“She would take my phone and flirt with a boy I dated, pretending to be me.”

As a Senior Editor at BuzzFeed, I cover lifestyle topics including books, work and money, health, and home.

Note: This post contains mentions of child abuse and pregnancy loss. 

Comments have been edited for length and clarity.

"I was speechless. Like legit, hung up on her, speechless.

I knew I had to have new boundaries in place cause of the baby, but I didn't realize I had to put up the proverbial walls months before the baby even arrived.

In the very few IRL visits we've had since, I've caught her coaching my infant to call her 'Mama.' Nipped that in the bud by explaining that the next time I caught her coaching my kid, she would have all access and communication revoked. Presents sent back unopened. Blocked phone calls. Missed holidays and birthdays.

I can handle my mom's flavor of crazy, but I refuse to allow my kid to be a pawn in her ego games."

"Then she was laughing and gave me a look like she expected me to join in, while I just...stared at her in horror.

What the fuck was that? At a funeral? I don't even have a flat ass?????

I was in my late 20s when this happened, which somehow made it weirder."

"My mom had a miscarriage before I was a year old, and always blamed me for it (I left her in a bad state, she had to take care of me and couldn’t take care of her pregnant self, etc.). So as soon as I was learning to talk, she would make me apologize to God in my nightly prayers for killing my baby brother, since I had already been baptized when it happened, and I had to carry that sin until I could atone for it in my first communion."

"I always got so much anxiety about how he’d embarrass me in front of them or accuse me of liking my friends in a romantic way. I just stopped inviting them over.

It was confusing. As I got a bit older, I honestly thought I must be a lesbian, and my crushes on boys were wrong. It was fucked up."

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.