pines, I tried to hold it together. But when my brother-in-law said, "I couldn’t live like your mom. Alone, watching the news all day, no friends," I burst into tears.
They let me speak. I told them what happened. I told them stories of my childhood I had never shared. And the balloon kept deflating.
PART III: A Lifetime of Stories
From my earliest memories, my mother painted my father as a monster. Even after his death in 1996, the stories never stopped.
When my son brought his girlfriend—now his wife—to meet our family, my mother told her, unprompted, that her life had been so awful she once wanted to commit suicide. Then she said good night and left us with the weight of that trauma.
I had heard many stories of how awful my father was and how much she suffered, I had not once heard her say she wanted to die. Why did she share this story upon meeting my son’s girlfriend? Was she making sure this new person in our lives knew how awful my father was and the victim that she was? I was confused, mortified, and embarrassed.
She has always made herself the victim and used that pain to silence me, guilt me, manipulate me.
During a celebratory breakfast for one of my nephew’s college graduation, I dared to voice my opinion about the cost of retirement in the United States. My mother slammed her hand on the table and shouted, "Don’t contradict me."
I was 58 years old at the time. I froze.
It took 24 hours to build the strength to tell her that she could not treat me that way, that she could not talk to me like that. I said, “My opinions are different from yours and I have the right to my opinions.” Her response, “Then, you and I can never speak again.” I bolted out of the parked car and left my sister to deal with her.
After walking around the area, my sister, my mother, and I sat at a restaurant and ordered iced tea. My sister told us we needed to talk to each other.
I finally found the strength to say, “For 58 years, I’ve believed that I am the reason your life has been so miserable—because you and my father had to get married when you found out you were pregnant with me.”
She didn’t deny it. She reached out for my hands and said, “You are loved.”
I pulled my hands away from hers.
PART IV: The Childhood I Wasn’t Allowed to Feel
At 11, my parents sent me to Miami to live with my grandparents. The official reason was to improve my English. But I knew it was to keep me from witnessing their separation.
I was miserable. My grandfather slapped me at the dinner table when I refused to eat green beans. My grandmother cooked green beans every night, I didn’t like them. I don’t eat green beans. I missed my family.
It wasn’t easy living with my grandparents, I’m sure it wasn’t easy for them to have an 11-year old living with them. My grandfather and I would fight over the only television set in the home. I wanted to watch the Donny and Marie Osmond Show, he wanted to watch tennis.
After four months in Miami, it was one of my aunts who told my grandparents that they had to send me back to Bogotá, she could tell I was suffering.
My parents picked me up at the airport together. A vision of hope for an 11-year old. They were together. We drove home. As we were pulling into the apartment building, my father dropped us off at the main entrance and told us to wait for him by the elevator while he parked the car.
We didn’t wait. My mother called the elevator and we got it. I was confused. I froze. We were asked to wait. My mother pushed the button for the fourth floor and as the elevator began to go up floor by floor, she turned to me and said, "Your father already moved out. Don’t cry."
So I didn’t. I froze.
We got to the apartment, I walked into my bedroom, and a few minutes later I heard my father walk into our apartment. We had three bedrooms immediately to the left of the entrance, a long hallway that took you to the kitchen and then the living and dining room. I heard my father walk down the hallway when he called my name.
I walked to the living room, saw him sitting on the main sofa, he signaled with his hand on the sofa to come sit next to him. I did. As I sat down, my mother came down the hallway and said to him, “I already told her you moved out.” My father with frustration in his voice said to her, “We agreed we would tell her together.” She responded, “Well, too bad, I already told her and told her not to cry.”
I didn’t. I went to bed.
Years later, after graduating from high school in Charlotte, North Carolina, my siblings and I went to Bogotá to visit my father for our summer break. My dad and I were in his car driving home. As we were pulling into the same apartment building we once all lived in, I asked my dad if I could stay and live with him. He opened his eyes wide, turned to me with joy on his face, held my hand and said, “Of course, mi hijita.”
He asked me if I had told my mother, I said no. He suggested I go back to Charlotte, talk with my mother, pack my stuff and come back. I told him that if I would go back to Charlotte, my mother would not let me leave. I told him to please call her and tell her.
He called my mother to tell her. She demanded he send my siblings back immediately. And then, she got on the phone with me and said, "If you stay with him, he might abuse you."
She never stopped trying to weaponize my father’s memory—and my guilt.
PART V: The Professional Silence
I co-own and run a DEI-focused marketing firm. In 2025, when the administration's policies began to severely impact our business, I hoped my family would reach out.
They didn’t.
Not even my mother, who I had hired for Spanish translations for years.
When I shared the news of how our business was being affected by the new policies in our family WhatsApp group—the one I created, with clear rules of no politics or religion—my mother replied:
“Ok la abuela is talking now. If this is politics this chat is only for family events, prayers, travel, pictures etc. Thank you 😊🙏 You can open your own chat to argue what is going on in our country. ☺️ Because we all have different world views. Remember we’re family first. 🥰 One more thing: God loves us no matter what.”
Yes. She opened with her title. To establish rank.
I replied:
“You can also leave this chat if it bothers you that we are speaking truth and not politics. We all have a voice. Just because you are ‘la abuela’ doesn’t make you higher or better than us.”
Not my most diplomatic moment. But maybe the most honest one.
I was accused of talking about politics on the WhatsApp group because I mentioned how my business was being affected.
Silly me for not opening an empanada stand instead of a DEI multicultural marketing firm.
I felt like I needed to vomit words—to stand my ground, to claim space in this so-called “family first” dynamic of hers.
For 60 years, every time I called her crying, I got one of two responses:
“Why are you crying? Don’t cry.”
Or the ever-reliable: “Tell me about it—I had it worse with your father.”
ARRGHHHHH!!!
Am I part of this family first group?
Can anyone hear me?
PART VI: The Last Contact
I haven’t spoken to my mother since.
She emailed me once, calling me a spoiled brat and saying she didn’t know why she was so harsh with me. My response, “I don’t know what to say to this.”
Another time, she texted: "How are you?" Like nothing happened.
I heard my soul say: No. You don’t get to pretend. Not anymore.
I remembered the 2019 visit when she was so harsh with me during a family reunion that I left two days early without telling her. I was staying at her place, got up at 4am, ordered an UBER and got on a flight back to Nashville without telling her. I couldn’t stay one minute longer.
She never called to ask why.
The days turned into weeks, turned into months. She never reached out to ask or to talk with her daughter to see why I had left so abruptly. I lived in fear and guilt all that time. I told myself I would call her for Mother’s Day and we would take that chance to talk and reconcile.
I remembered that day. I showered, put on my makeup, and while blow drying my hair, I built the strength to call her and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. I played the scenario over and over in my head. This was the perfect excuse to call her, she would ask me why I had left, and I would be able to share with her how I felt when she would dismiss me and say harsh things to me.
I called. I heard her say, hello. I said, “Happy Mother’s Day, Ma.”
Then I heard her say, “Ok, now that you’ve called, I’m going to send you an email with parameters you have to follow so you and I can have a relationship." Click.
I froze. I had no voice. What about my feelings? Who cared about your feelings, Marcela. Who cares?
Two days later I received her email. For the life of me, I can’t remember the six or eight bullet points I saw. I don’t even know if I kept that email. I still can’t bring myself to search for it. I am not that strong yet.
The bullet point I remember said: You can never stay with me more than three nights.
I was at work, in our co-working space when I received the email. I froze. I began to read it and began to weep. My business partners were with me. I started to read the email out loud. They were shocked. They didn’t say a word. I cried. I cried. I cried.
A few days later, I was able to email her back and asked her for one thing in return: Once in a while will you call me or text me to ask me how I’m doing.
So when I saw that text message came in April 2025—"How’s it going?"—it wasn’t kind to me. It was erasure.
PART VII: The Therapist, the Revelation, and the Third Arm
I asked my Colombian therapist: "What happens if I stop having a relationship with my mother? Will I grow a third arm? Will I grow a second head? Will I go to hell?"
He smiled gently.
"You and your mother are perfect rays of Spirit. On Earth for such a time as this, she plays the role of mother. You play the role of daughter. But now, you get to decide what kind of adult daughter you want to be."
And that was it. That was the door.
I get to decide what kind of adult daughter I want to be. Adult being the operative word.
My sister said to me not long ago that our father once told her that she and my brother were made with love.
I wondered, How was I made? I’ve never known.
My mother says, "I don’t remember. I blocked it all. That’s before Christ."
But she remembers every offense. Every wrong. Every trauma.
She just doesn’t remember me.
I used to believe that telling the truth about my relationship with my mother would make me a bad daughter. That speaking out would mean I was ungrateful, disloyal, or worse—selfish. I carried that fear like a second skin.
For most of my life, I was labeled: spoiled, rebellious, disobedient, rude. The message was clear: You are the problem.Those labels kept me tethered to guilt, convinced that if I just behaved better—loved harder, stayed quieter, tried more—I might finally earn acceptance.
I was trained to believe that expressing pain was an act of betrayal. That saying “I’m hurt” was being dramatic. That asking to be seen was asking for too much.
On more than one occasion, when I shared my experience of being uprooted and forced to finish high school in Charlotte, my mother would interrupt loudly and dismissively: “Oh, the poor pitiful victim.”
That sentence was a muzzle. A shutdown. A script I was supposed to follow: Don’t cry. Don’t complain. Don’t hurt. Don’t feel.
The balloon burst. This is where my therapist would tell me to be thankful for what my mother has done. Her harsh words, her constantly bad mouthing my father, her bullying me was the long, thin, sharp needle needed for the balloon that was holding all my feelings to burst.
Am I thankful? Yes. Have I forgiven her? Not yet. Am I grateful that through all this pain, I have found my strength and my freedom? YES!
There’s something else I have found in the darkness of the relationship with my mother, and that’s not to be that type of mother to my son. It is the year 2025 and my son turns 35 this year. Have I made tons of mistakes, absolutely. Some I may not even know about. What I do know is that I am intentional about paying attention to every thought that crosses my mind, every word that wants to come out of my mouth. I check my heart to make sure my emotions and my feelings are not manipulative, guilt-driven, or condemning. Have I always succeeded? No.
When I was raising my son, I knew I had to take care of myself first so I could truly be there for him.
In 2012, I made a promise to myself: to care for me first—so I could become a better version of myself, not just for him, but for me.
That’s when I finally understood the true meaning of being self-ish.
In 2012, I began the process of challenging my beliefs. That summer, during one of our long conversations while my son was home from college, he looked at me and said:
“What if you’re wrong? What if everything you believe in is wrong—and you’re crazy?”
My beliefs had trickled down to him for years. And now, as an adult, he didn’t know how to navigate them. He wasn’t carrying the same guilt or programming that sustained me all these years.
I want my son to be free—to be fully himself. So I said:
“I could be crazy.”
Those words created a crack in the matrix. That was the moment my new life began.
Since then, I’ve been on a healing journey, taking intentional steps toward greater freedom. Those steps are now elements in THE C.R.E.A.T.E. FRAMEWORK By Marcela Gómez™.
The stories I share in this blog live at the intersection of these three elements of framework:
Challenge Your Beliefs: I dared to question the rule that said being a good daughter meant allowing my mother to bully and diminish me—constantly.
Revisit Your Stories as the Observer: Detaching emotionally and going back in time to revisit these stories as an observer wasn’t easy. I cried while writing this—and that’s okay. I had the strength to revisit those memories, to observe myself, and ask: Why didn’t I speak up in a meaningful way?
What I saw, over and over again, was five-year-old Marcela—body frozen, tears held back, a knot in her throat.
Transform Through Action: I finally stood up. I spoke. I said, No. And I did not grow a third arm.
Are you open to challenging beliefs about what it means to be a good daughter, a good son?
What beliefs about family, loyalty, and love have I inherited that no longer serve me?
When I revisit my past, can I do so as an observer—without judgment, just curiosity?
What’s one action I could take this week to honor my truth—even if it ruffles tradition?