Maya Gwynn
With KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn with Black Perspectives IE, a show where we learn about the amazing things members of the Black community are doing in the Inland Empire. My guest today is Dr. Bridgette Peteet, Professor of Psychology at Loma Linda University School of Behavioral Health, and also Author of (dis)Honor Thy Mother: Daughterhood, Dysfunction, and Deliverance. Thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
Thank you so much for having me.
Maya Gwynn
Of course. Your book (dis)Honor Thy Mother: Daughterhood, Dysfunction, and Deliverance tackles the topic of maternal abuse, something that so many people experience but rarely name, and even the title itself feels really powerful and provocative. When I first read it and then see your smiling picture, I'm like, whoa. You say it's a blend of memoir and clinical expertise, which I think is so interesting. What led you to share your very vulnerable story?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
Yeah, so this is something I wanted to do for 20 years, and as I was going through my own therapy and trying to work through my childhood issues, my current issues, there just felt like there weren't any resources, that no one really understood what I went through as a child, what I was still continuing to go through as an adult with my mother. And so to fill this void, I kind of broke the silent barrier of talking about, from a professional standpoint, my lived experience. And that's something, you know, we're not trained to do as psychologists. It's not something we're supposed to do in black culture, you know. So there were many layers of taboo that I really broke doing this work, but I felt like it was so important for women like me to understand that these relationships are toxic and abusive and really provide a roadmap to help them recover from that.
Maya Gwynn
This is something people are talking about more now, especially with books like I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy, which the cover of that book, I showed it to my mom. She's like, I don't like that. It's really brought more visibility to family estrangement or difficult relationships with one's parents in general. Do you feel the conversations around maternal harm is becoming more nuanced, especially, like you just said, in the black community, and I do think it is something different about a woman talking about this, when women are always seen to be agreeable and to always like be respectable, no matter what happens to us.
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
It's time for our voices to be heard. I think we talk about fathers that aren't doing what they're supposed to do, or maybe abusive or alcoholic. Deadbeat dads, right? We have like these nicknames. But for mothers, there's this idea that mothers are on a pedestal, that they're above reproach. You know that they are infallible. And so to talk about this, I think, is still very uncomfortable. Sleighting their mothers felt like this risky thing that you couldn't do, that it felt like you were not respecting that they may have provided for you. And I think that's difficult for people to hold space that two things can be true, maybe they did provide food and clothing and shelter, and they may have also abused you or neglected you or emotionally abused you.
Maya Gwynn
Absolutely. I know this is a sensitive topic. Was there a specific moment when you realized it was maternal abuse, not just dysfunction or not just like a quirky personality, and what made the recognition so difficult to accept?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
It came in phases. So I'll say this, in the book I talk about a case of physical abuse around physical corporal punishment with an extension cord. That was like my first flash, like at 15. Like, this is not right. This doesn't make sense. Mothers are supposed to love their daughters, you know. But it really seems like this lady hates me. But then I don't think I really had the language for that, because it was this cognitive dissonance, like my brain could not really comprehend, because you also need your mother, you want your mother, you crave that relationship. But then I think coming into my training as a psychologist, initially I was very optimistic, like I can help change her. I have all the tools now. And I think it was that point my mid 30s where I just said and realized, like, oh, this is permanent. This is who she is. This is not something that is going to be repaired with time or my effort, or family effort, or prayer or any of these things. It really was a permanent sort of type of personality, emotional immaturity, toxic, and I had to fully accept that. And it was this radical acceptance of, this was abusive, this was problematic, and I can't continue to have this in my life.
Maya Gwynn
Yeah. How do you redefine forgiveness in a way that doesn't require continued access? I think this is a huge one, because I feel like a lot of people maybe want to cut off people, or maybe want to set boundaries, but it's the community that gives them backlash.
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
Yeah, I think it is very difficult to disentangle forgiveness and what that means for you, what that means in terms of your spiritual life and merging those two things together. So, you know, I think for my grandmother, who's my mother's mother, she ended up raising me - amazing woman who's no longer with us, but you know, her version of forgiveness was turning the other cheek and continuing, you know, to allow yourself to be abused, and she had a much higher capacity for her version of forgiveness. But for me, it was like I needed to stay in this place where I wasn't constantly harmed, and had to go through that cycle of healing and then rebounding and then going back to the abuse. And once I realized, like there's nothing in the Bible that says you have to stay in contact. That's not what it says. It says you have to forgive. In order for me to stay in a place of forgiveness, I needed to remove myself from the equation. And that was very difficult for my family. It was very difficult, you know, for them to accept. Many of them didn't agree with it, and you know, I had to be okay with that. I had to be okay with being a little bit of a public enemy in terms of, I'm not going to go if my mother's going to be there in most cases, unless it's like a funeral. You know, something important.
Maya Gwynn
For individuals who want to be mothers themselves, like you're a mom now. I met your beautiful daughter. What does breaking the cycle actually look like? What are real daily practices you can do?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
So I have two daughters, and they're amazing. Shout out to them. It is very difficult. I really could not understand the way my mother treated me, given how much my heart felt, you know, so warm and attached to my children. Early on, it was really resisting how I socialized around discipline, and so working with my husband to make conscious decisions about discipline that don't involve corporal punishment and don't involve putting our hands on our children and really just shifting my whole ideas about spanking and swattings and all of the things that we think are harmless, right, and don't really correct behavior, right? So it's a constant checking in with myself, responding to my kids and asking them how they are reacting to how we're engaging with them, apologizing when we make mistakes, like it's just a different world, like things that we didn't get. You see the fruits. They're much more confident and more self assured than I ever was at that age. And so I think we've made the right choice.
Maya Gwynn
We're gonna move to our rapid fire portion, change the vibe. If your work had a theme song, what would it be?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
I like Kendrick Lamar's Humble.
Maya Gwynn
He's our most talked about in this question. Everybody always has a Kendrick song. So I love it. If you had to teach a master class or give a TED talk on a random skill you have, from silly to serious, what would it be?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
I like crafting and cricutting and crocheting and so making things. That's one of my stress reliefs.
Maya Gwynn
I love that. And do you have a favorite IE restaurant or landmark that reminds you of the Inland Empire?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
Oh, I love The Quarter in Claremont. So flavorful.
Maya Gwynn
And how can people keep up with you and support your work?
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
The book is available on Amazon and wiley.com and I am on social media: Dr.Bridge.Peteet.
Maya Gwynn
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for this vulnerable conversation. I think so many people are going to get so much from it.
Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet
Wonderful.
Maya Gwynn
Dr. Bridgette Peteet is a Professor of Psychology at Loma Linda University School of Behavioral Health, and the author of (dis)Honor Thy Mother: Daughterhood, Dysfunction, and Deliverance. Find this segment others at kvcrnews.org/bpie. Support for this segment comes from the Mecca IE Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation, advancing racial equity and supporting long term investments in black led organizations in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Join us again next week for Black Perspectives IE. For KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn, thank you.
