Stop Walking on Eggshells: Coping With Fragility, Cultivating Strength

By Ann F.

“What’s wrong with grandma?” was a familiar phrase in my home when I was growing up. I now realize the question was mostly asked rhetorically. We all knew something was very wrong with grandma, but nobody wanted to talk about it.

My mother’s mother, Gigi, was always yelling at my mom over what seemed like nothing. When she visited, my mom went out of her way to make her feel welcome, inviting her to join her get togethers with friends for coffee and hikes. Inevitably, she responded to such invitations by snapping, “Why would I want to go out with them? I came here to see you!”

Gigi exhibited this same jealous behavior when my mom was a young woman. Every time she was leaving for a long-standing dinner date with friends, Gigi complained, “You’re always with them! Why can’t you see me for a change?” When mom responded graciously by inviting her along, Gigi refusals infuriated my mother. “I’m not interested in them. I want to see you.”

Even schoolwork provoked Gigi’s ire. My mom, an exceptional student, loved learning and dreamed of following in the footsteps of her father, who entered college at only fifteen. Instead of rewarding her diligence and good grades , Gigi would yell, “Enough with all this studying!” slamming the door as she stormed from the room. In Gigi’s world, it was more important to be pretty than smart ––or perhaps just less threatening. It seemed nothing my mom did was ever good enough. She’d offer an innocuous opinion only to hear, “You don’t know anything.” My mom is still proud that she had the wherewithal to quip, “Then you should have let me go to college!”

My memories of Gigi screaming insults at my mom go all the way back to kindergarten: “That’s not what you feed a child. You’re the worst mother!” I still vividly recall how loudly she pounded on the table as my mother flinched, and how tightly I wrapped my arms around mom’s waist after running to protect her. “Leave her alone!” I shouted. “My mommy is the best in the whole world.”

Fortunately, my mom’s innate intelligence and ambition eventually led her to the world of academia. Though her mother crushed her dreams of earning a college degree, she worked as a tutor of college-level English language and composition, using the writing skills she acquired over the course of her career in public relations. She also picked up freelance editing work. “One of those editing jobs changed my life,” she told me, “in the best way possible.”

On a visit home from college, I saw a book on my mom’s nightstand: Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder. She explained how she had pieced it together while editing a psychology student’s thesis. She encountered descriptions that felt chillingly familiar: irrational anger, self-destructive behaviors, constant feelings of rejection and the pivotal diagnosis: “This patient is presumed to be suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder.”

That’s when she sought the help she needed. She began devouring books, attending support groups, and, most importantly, stopped believing there was something inherently wrong with her. For years, she had felt like she couldn’t do anything right. Now, she had a framework that validated her feelings and made sense of the cognitive dissonance. Every time Gigi acted up after that,” she took a deep breath and responded firmly,“You are not to talk to me like that.”

I came to realize how deeply mom’s resilience shaped me. Internalizing her lessons gave me the determination to walk away from anyone who mistreats me—whether a manipulative friend, toxic boss, or abusive boyfriend.

In a strange way, I am grateful to Gigi. She showed me exactly the kind of person I don’t want to be or be around, and taught me that people’s cruelty almost always reflects their lack of self-worth, not the value of yours.