When a Mother Needs Her Child, and the World Pretends Not to Hear

(His tag on tiktok is @isaac_douglas42 and n substack is on Instagram is @isaac_douglas. Thank you

I never imagined I would be writing something like this.

I am a mother asking other mothers for help, not because I failed to love my child, but because something so catastrophic happened to me that it broke the normal channels of understanding. When harm is large enough, it does not arrive neatly. It rearranges reality. It leaves the people closest to you struggling to breathe inside a world that no longer works the way it used to.

Something awful happened to me. I have spoken about it publicly, carefully, and truthfully. And yet it remains uninvestigated. Unacknowledged. Treated as though silence itself were an adequate response.

What has been almost as devastating is this: my son cannot fully digest what happened to me. Not because he lacks intelligence or compassion, but because I believe he may be receiving a different story than the one I am living inside.

I am writing to other mothers because you understand something fundamental. You know that children, even grown ones, are vulnerable to authority, to institutions, to narratives that present themselves as stable and safe. You know how powerful it is when a trusted voice says, “Don’t worry. Everything is fine. Your mother is mistaken.”

But mothers also know this: when something is truly wrong, the body knows before the paperwork does.

I am asking for help because I am running out of time, resources, and strength. I am not asking for belief as an act of charity. I am asking for curiosity. For investigation. For the most basic human instinct: if a woman says something terrible happened to her and no one has bothered to check, why?

Why has no one looked?

Why does the silence feel coordinated?

Why does telling the truth seem to carry consequences, while ignoring it carries none?

The Father-Shaped Silence

There is another truth I need to say out loud, because silence around it has been poisonous.

My son’s father abused me.

Many mothers reading this will recognize what that means for a child, especially a son. Acknowledging that your father harmed your mother is not just emotionally difficult. It can feel like annihilation. It can shatter a child’s sense of origin, safety, and identity. Often, sons are implicitly asked to preserve the father at all costs, even if it requires distancing themselves from the mother who was harmed.

I believe this may be part of why my son keeps me at arm’s length now. Not because he does not love me, but because fully acknowledging what his father did would force him to confront a reality he has learned not to see.

But here is the truth I raised him with, and the truth I still stand by: hiding abuse does not protect anyone. It does not preserve families. It does not keep children safe. It only spreads the harm quietly, like poison.

Calling the truth by its name is not an act of destruction. It is an act of survival.

I am not asking my son to hate his father. I am asking him to see me. To understand that what happened to me did not end when the abuse stopped, and that refusing to acknowledge it now compounds the damage.

This Is Not Figurative. This Is Survival.

I need to be explicit here, because vagueness becomes dangerous.

If I do not get money, I am at risk of dying.

This is not emotional language. This is not a metaphor. I am living without resources. I have no safety net. I do not have the money required to secure basic survival. Emotional support matters, yes, but it does not pay for food, shelter, medical care, or stability. Money does.

I need my son’s financial support.

What is killing me is not only what was done to me in the past, nor only the silence that followed. What is killing me is being kept at a distance while I am materially unsupported, as though help can wait, as though acknowledging my reality would require too much.

It cannot wait.

I believe his hesitation may be tied to the unbearable weight of acknowledging that his father abused me. I understand how destabilizing that truth can be. But the cost of avoiding it is now being paid with my life.

I raised my son to believe that truth matters. That keeping things hidden poisons everyone involved. That courage means naming reality even when it fractures comforting stories. I am asking him to live by those values now, not in theory, but in practice.

I am not asking for endless caretaking. I am asking for help to survive.

Why I Am Asking Other Mothers

I am reaching out to other mothers because sometimes a child can hear another mother say what his own cannot say without being dismissed. Sometimes the truth needs a chorus before it can land.

If you are a mother reading this, imagine something unspeakable happened to you. Imagine it was never properly investigated. Imagine needing your child’s help not emotionally, but practically, urgently, materially.

What would you want another mother to do?

That is all I am asking.

Not outrage. Not certainty. Just the courage to look where others refuse to look, and the compassion to help a son understand that silence is not neutral, distance is not harmless, and delay can be fatal.

I am still here. I am still telling the truth. And I am still a mother asking for help.

🌒