Dear Snarky – My Mom Told Me I’m “Too Fat” To Be in the Family Holiday Card

Dear Snarky

I’m stupidly devastated by the stunt my mom pulled. I say stupidly because I don’t know why I’m surprised because she has been hurting me for a long time with her behavior. I’m 24 and in a top tier law school I’m attending with scholarships. My parents aren’t supporting me.

A couple of days ago my “almond mom” texted me and said that we would be taking the photo for the holiday card in early November at our lake house. She then added that for me to be in the FAMILY picture I would need to lose at least 20 lbs. and since she is giving me “two months notice I should probably get on that ASAP!” She then followed that text up with “Maybe Ozempic?”

My mom has always been on me about my weight and by now I should be used to her cruelty but this feels different. I haven’t responded to her text yet and I honestly don’t know what to say.

Any suggestions?

Signed, Really Sad Daughter

Dear Really Sad,

You know what I wish? I wish I had a minivan and it would have a sign on it that says “Dear Snarky is Coming For You.” Because if I did right now I would be in that minivan hauling to your mom’s house and kicking her ass. Have I ever literally kicked anyone’s ass? No, but there’s always a first time.

Now what I suggest you do is the non-response. The text is atrocious and beyond hateful and it doesn’t deserve a reply. I would go so far as to block your mother because it sounds like whatever communication you have with her is brutal. At this point she doesn’t deserve the gift of communicating with you.

As for that family photo – F that! If anyone over the holidays asks why you weren’t in that photo I would tell them why – because your mom said you had to lose weight to be included in the family holiday card. It’s time for your mother’s vile behavior to be unmasked.

And it’s time for you to have the strictest of boundaries with her. You need to focus on law school and getting an amazing job. You have a wonderful future ahead of you and you don’t need your mother’s cruelty to contaminate your joy.

*****

Wow, that was a lot. Let’s all now take a cleansing breath and focus on something more, shall we say, fun like my latest book KILLER DANCE MOM! 😍 Click on this Amazon link to take a look www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4FZTK5B. But if your thumb is weary of clicking here’s a teaser of the fun that awaits you.

Wynn Butler is a newbie dance mom and honestly, she hasn’t exactly been receiving rave reviews for her skills. Blinging out costumes and being your child’s glam squad aren’t exactly her strong suits. But at her daughter’s first national competition Wynn is ready to prove herself.

What she hadn’t planned for is being forced to share a hotel room with her least favorite person in the whole world – Jacardia Monroe, a mom who’s had two tours of duty at a spray tan detox clinic.

As Wynn attempts to survive the roommate from hell and cheer on her daughter, she stumbles onto a murder. Stuffed in a dance bag backstage is Kingston Reeves, a renowned competition judge. Sitting right next to that dance bag is Jacardia.

When both women became “persons of interest” in the case, Wynn decides it’s time to do some serious snooping to see who at the competition had a motive to kill the dance judge. Rallying her best friends to help her, she discovers a wide swath of suspects from the Instagram/influencer mom who brings a professional camera crew to follow her at competitions, to a crazed former ballerina turned combative dance mom and then there’s the glitter gang . . . a cadre of mothers who are addicted to rhinestoning costumes and perhaps even murder.

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Kim on September 11, 2023 at 10:40 am

It is awesome that you are in law school and funding it without parental contributions! Not many people are able to do this. Please take a moment and let yourself feel this accomplishment.
Please listen to Snarky and heed her advice. I would also add the following:
Any discussion about your weight or BMI should only be had with a trained medical professional.
Please seek out the mental health services that your college provides. It’s best to get the tools you need to deal with your mother early in life. She will only increase her aggressions toward you as she ages.
Document all aggressions from now on. It will help when the inevitable “But I didn’t mean it like that” or “It didn’t happen that way” comes up. Keep the text, do not delete it. It is a piece of evidence that you can show a therapist illustrating her behavior.
Now, the demand that you come to the lake house early in November. You have something else to do – school work. You might want to think about using Thanksgiving break for school work also. As to the demand for a picture – Photoshop exists for a reason. A good photographer will be able to manipulate the image to include you, even though you may be actually several thousand miles away. This happens more often than you think as people grow up and move away.