EXCLUSIVEMy religious mom swapped my medication for pond weed... leaving me with a brain tumor and a broken, unmothered heart
Marianne Richmond wasn’t expecting a show of concern from her mother, Mary, when she told her she had a lesion on her brain and needed surgery at the age of 25.
The pair had maintained a distant relationship for as long as she could remember. Her mom’s coldness and lack of empathy had prevented them from ever sharing a bond.
Indeed, Mary’s reaction to the news that her daughter’s life was in danger was just as she’d predicted. ‘Well,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘I'm going to bring this to my Bible study group and we’re going to pray for a miracle.’
She may not have been shocked by her mother's lack of worry, but Marianne still felt hollow inside. After all her mother’s fanatical devotion to the Catholic Church — and deep mistrust of modern medicine — had helped put her in this position.
It had clouded her judgement so much that she’d refused to acknowledge Marianne’s childhood epilepsy. During the brain biopsy to assess the lesion, doctors found a tumor. They said it had caused the seizures.
'I still hold a lot of bitterness towards her,' Marianne says of her late mother’s convictions. 'I should have received proper treatment from a young age.'
The now 59-year-old children’s books writer who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, chronicles her strained relationship with her mother in her upcoming memoir If You Were My Daughter.
Its title echoes the words of the surgeon who recommended Marianne have a brain biopsy in January 1990.
Children's author Marianne Richmond, 59, chronicles her troubled relationship with her mother in her new memoir If You Were My Daughter
'I was prevaricating a little,' she tells me. 'But he said he would tell his daughter to go ahead with it. I found the phrase full of kindness and empathy — the qualities I craved from my mom.'
Marianne, raised in Greendale, Wisconsin, was just nine when she suffered her first seizure.
It happened at home and started with a sudden pain in her little finger that quickly spread up her right arm.
‘I felt a tingling, as if I’d banged my funny bone on something,’ she says. ‘The numbness started spreading and my hand formed a claw.
‘I bolted into the kitchen and just screamed. I fell on the linoleum floor, hitting my head. Then I went into full seizure, my limbs extending uncontrollably. It was terrifying.’
Instead of acting in a practical manner, her mother simply kneeled beside her and proclaimed: ‘Hail Mary…full of grace, the Lord is with thee.’
Marianne was taken to the ER where she was diagnosed with a pinched nerve in her spine. Her mother consulted the family doctor a few days later. Unhelpfully he said what her mom called 'spasms' were psychosomatic.
They then went to a chiropractor who at least recommended they see a neurologist. Tests detected irregular waves at the back of her brain.
Nevertheless, the specialist dismissed the results as ‘typical’ for a kid her age before prescribing an anti-convulsant as a precautionary measure.
Marianne took the drug for barely three weeks before her mother forced her to dispose of the pills. She’d researched the medication, which, she said, had side effects including drowsiness, vertigo, rashes and blisters.
Her daughter pleaded with her, saying the side effects were worth the risk. Mary ignored her. ‘You know how drug sensitive I am,’ she said, defending her decision.
Marianne was just nine when she suffered her first seizure. It happened at home and started with a sudden pain in her little finger that quickly spread up her right arm
Her mother's solution to her epileptic fits was to change the family’s diet. She made Marianne and her older brothers, Tony and George, eat things like Brazil nuts, wheat germ and millet
Marianne knew her objections only too well. Her mom constantly brought up her four years of administrative service in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s. In 1957, after being promoted to captain, she was admitted into a military hospital after falling into a deep depression.
At the time Mary was spending her weekends traveling 500 miles by train from her air base in Dayton, Ohio, to her family home in Philadelphia to help look after her mother, who was dying of heart disease.
‘She was exhausted and depleted,’ Marianne says.
Mary, by then engaged to Marianne’s father, Gerald, was also stressed about her upcoming wedding. ‘She told me she didn’t want to marry him because she wasn’t attracted to him,' she says.
Her mother was convinced the anti-psychotic she was prescribed triggered jaundice and confusion. But she blamed the electric shock therapy she received at 29 for ruining her life. She claimed she had been subjected to a secret military experiment, telling everybody she met about the violation of her rights.
'It was her explanation and justification any time her body fell short — from a forgotten grocery item to a sore finger to her deteriorating vertebrae — and now it was her reason for not letting me have medication,’ Marianne writes.
Her mother wrote scores of letters of complaint to the Veterans’ Administration, even the CIA. She demanded an admission and compensation. If they bothered to answer, they implied she was a conspiracy theorist.
As for Marianne’s father, he was overshadowed by his domineering wife, rarely advocating for his children. He was the only one who bothered to buy his children a few gifts for Christmas. Their mom disapproved because she believed the holiday was purely to celebrate Jesus.
‘She called Sunday the day of obligation,’ Marianne tells me, adding that the term was appropriate since she was forced to go to church.
Meanwhile, between the ages of nine and ten, Marianne suffered seizure after seizure, mostly in her bedroom at night. She called the milder ones 'hand seizures', but others could be full body seizures. They could happen as often as three times a week.
‘I felt embarrassed and humiliated,’ she says. ‘I knew I was in danger; on hyper alert that they would happen in front of people.’
Then a boy who had epilepsy had a serious attack in middle school. Marianne realized her seizures were almost identical. She ran home, giddy with excitement.
‘I said, ‘Mom, I know what I have,’ Marianne announced. ‘It’s epilepsy.’
Her mother's solution was to change the family’s diet. She made Marianne and her older brothers, Tony and George, eat things like Brazil nuts, wheat germ and millet. They swallowed ‘a small mountain of vitamins’ at breakfast and a half-inch capsule containing blue-green algae.
‘It’s a superfood made from bacteria in lakes and ponds,’ she told them.
In her teens, Marianne felt increasingly alienated from her mother and her beliefs. ‘I became jealous of friends who went to the mall with their moms,’ she says. ‘It was like I was living with a stranger.
‘She was so self-absorbed; she had no time for me at all.’
In her teens, Marianne felt increasingly alienated from her mother and her beliefs. ‘It was like I was living with a stranger,' she says
The lack of connection continued into high school. Marianne dealt with her first period alone, not bothering to tell her indifferent mother.
She entered college at The University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, four hours north of Milwaukee, without fanfare — her mom seemed to barely register the achievement.
It was during her first semester there, at 18, that Marianne suffered a major seizure in her dorm. Her friends called 911 and she was seen by a neurologist. She told him about her previous episodes, and he diagnosed a seizure disorder.
‘I find it hard to believe you’ve never been treated thus far,’ he said, according to Marianne’s memoir. ‘Me too,’ she writes, grateful that she received an anti-convulsant she could finally take, free of her mother’s influence.
After she graduated, Marianne moved to Connecticut to work her first job in corporate communications. She found a new neurologist who discussed her condition and ordered an MRI. To her shock, the scan revealed a 'lesion'.
A second specialist said the lesion was the 'clear origin' of the seizures that had plagued her childhood. She was relieved to find out, but the diagnosis triggered a long-buried anger towards her mother for not allowing her thorough, specialist treatment as a child.
Throughout the ordeal, she was supported by her boyfriend, Jim, five years her senior, whom she’d met through a mutual friend. 'He was there for me — unlike Mom,’ Marianne says. ‘His presence was comforting.’
She says, while her mother remained far away and was disinterested, her future husband accompanied her to the hospital during her scans. 'He was another set of ears in the room when the doctors discussed my treatment.'
After the consultant said he would recommend it for his daughter, Marianne agreed to the brain biopsy. The operation, delayed several months due to complications with Marianne’s health insurance, took nine hours to perform. The surgeons discovered a tumor. Mercifully, it was benign.
Her mother flew from Wisconsin to Connecticut to ‘care’ for her daughter, but she flew back home within a day of Marianne coming home from the hospital.
'I had been quietly holding hope that this — her own daughter’s long-awaited brain surgery — would spark the sudden appearance of a relationship that had never been, filling out physical and emotional distance with talking, reading, walking, laughing.’
‘How can she not want to be my mom? What is it about me? About her?....Whatever the real reason I take away this: I am not worth her time,’ Marianne writes in her book.
When Jim proposed in April 1990, Marianne was hurt, but not surprised, when her mother showed no interest in her wedding. There was no excited shopping for a bridal gown or choosing flowers together.
‘I was alone, and that craving for a maternal presence followed me my entire life,' she says.
The operation, delayed several months due to complications with Marianne’s health insurance, took nine hours to perform. The surgeons discovered a tumor. Mercifully, it was benign
Marianne was hurt, but not surprised, when her mother showed no interest in her wedding. There was no excited shopping for a bridal gown or choosing flowers together.
Similarly, her mother, who maintained her religious convictions until she died, never enthused over the births of Marianne’s children - Cole, now 27, Adam, 26, Julia, 23, and Will, 21. She didn’t call for a week after Julia was born, phoning only for a few seconds to ask her name so she could send a card.
'There was no emotional connection between her and any of us,' Marianne says. ‘I resented the fact that my kids never had a grandmother who cherished them.’
Her mother died in September 2013, nine months after her father. She’d suffered dementia for a decade, during which time Marianne reconciled herself to the fact she'd never forge that much-missed bond.
A few months before her death, Marianne was sorting through her mom’s papers and found a file full of letters to the Veterans’ Association and CIA. Some dated back to 1977 — the year Marianne had had her first seizure in fourth grade.
‘She’d been seeking justice for her electric shock therapy for more than 20 years,’ she writes. A final letter from the authorities showed they had denied her request for compensation. She gave up on the cause.
‘I don't believe she was subjected to mind control experiments, but I believe she was depressed,’ Marianne says. ‘They put her through the barbaric treatment of electroshock therapy that was prevalent in the 1950s.’
While she always knew the experience had turned her mother against conventional medicine, she wondered if she thought her daughter's ‘spasms’ were related to the procedures.
‘Maybe she felt guilt,’ says Marianne. ‘If so, it illuminates so clearly the power of the narratives we cling to. Imagine how differently Mom’s life would have been without hers.’
‘She could have said, "I'm going to accept that this happened to me and, although I may never know the answer, I'm going to be present for my family."'
Eleven years on, Marianne says that, with the help of therapy, she has accepted her mother’s attitude towards her. For years ‘I had a bitterness and anger about it,’ she says. ‘Then I traded them for the forgiveness that would allow me to let go of those feelings.'
She says one takeaway was the need to be there for her own daughter. She would never emulate her mother.
'I believe my daughter Julia and I have a solid, loving relationship,’ Marianne adds. ‘I think she feels the same back.’
Do you have a powerful story to share about complex mother-daughter relationships? Please email Jane Ridley, real-life correspondent at The Daily Mail US, at jane.ridley@mailonline.com
