I once made my mom go quiet, and then apologize to me, defeating this point.

I was telling her that she could be really cruel with her words sometimes, and that I’d like to her to be less so. She told me I shouldn’t take it so seriously, grow a thicker skin, that they’re just words.

But she’s my mother, and what she thinks of me and what she says will always weigh ten times more in my mind than the words of almost anyone else. Ignoring what strangers think of me is easy, but with her, it’s literally impossible. I was telling her off because I knew she doesn’t mean the worst of what she says, and that despite that, coming from her every word hits like a freight train. That it takes enormous effort to think through and discount the parts she doesn’t mean. I told her that.

At the time I felt really clever for making that point. Getting her to actually go quiet and say sorry felt amazing, so it stayed with me.

I later realized it probably landed so hard because of how her parents treated/treat her.