Maternal Guilt and Shame

When ‘Good Enough’ Falls Short

TW: Violence, GBV, Child Abuse, Suicidal ideation and related themes

‘Devastated’ is an understatement, yet I am far too broken to search for a more fitting word. I have said this before, and I will say it another million times: I am not stupid. I never expected parenting to be easy, but if there were words, if the dialogue existed to effectively detail precisely how difficult it would be, I might have reconsidered.

No, love is not enough.

I waited. I waited until I was certain. One could argue I only believed I was certain because my brain was hijacked by hormones determined to procreate before it was too late, but it is all speculation. Although born out of wedlock, he was no accident. I cried for months each time my period arrived, until that fateful day when the pee-stick read ‘+’. I was beside myself.
My Beastie Boy was chemically induced at 45 weeks and born with a nuchal cord at 4:20 pm on Youth Day. I was 32 years old, severely stressed, in a relationship with a man who had embraced alcohol during those 10 months. The Amazon was burning, as was the Knysna forest. Perhaps it was an omen.

Alongside that first taste of what might become significant trauma, I gave him his unusual name. What’s in a name, right? Absolutely everything.

I named him after Aradia, the Queen of the Witches,
daughter of Diana—goddess of the moon, femininity, and autonomy—
and Lucifer, the Morningstar, who exercised free will in defiance of god’s authority, thereby becoming the OG rebel.

As the legend goes, Aradia descended to earth at her mother’s request to liberate humanity with the gift of magic. In the shadows of medieval Italy, she walked among the oppressed, whispering spells of resistance and guiding the persecuted toward empowerment. She gathered the outcasts—witches, the poor, the enslaved—teaching them to harness the forces of nature and defy those who wielded power unjustly. Her presence was ethereal and rebellious, a celestial flame igniting a revolution in the hearts of those who dared to listen. When her mission was complete, she vanished as mysteriously as she had arrived, some say returning to the moon, while others believe she became one with the winds and wild places, forever lingering as a guardian spirit to those who seek freedom.

I bestowed on my son a name symbolising a beacon of light and change, rebellion and resistance, a leader who will not submit or surrender to the status quo. If only I could conclude that all resistance and defiance is born from a name, I wouldn’t be spilling tears over my MacBook. But I believe, I need to believe, that it does contribute.

My Beastie Boy achieved developmental milestones with astonishing speed, outpacing his peers. However, at 18 months—after witnessing his father seize me by the throat and hurl me across a room, followed by our swift relocation 1200 kilometres away—he lost his words. He retained only a handful of double-sounds: ‘mama’, ‘dumdum’, ‘dudu’, and did not reawaken to language until he was three.

My own PTSD was evident. I suffered multiple panic attacks daily, each time a fucking motorbike sped past our apartment building. I had nightmares and trembled whenever my ex appeared, he stalked me for months. My entire body, bar my feet, was ravaged by an eczema flare-up for eight successive months. The medical establishment effectively wiped my immune system with weeks of daily penicillin, steroids and IV cortisone, which proved futile. Chemotherapy ensued - but that’s another essay altogether. I finally found relief in a beautiful endocrinologist who, bless her heart, didn’t hand me a prescription. Instead, she set aside 4h30min of her day and listened. She listened as I told her my story, from start to finish and introduced me to Wet Wrap Therapy.

But I digress. I met someone, though I had no desire to be in a relationship. I found him attractive but saw no plausible long-term future. Then COVID-19 struck. Quarantined together, I watched my business collapse, and my son—an outdoorsy child—withered under confinement. Our claustrophobic apartment felt cold, eerie, and dark. Within weeks, coercive control emerged.

My baby and I were still co-sleeping; he had never spent more than ten continuous hours away from me. Suddenly, he faced a closed bedroom door, while a volatile adult raged if he caught me cuddling my boy in the night or morning. The child was barred from venturing upstairs, instead expected to remain downstairs alone in front of a TV, and I was not to descend unless it was to retrieve something from the kitchen. Night terrors ensued.

My mother, locked down with her parents and sister, agreed to take my son if we could deliver him undetected across provincial lines. I genuinely believed he would be happier there, surrounded by those who adored him, with ample outdoor space, at least until the pandemic subsided. It was, in hindsight, a catastrophic choice.

The separation’s effect on my son was unimaginable. The coercion and psychological harm inflicted upon me were equally incomprehensible. Three months later, we relocated—despite considerable legal hurdles—to a forest cottage in the Western Cape. Two months on, tormented by the absence of my child, I retrieved him from my mother. I still cherish that image of my chubby-cheeked boy, hair whipped by the wind through an open car window, eyes shut, mouth open in joyous laughter, crying out “woo-hooo” again and again.

Yet darkness followed. Within a few weeks came ‘The Incident’. My Beastie Boy, not quite two and a half, was sitting in this man’s lap, face to face, while they played a raucous game of peek-a-boo and tickles. In his excitement, my son accidentally kicked him in the chin. The man erupted, slamming his open hand across my child’s face with full force. Before the shock had fully registered, I was in front of him, my wailing child on my hip, my chest heaving, my fist connecting with his jaw. Everything after that is a blur until he stumbled to his car, and I dented the bumper with a kick, screaming at him to get fucked.

He still claims that was the moment he became a “victim” of our abusive relationship—the day my child and I first assaulted him. I called my mother, asking if she could keep my son safe while I figured out a plan. By then, I was already “employed” by the man, or rather working ‘alongside’ him as he insisted, with no compensation. I supposedly did not need money because he “provided everything”. It was my relatives who encouraged me to stay and “resolve” things.

We relocated again, this time to a charming beach house. We brought my beastie boy back on his third birthday and enrolled him in a Waldorf school; he had regained his speech and seemed to be thriving. Yet the man devised ways to keep me apart from my child, conscripting me to work all hours in “the office” and even hiring a live-in au pair.

Trouble surfaced at school. My son’s best friend unexpectedly became a bully. When that bully left, another crueller child replaced him. My boy began suffering morning meltdowns and stomach aches and clung to me desperately. His teacher dismissed this behaviour as a “phase”. As matters escalated, I appealed to the school, only to be repeatedly dismissed.

In March of his Kindergarten year, the school called: “Please fetch your son; he has been suspended for assaulting a boy,” who ended up with a bloody nose. Yet a fortnight earlier, I had picked up my son looking as though he had been in a serious crash—battered, bruised, bitten. The bully’s mother called me in tears, apologising for what her child had done. The school never bothered to alert me. A teacher on duty shrugged, saying she was not present. Now that my boy had finally stood his ground, he was suspended.

For the remainder of the year, the routine was the same: drop him off at 8 am, and by 10:30, I would receive a call to collect him. The bullying continued. My visits to the school for support were met with gaslighting and denial. Three weeks into first grade, we received a formal diagnosis: Autism Level 1, ADHD with a PDA profile. The day before the school expelled him, at six years old, he told me he wanted to kill himself.

The man seized on this, proclaiming that the child was the true problem.

We found a remedial school that seemed ideal. By July, he refused to pay the tuition, forcing me to withdraw my son. He fell an entire year behind his peers.

Hostile confrontations flare almost daily, with insults hurled at both my Beastie Boy and me. Threats of eviction, withheld meals, passive aggression, and silence have become our new normal. One moment, he would say, “I love you, my boy!” and by evening, it would be, “Sort that fucking child out, or I will!” His disconnection from reality, shifting from one persona to another, is so predictable that we brace ourselves for whichever version of him appears.

2025, and a glimmer of hope has emerged. My mother agreed to pay half the school fees each month. But his teacher has grown increasingly concerned. He is uncooperative, disruptive, and on occasion physically aggressive.

Yesterday, he got suspended.

He tried to strangle his teacher, leaving bruises on her neck.
The man shakes his head disapprovingly “Should we take him to the police station so they can explain due process to him?” he asks me in that patronising and self-righteous tone. I daringly remind him that my Beastie Boy was merely acting out what was done to him a week ago.

Earlier, my Beastie Boy confided in me that every night he dreams of taking a butcher’s knife and plunging it into his heart because he “will never have a happy life”. He is 7 years old.

I am inconsolable.
But this isn’t about me.
Yes, it is my fault, and it is because of me.
It’s not about me.
I am aware that I am to blame;
I should never have allowed the man to remove my child from my bed during the pandemic. (I did, however, move into his room approximately a year ago, and we have been co-sleeping since.)
I should have stayed with him, with my family then and told this man to find his own way.
I should’ve, I could’ve, I didn’t, and I hate myself; I beat myself up for that each and every night.

What now?
How can I help him?
Help myself?
I know I have to get out.
My mother cannot take us in, she is in a retirement home. Her sister heading to Canada. My grandparents gone.
Nobody is coming to save us.

I now have the deepest compassion for that woman I read about years ago, that psychotic, evil woman who drowned her children in the lake by her house before taking her own life. She wasn’t evil. She was a good-enough mother.