My Mom Traded Me for a Car: Liz's Story of Growing Up With an Abusive Mother

We like to believe kids who grow up in chaos are destined to repeat it.

That if your mom lied to you, hurt you, and handed you off to someone else for a car, you'll grow up hard. Guarded. Unable to trust anybody.

On paper, Liz should be that story.

Instead, she's the person people run toward. She's the loudest one in the room and the first one to show up. She's a mom, a stepmom, a wife, and part of my chosen family. And when we sat down to record, I realized I'd only ever known the outline of what she survived to become that person.

Liz's Story

Even Liz's beginning comes to her secondhand.

She was born in Mesa, Arizona. Or that's what she's gathered. From there it was Virginia Beach, then Washington State so she could meet her dad. As for how her parents got together, there are at least two versions, maybe three. "I don't know what to believe," she told me. When the person holding your origin story doesn't always tell the truth, you learn to treat your own life like a rumor.

Her dad was in the Navy and out to sea a lot, which left Liz and her little brother home with their mom. Liz describes the house plainly: "a fucked up one." Her mom would beat her until she did something right, like making her bed. The kids got locked in their rooms. There were threats Liz's brain still won't let her go back to. Her mom is saved in her phone, to this day, as Mommy Dearest.

School didn't help much. Liz missed a lot of it because her mom just wouldn't get up. When she was there, she was regularly in the principal's office answering questions about the marks on her body. Child Protective Services was called. When I asked if anything ever came of it, Liz said, "I think somebody tried to do something. That's all I got." Everybody was afraid of her mom.

When her dad came home from deployment, Liz cried every time. "When he was home, it just felt like I was safe again."

At nine, she woke up in the middle of the night and her mom was gone. Her dad fought for custody and won, which tells you something about how bad things had gotten. For a while it was Chef Boyardee out of the can and friends helping out while he was at sea. Then he remarried, the family blended, and things changed again. Liz became the one everything got taken out on, including by her dad. It was a short stretch, but it was enough to break something between them.

At 14, hoping her mom had finally gotten better, Liz moved back to Virginia Beach to live with her. "You always wanna believe that," she said.

Her mom hadn't gotten better. At 14 Liz was physically pulling her mom's girlfriend off her mom. At 15, when one of those relationships ended, her mom told the ex she could keep Liz if she got to keep the car. That woman, who Liz remembers fondly, was one of the first adults who told her, "I know your mom. You don't have to worry."

By 16, Liz was out of the house for good. She left with a black trash bag of her stuff and a pillow with a Lion King pillowcase, because it made her happy. She couch surfed, snuck in through a friend's window at night, and was eventually taken in by two young women who weren't much older than she was. "I still feel I was raised by my friends," she said.

Her teen years got darker before they got better. She was cocktail waitressing on a fake ID, using drugs, and at one point hurting herself. Then her mom moved into her apartment, didn't pay the rent, and got her evicted. She opened bills in Liz's name. She invented stories about where they'd lived, faked pregnancies, and told every new girlfriend that Liz was a pathological liar, so nobody would believe Liz if she ever told the truth.

3 Things I Learned About Growing Up With an Abusive Parent

You can love someone and still name what they did

Liz gives a lot of grace. More than I would. When I pushed her on it, she was honest: "I don't want to be mad at somebody. I don't want to hate anybody." She knows it might not be the healthiest coping mechanism. But understanding her mom's own brutal childhood, which ended with Liz's mom being handed over to the state, is how Liz makes sense of what was done to her. Loving someone and holding them accountable aren't opposites. Most people who grew up like this are doing both at once.

Kids in chaotic homes become the caretakers

Liz was the big sister, which meant she was her little brother's safe place long before she

had one of her own. Even as a teenager, she was defending her mom from girlfriends and stepping into fights she had no business being in. "Why am I in the middle of this?" she asked. She was 14. Kids in homes like this don't get to be kids. They get assigned a job.

Chosen family can do what blood couldn't

Liz's Oma told her, "Doesn't matter. We're blood." But the people who actually showed up were often not related to her at all. There was a family friend who'd pick her up during her mom's episodes and buy her a coloring book. There was the woman with the skunk-stripe hair who told her she didn't need to worry. And there were the two friends who fed her and gave her a roof at 16. Family is the people who make it safe. Sometimes they share your blood, and a lot of the time they don't.

The Bigger Takeaway

The thread through this whole conversation is who gets to tell your story.

For most of Liz's life, other people did. Her mom made up where they came from. Her mom told people Liz was a liar. Kids at school called her an ugly duckling, and her dad saw her mom every time he looked at her. Liz grew up being described by people who couldn't keep their own stories straight.

When I asked how the people who love her would describe her, she didn't hesitate: a big heart, loyal as anything, a ride-or-die. She credits her faith, her friends, and being "too stubborn to have a shitty life."

I don't want to tie this up neatly. Liz still goes back and forth about her dad's paternity. She still protects her mom without thinking about it. The hard parts didn't go away. What she gets now, finally, is a version of her story that's actually hers. And it's the one I believe.

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