July 26, 2025
Here’s your text with improved punctuation, capitalization, and formatting, divided into paragraphs of roughly equal length (2–3 sentences each). I preserved your raw, conversational tone throughout.
I grew up initially confident in my mother’s feminism. Several people in my father’s Catholic family, who she divorced when I was four, referred to her as a “bra‑burning feminist,” and my aunt kept a decades‑long grudge against her after my mother had recommended she get an abortion in high school.
When I was six, my mother married a card‑carrying, gun‑toting Republican. He was the NRA chapter president and taught me how to shoot by the time I was in middle school.
When they first got married, she was still working full‑time in her government job where she’d met him, and my older siblings and I were typical 1980s latchkey kids. They had work friends over for dinner parties, and she was proud of her membership in a feminist organization, her friendship with a gay man, and excited when we moved to Washington, D.C. My friends there were mostly Vietnamese and Black, and I was always encouraged to read everything I could get my hands on.
While my stepfather, ten years her senior, was a Republican, she considered herself an Independent. When we attended Reagan’s inauguration during our East Coast stay, and I got a White House tour on my birthday, it was all because we were obsessed with history. We spent weekends exploring the Smithsonian museums and every other historical site we could find, and my life was never the same after living out there.
A few years later, in 1984, when I was ten, my mother quit her government job and became a self‑proclaimed homemaker. My older siblings from her first marriage had already moved out, so it was just me. I started middle school watching my mom shift from an independent, working woman to someone focused on picking up dry cleaning and having dinner ready on time.
She also got deeply into gardening, baking, and canning—three hobbies I inherited from her—but I realize now that this is when the dinner parties stopped. The only visitors were my stepfather’s adult children and their spouses. Through middle and high school, my outspoken mother had few friends and became quieter about politics unless her opinions matched my stepfather’s.
It was subtle at first, but the change was real. By the time I hit adolescence, I saw the hypocrisy. She was a stay‑at‑home mom when I no longer needed one, she never finished the schooling she started after her first divorce, yet told me I’d be nothing without a degree. Her old art projects and records ended up in the attic while her identity merged completely with his.
Yet when I wanted to protest the Gulf War or sit with the family of Mulugeta Seraw, the Ethiopian‑American man murdered by White Supremacists in my hometown, she wrote me school‑absence notes for those causes. She got me on birth control as a teen and encouraged me to enjoy being single, not to rush into marriage or motherhood.
My brother became an accidental father when I was thirteen, and her relationship with being a grandmother was complicated. She was divorced three times before marrying my stepfather and was adamant that my sister and I not repeat her mistakes. When I went off to college at seventeen, I figured she and my stepfather would travel and enjoy their empty nest since I knew deep down she wasn’t meant to be a mom.
At first, it seemed that way—they traveled when I was in my early twenties, even living in Germany for a consulting job he took. They didn’t own a TV, and I stayed blissfully unaware of politics. We used to joke about how mad he’d get about Hillary Clinton, so I assumed my mother was still secretly a feminist at heart.
But my relationship with my stepfather was nonexistent once I left home. He stopped calling, stopped caring, as though fatherhood to me was now off his plate. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I had to find out from a friend of a friend; he never reached out.
Post‑9/11, she told me with certainty that my flight‑engineer brother said Saddam Hussein hid bombs under schools. He never had that kind of clearance, let alone the poor judgment to share it, and I knew then something was shifting in her. By the time I was thirty, she was bragging about buying their first big‑screen TV “so we can watch O’Reilly.” My jaw dropped, but I didn’t realize how dangerous that was yet.
My sister later told me my stepfather made racist and homophobic remarks at dinner, which stunned me. I didn’t want to believe my mother would go along with it. But her politics were changing, and when she called me in 2008 to say, “You know who I really like? Sarah Palin,” I nearly lost it.
After that conversation, we didn’t talk politics again. When I expressed disappointment that they refused to attend my first art show—less than ten miles away—she told me bluntly that my stepfather “never liked” me. I cut her off after that. She wasn’t one to apologize for anything, and we didn’t speak for seven years.
When my brother told me my stepfather had cancer, I wrote my mother a letter to express sympathy. I didn’t mention the past, just offered empathy. They’d been married thirty‑five years, and I knew it would devastate her. When he died, she texted me, but there was no funeral.
We reconnected briefly in 2016, and I was shocked at how small and frail she’d become. Her shelves used to overflow with books—now there was just one, filled with titles by right‑wing pundits like Glenn Beck. My sister had come out of the closet, which baffled our mother. She made snide comments about her girlfriend “dressing like a man,” and I had to meet those with calm explanations instead of anger.
I thought that widowhood might free her—that she’d move abroad, reconnect with her feminist roots. But not so much. Around that same time, I was struggling through multiple rounds of IVF, emotionally and physically exhausted, and she had zero interest in supporting me.
On the fourth round, we finally got a positive test. I called her, so full of joy, and she seemed happy—briefly. When I sent her the ultrasound, she said, “I’ll look at it after I finish watching the Republican National Convention.” Three days later, she texted one word: “Neat.”
Not long after, I miscarried at nine weeks. I begged her to come sit with me, but she stayed at her new boyfriend’s. Yes—the one she started seeing while my stepfather was in hospice. Three weeks went by before she sent another text: “U ok?” That was the end for me. I told her I didn’t want a relationship anymore.
Her response was vicious, but it didn’t hurt this time. She’d gone from being an opinionated, creative feminist—even if flawed—to a paranoid, bitter woman steeped in hate. I know now she’s angry and isolated, but I’m at peace with my decision to walk away.
My sister still keeps me updated, though. Mom sits around with old‑man boyfriends, glued to YouTube and Fox News, her house cluttered with Trump memorabilia. She even has a MAGA hat perched on a lamp. She sends hateful memes about Kamala Harris and insulting messages to my sister, who still engages with her for reasons I can’t fathom.
At eighty‑four, my mother is lost to it completely. As your documentary pointed out, it’s been a slow burn over decades. I can’t unsubscribe her from her own delusion, though sometimes I cheekily sign her up for progressive mailers. But she’s surrounded by hate, talk radio, and an utter lack of diversity.
She has no interest in independence anymore. She chooses her cell of hate, and that, more than anything, is what truly breaks my heart.