Let me be clear: I hate my mother. She was a terrible person who treated me terribly. She was a drug addict who dragged her children from doctor to doctor, pharmacy to pharmacy, before computer systems could track prescriptions. She took us with her to buy pills from strange men in random apartments and flea markets. She chose to stay with my pedophile father because his paycheck was worth more to her than protecting her daughters. She beat us, tortured us, neglected us and fucked us up mentally.
But here’s where it gets complicated: She was also genuinely ill. Physically and mentally. She had real health issues that went undiagnosed and untreated. The medical system labeled her a hypochondriac with Munchausen syndrome… and while she absolutely was drug-seeking, that wasn’t the whole story.
It wasn’t until after she died in 2019 that I started learning about trauma, neurodivergence, and chronic illness. That’s when I realized something uncomfortable: She probably had many of the same conditions I do. ADHD. Autism. hEDS. POTS. A collection of interconnected conditions that cause widespread pain and dysfunction. Conditions that were barely researched, especially in women. Conditions that are still dismissed and doubted today.
This isn’t a story about forgiving my mother. It’s a story about understanding how systems fail people… and how those failures create cycles that ripple through generations.
If someone had recognized her neurodivergence when she was young… if her chronic pain had been properly diagnosed and treated… if her trauma had been addressed… would she have needed to self-medicate? If she’d had access to real support and healthcare, would she have felt trapped with an abusive partner for financial security? If she’d had her basic needs met, could she have developed the capacity to be a better mother?
I’ll never know the answers to these questions. But I do know that by the time the evangelical church “saved” her after an overdose in her 30s, she was already trapped in multiple failing systems. They didn’t offer real help… just shame, control, and a new framework for avoiding accountability. She went from being an IV heroin user and sex worker to a prescription drug addict who used Christianity to justify her actions.
Now here I am today navigating a very similar healthcare system like a complex game of chess just like she had to. I have to look competent but not too put together. Describe pain but but don’t actually complain. Make doctors think my ideas were their own. Bring my husband because they’re more likely to listen to a man. I’ve had to become my own researcher, advocate, and diagnostician because the system still isn’t designed to hear us.
Every diagnosis, treatment or test that I’ve received in the last five years… Celiac, Autism, hEDS, POTS, MCAS… I had to figure out myself and coerce the professionals into helping me.
And I recognize the privilege in being able to do this. I’m white, educated, have resources and support. I can make myself heard without being labeled “difficult” or “aggressive.”
Understanding these systems doesn’t excuse my mother’s choices. She was an adult who made decisions that hurt her children. But it does help explain how someone can be both a perpetrator and a victim of systemic failure. How lack of early intervention, proper diagnosis, and support can create cycles of trauma and addiction that affect generations.
The medical system, like so many of our systems, wasn’t built to serve everyone equally. It was built on assumptions about who deserves care, who deserves to be believed, who deserves to be heard. It operates on white supremacy, patriarchy, and evangelical beliefs about worthiness and punishment.
My mother was both a casualty of these systems and someone who perpetuated their harm. That’s the uncomfortable truth about systemic failure… it creates impossible situations where people can be both victims and perpetrators. Where getting help requires resources most people don’t have. Where early intervention could prevent generations of trauma, but instead we wait until people are broken enough to justify punishment.
I learned all this too late to help my mother. But right now, these systems aren’t just continuing – they’re being strengthened and weaponized at unprecedented levels. We’re watching the evangelical right take direct control of healthcare policy, erasing decades of progress in weeks. They’re systematically dismantling protections for marginalized people, all while claiming it’s for our own good.
This isn’t abstract policy – it’s life and death. They’re stripping healthcare access from trans people, forcing doctors to misgender patients, removing crucial public health information from government websites, and reversing protections that took years to put in place. They’re doing this while simultaneously gutting programs that help the most vulnerable access care, all under the guise of “religious freedom” and “biological truth.”
The same systems that gaslit my mother, that tried to convince her she was crazy rather than sick, are now being codified into law. The same evangelical framework that taught me illness was punishment for sin is now writing executive orders. The same people who profit from keeping us sick are now making the rules about who deserves care.
When you’re fighting to be heard by doctors, when you’re being dismissed or disbelieved, when you’re watching family members fall through the cracks – understand that this isn’t accidental. These systems were designed to fail most of us while convincing us we’re the problem. They’re designed to keep us isolated, to make us think our struggles are personal failures rather than systemic violence.
Right now, they’re scrubbing government websites of information about trans healthcare, HIV, and women’s health. They’re dismantling diversity initiatives that helped marginalized people access care. They’re explicitly defining sex and gender in ways that deny reality and harm vulnerable people. And they’re doing it all while claiming it’s about truth and protection.
This is how systems of oppression work – they take our pain and use it against us. They take our struggles to access care and turn them into proof that we don’t deserve care. They take our fight to be believed and twist it into evidence that we’re just seeking attention.
I can’t go back and help my mother. I can’t undo the damage these systems did to her, or to me, or to countless others. But I can help expose how these systems operate. I can help others recognize the patterns before they become casualties. I can add my voice to the chorus of those fighting back.
Because here’s what I know now: Understanding these systems, seeing how they operate, recognizing their patterns – that’s the first step toward dismantling them. Maybe we can’t change the past, but we can fight like hell to build something better… something that catches people before they fall so far that their children become collateral damage in their struggle to survive.
The truth is uncomfortable. It should be. We’re watching in real time as systems of oppression become more overt, more violent, more explicit in their goals. But discomfort is what drives change. And change is what we desperately need.