Blocked by Blood: Healing from the Narcissistic Women Who Raised Me

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from being hurt by women who were supposed to protect you.

We talk a lot about narcissistic men—abusive fathers, manipulative partners, toxic exes—but female narcissists? They hide in plain sight. They often wear the mask of martyrdom, playing the perpetual victim while leaving a quiet trail of emotional wreckage behind them.

I was raised by them.

My mother and my paternal grandmother were both the main characters in their own tragedies—two women who claimed the title of “good mother” not through love or safety, but through shame, guilt, and performative sacrifice. For years, I believed their narratives. I believed I was the problem.

My grandmother loved to remind me of how much I resembled my “horrible” mother—her daughter-in-law. She'd whisper venom into every family gathering, weaponizing language with surgical precision. She’d call me a witch, sneer at me in front of others, and even apologized for my presence on my wedding day. To my then-husband.

That was her gift to me on one of the biggest days of my life.

Years later, when I shared a simple truth on Facebook—*“I will protect my children in ways I never was”—*she exploded in the comments. Said I was “full of shit.” When my incredible husband gently defended me and reminded her that her guilt wasn’t mine to carry, she didn’t reflect. She didn’t reach out. Instead, she sent my sister to demand I “rein him in,” and then blocked me—cutting off all communication ever since.

I tried to extend grace. I said I was open to a conversation. But accountability doesn’t live where narcissism reigns.

And then there’s my mother.

Mother’s Day is her favorite stage for guilt. She tells me she has no reason to live, no reason to get clean, because I’ve “cut her off” and her grandchildren “don’t even know her name.” She boasts about the “good mom” she was—because I had haircuts and could watch cartoons. Nevermind those things happened alone, while she was gone for days, binging.

She never came to my college graduation. Neither did my grandmother.
But they’re quick to tell others that I “turned out great”—because of them.

They love to claim the fruits of the very healing they tried to prevent.
They call me an incredible mom, but only when it serves their narrative. Behind closed doors, they tell my siblings I’m mean, ungrateful, selfish. I assume they mean I hold people accountable. That I say out loud the things they’ve spent years denying.

The truth is kryptonite to female narcissists.

When you speak it, they flinch. They deflect. And if you don’t fall back into line, they do the ultimate act of control: silence you.

But here’s what I know now: being blocked isn’t a loss. It’s a boundary enforced. It’s a signal that my voice, my truth, and my healing are no longer accessible to people who only ever came to take.

Healing from a mother wound this deep is a lifelong process. I still grieve what I never had. I still flinch sometimes at my own softness, because for so long, being soft wasn’t safe.

But this work—this messy, sacred work of facing the dysfunction and speaking anyway—has cracked something open in me.

I now know:
Being silenced is not the same as being safe.
And being honest is not the same as being cruel.

If you, too, have been hurt by the women who should’ve loved you most—if your wounds were wrapped in guilt and gaslighting—I want you to know: you are not the problem. You never were.

You’re just the first one who was brave enough to stop pretending.

So here’s to the daughters who dared to speak.
Here’s to the survivors of female narcissists.
Here’s to being blocked—and finally free.

—Ramona Benson