My Mother Demanded Both My Kidneys For My Alcoholic Brother. She Said I Don’t Need Them Because I’m Childless. Now The Whole Family Is Harassing Me.

Therapy and Reflection

The next week I took the elevator up to the third floor of the medical building where the hospital’s Employee Assistance Program had their offices. Catalina had given me the name of a therapist, Michaela Fields, who worked with healthcare workers dealing with family stress.

I’d been skeptical about therapy, figured it would just be someone telling me to forgive my mother and repair the relationship. But Catalina promised Michaela was different, that she actually understood difficult family situations and wouldn’t push reconciliation.

The waiting room was quiet with soft chairs and calm colors on the walls. I filled out intake paperwork asking about my family history and current stressors, checking boxes that didn’t come close to explaining the actual situation. When Michaela came out to get me, she was younger than I expected, maybe 40, wearing regular clothes instead of professional office wear.

Her handshake was warm and she smiled like she was genuinely glad to meet me. Her office had a couch and two chairs, windows looking out at the parking lot, and a bookshelf full of psychology texts mixed with novels. I sat in one of the chairs and Michaela sat across from me with a notepad.

“Catalina told me a little about your situation,” she said. “But I’d like to hear it from you. What brought you here?”

I started talking and once I started I couldn’t stop. The whole story came pouring out. Mom’s demand for both kidneys. Tyler’s entitlement. The 10 years of estrangement. The harassment campaign. Last week’s parking garage scene.

Michaela listened without interrupting, nodding sometimes, taking occasional notes but mostly just paying attention. When I finished, she didn’t immediately try to fix anything or offer advice. She just said this one thing that made me feel like she actually understood.

“It sounds like your mother has never seen you as a separate person with your own needs and rights. You’ve always existed in her mind as either an extension of her or a resource for your brother.”

Nobody had ever put it that clearly before. That’s exactly what it felt like. I kept coming back to that phrase for the rest of the week, turning it over in my mind during shifts at work and while lying awake at night. Mom had never seen me as separate from her plans and needs. I existed as either a tool for her use or an obstacle to remove when I didn’t cooperate.

Michaela asked me to think about other times this pattern showed up. Once I started looking I saw it everywhere. When I was 12 and wanted to quit piano lessons because I hated them, Mom made me continue for three more years because she liked telling people her daughter played piano.

When I wanted to go to community college close to home, she pushed me toward expensive universities so she could brag about where I got accepted, then refused to help pay when I actually enrolled.

When I got pregnant at 18, she kicked me out not because she was disappointed but because having a teenage mother as a daughter didn’t fit the image she wanted to project. The miscarriage that followed wasn’t a tragedy to her; it was a convenient problem solving itself.

Michaela helped me see that Mom’s current demand for both kidneys followed the exact same pattern. She wanted Tyler healthy and normal again and my body was just another resource she expected to access without my consent. The fact that taking both kidneys would destroy my health didn’t register because my needs had never registered.

I was supposed to exist for her convenience, and anything else was selfish rebellion. Understanding the pattern didn’t make it hurt less, but it made me feel less crazy for refusing. I wasn’t being cruel or heartless like Mom claimed. I was finally treating myself like a person with rights instead of an extension of her will.

My second therapy session with Michaela happened the following week and she started by asking about the miscarriage. I hadn’t talked about it in years. Not really. Evan knew it happened but I’d never gone into details.

The pregnancy had been unplanned, the result of a relationship with a guy from my high school who disappeared the moment I told him. I was 18, living at home, working part-time at a grocery store and trying to figure out college.

Mom’s reaction was immediate rage. She screamed that I was ruining her reputation, that people would think she raised me wrong, that I was throwing my life away. Dad said nothing, just sat there looking at the floor while she yelled.

Two days later Mom told me to pack my things and get out. She didn’t care where I went or how I’d manage. I moved into a friend’s basement and worked double shifts to pay rent. At 12 weeks I started cramping at work. By the time I got to the emergency room I was bleeding heavily. The doctor told me the pregnancy wasn’t viable and I needed a procedure to complete the miscarriage.

I went through it alone because I didn’t have anyone to call. When I finally reached out to Mom 3 days later, thinking maybe this would soften her, she told me it was probably for the best since I clearly wasn’t responsible enough to be a mother anyway.

She said the miscarriage was proof that even my body knew I wasn’t ready, like it was some kind of judgment on my character. Then she hung up and didn’t speak to me again for 10 years.

Telling Michaela all of this, I realized how much shame I’d been carrying that was never mine. I’d blamed myself for getting pregnant, for not being more careful, for somehow causing the miscarriage through stress or not taking good enough care of myself. But I was 18 and alone and terrified, abandoned by everyone who should have helped me.

The miscarriage wasn’t my fault. Mom’s cruelty wasn’t something I earned through irresponsibility. I’d been carrying guilt for a decade that belonged to the people who failed me, not to my own choices.

After starting therapy, I started sleeping through the night for the first time in weeks. The constant anxiety that had been sitting in my chest loosened enough that I could take full breaths again. Evan noticed the change immediately. He said I seemed less jumpy, that I didn’t flinch anymore when my phone buzzed with notifications.

We were having dinner at his apartment when he brought it up and the conversation shifted into something bigger. He told me he was serious about us, about building a real future together. He’d been thinking about asking me to move in even before the kidney situation started, but he didn’t want me to think he was only offering because I needed help. He wanted me to know that my family’s dysfunction didn’t scare him away.

He’d seen the worst of it now, witnessed Mom’s harassment and Tyler’s cruelty, and he was still here. He was still choosing me. We talked for hours that night about what we wanted. He wanted marriage eventually, kids maybe. A life that looked nothing like the chaos I grew up in.

I wanted the same things but I’d been afraid to hope for them after everything that happened when I was 18. Evan held my hand across the table and promised me that I deserved good things. That I deserved people who stayed.

I cried a little bit, the good kind of crying that comes from relief instead of pain. For the first time in months, I felt like something in my life was moving in the right direction.