How My Mother’s Violence Shaped My Queerness

 TW: This piece discusses childhood abuse, physical violence, emotional neglect, and parental trauma. Please take care while reading. 

Just a kid, somewhere along the way.

This is not my usual content.

I usually write about physics. It's been a while since I've posted on here, and I have many saved drafts written about black holes, nature, and gateways to other universes. But it's Pride Month, and something old has been surfacing again. Like background radiation, always there and impossible to ignore: Am I a lesbian because I never had a mother who loved me?

A person born in a burning house believes the world is on fire. And for most of my life, I didn’t know any different. I came out at sixteen. I'm twenty-four now. I've known for a long time that I love women. That this is not a phase or a reaction or a wound pretending to be love. But lately, I've been wondering how much my queerness was shaped in the shadows of my mother's violence. Not created by it, but bent around it.

She didn’t just hit me. This wasn’t a “whooping” or a slap on the wrist. It wasn’t the kind of violence that gets brushed off or joked about in too many POC households. She beat me until I bled. Left black eyes and deep purple bruises down my arms. Forced me to wear cardigans to school so no one would notice. She broke two pairs of my glasses hitting me in the face.

When I came out, she threw me to the ground and tore off my clothes so she could hit me harder. That was the first time I truly felt suicidal. I was living in a different country, just sixteen years old, and my home was hell. Death felt like the only escape. I genuinely contemplated jumping off the balcony. I was numb, quieter than I had ever been in my life. That silence came from exhaustion, from the feeling that there was no way out.

And then came more violence. Once, she beat me so badly I stained the walls with my blood. Her only response was, “If you get more blood on the walls, I’m going to beat you even harder.” This wasn’t rage. It was power. It was cruelty. And it was constant.

There were nights I used to pray my mom would die in her sleep. I was just a kid, but the fear was overwhelming. I didn’t know how else to make it stop. It wasn’t about hate. It was about survival. I was living in a house where love came with bruises and silence was the safest language I knew. Wishing for her to be gone wasn’t about cruelty. It was about imagining a life where I could finally breathe without being afraid.

Child Protective Services came often. To the house. To my school. There were so many signs, and so many chances for someone to pull me out, but I lied every time. Not because I wanted to stay, but because I was terrified of what would happen if I told the truth. I didn’t want my siblings and me to be separated. I thought if I could just hold on a little longer, maybe I could protect us.

One day, I watched my mom take a pair of scissors to my dad’s back. That was the day my fainting disorder began. I told everyone it was anxiety, and it was. I wore a medical alert bracelet and would faint anytime my body registered fear. My nervous system decided it was safer to shut down than to stay present. It was my body trying to protect itself when no one else could.

Me in first grade.

So when I fall for women, when I crave gentleness, I sometimes wonder. Am I loving, or am I healing? Or both?

This isn’t about questioning my queerness. I’ve known who I am for a long time. But I also know that we carry the past with us, even into our desire. Especially into our desire.

Queerness is not a wound. It is not a reaction or a scar. But I didn’t grow up in a neutral world. I learned love in a house where I flinched before I spoke. Where affection never came, and safety was something I had to invent from scratch.

So I ask myself. What does it mean to love women when the first woman I ever loved made me hate myself?

I don’t believe trauma caused my queerness. But I do believe it shaped the way I love. I didn’t just want women. I wanted to feel safe around them. To be held instead of hurt. To be seen instead of erased. And somewhere in that ache, real desire grew. Not in place of pain, but alongside it. As resistance. As reclamation.

I didn’t explore my own body until I was nineteen. It wasn’t from lack of curiosity but from deep fear. My mother threatened to break my hands with hammers if I ever touched myself. She controlled even the smallest things, forcing me to sleep with my arms outside the blanket so she could check on me. She would come into my room and smell my hands to make sure I wasn’t doing anything she forbade.

That level of control was suffocating and invasive. It wasn’t just about punishment but about erasing any sense of privacy or safety I could have in my own body. Those moments taught me that my natural feelings were something to be feared and hidden, not honored.

For years, I carried the heavy weight of shame and confusion, believing my desire was wrong or disgusting. This made intimacy and sexuality difficult to navigate not because of who I was attracted to but because I was still trying to reclaim a sense of safety inside myself.

Maybe this is what people mean when they say queerness is defiance. Not just against systems, but against everything in us that was told we were unworthy of love. I didn’t just survive my mother. I became someone else entirely. Someone who chooses tenderness. Someone who chooses women. Someone who chooses love that does not bruise.

Still, there’s a part of me that questions why we only frame this kind of grief when it comes from fathers. We’ve all heard the stereotype. The girl with “daddy issues” who ends up chasing emotionally unavailable men. But what happens when the violence came from your mother? Where is the cultural shorthand for that?

Because if we admit that absence can shape attraction, if we accept that some girls grow up craving what they never got from their fathers, then why is it so strange to think that my own longing for women might also be shaped by what I lacked? Maybe it’s not so far-fetched. Maybe it’s not dysfunction. Maybe it’s survival.

And maybe that’s why my first love meant so much.

Her name was Mae. Or maybe it wasn’t. But that’s what I’ll call her here. Loving her felt like exhaling for the first time. Her love was gentle, deliberate, whole. We wrote poems to each other. I wrote her a book. A real book. Not a short one. Pages and pages of my heart handed over without fear. She gave me space to exist without apology. When I had anxiety at night, she sang to me. When I spiraled, she reminded me I was strong. She didn’t flinch at my trauma. She never made me feel like I was too much.

Loving her taught me what real love feels like. What it doesn’t do. It doesn’t bruise. It doesn’t raise its voice. It doesn’t walk away when things get hard.

Through her, I began to understand that queerness isn’t just about who I love. It’s about how I love. It’s about who I allow myself to become when I am finally met with care.

I've been in therapy for six years now, working with someone who specializes in trauma-informed care. We’ve done EMDR therapy, which has helped me reprocess painful memories and begin healing from my PTSD. I haven’t spoken to or seen my mother in four years, and that space has brought a kind of peace I didn’t think was possible.

Each week, I volunteer at a local domestic violence shelter. It reminds me that change is real and that survival can become something more than endurance. It can become power. It can become purpose.

I’m also part of a virtual support group called ASCA, short for Adult Survivors of Child Abuse. I’ve been attending for two years and have met some wonderful people who help me keep going.

I’m not ashamed of the girl who prayed for escape or the woman who still sometimes flinches at love. I’m proud of her. She kept going. She built a life out of splinters.

I’m not broken. I’m not confused. I’m not looking for substitutes.

And if you're reading this and it's not safe for you to come out, please know this: you don’t owe anyone your truth at the cost of your safety. It is not worth the risk. It is not worth your life. You are still valid. You are still whole. Survival is a kind of pride too.

I’m queer. I’m healing. I’m unapologetically free.

                                                                           ⚢⚢⚢

Resources & Further Reading

If anything in this piece felt familiar to you, or if you’re beginning to explore your own story, I want to share a few resources that have helped me along the way. None of these are solutions on their own, but they’ve given me language, insight, and tools when I needed them most.

Books

• Understanding the Borderline Mother by Christine Ann Lawson — This book helped me understand the patterns I experienced growing up and how to separate myself emotionally from the damage.

• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy — A raw, darkly funny, and deeply validating account of surviving maternal abuse. Reading it gave me language for things I hadn’t been able to name and helped me feel less alone.

• A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer — A heartbreaking but powerful memoir that made me feel seen. It reminded me that I wasn’t alone and that survival is possible.

Support

• National Domestic Violence Hotline — 24/7 support via chat or call at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

• RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) — Offers crisis support and resources for survivors of sexual and emotional abuse.

• Suicide Prevention Lifeline — Available 24/7 at 988 for anyone struggling with suicidal thoughts or emotional distress

• Local DV shelters — Volunteering or connecting with one near you can be a powerful way to build community and find support.

Healing takes time. You don’t have to do it alone.
And you’re allowed to outgrow the silence.