I sat with her, across from her in my therapy room, the coffee table between us, the box of tissues in reach. She told me what her mother had done to her when she came home with anything less than As.
She told me how her mother would scream at her, telling her she’s a stupid cow and a failure. She told me about the way her mother would make her — a 9-year-old — walk over to the canister in the kitchen and choose the wooden spoon for her spanking (she would try to choose the smallest spoon, it tended to bruise her less).
She told me about how, when the beating was over, she would go hide in her closet for hours — standing because she couldn’t sit on the bruises — until she knew it was safe to come out again, when she knew her mother would have had enough wine to make her nicer, easier to be around, less enraged about her Bs.
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