November 13, 2025 • 47 mins
Helen’s world revolved around her mother. After her mom passes, she leaves something behind that reshapes Helen’s past and challenges her understanding of who her mom truly was.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
There's this feeling there. Moms are good no matter what.
Moms are good even if they do the wrong thing.
It's because they love you so much. If you need
to accept the lie to live, then you accept the lie.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Today we're telling Helen Naeler's story. Helen grew
up in the Midlands of the UK.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The place where I was born was a really little town,
so you basically knew everybody, and I'd walk through town
and bump into ten people I knew.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
She was an only child. Her parents were Eleanor and Allan.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We lived in a really nice three bedroom semi detached
which was painted yellow with a brightly door. They have
very seventies taste in decor, so it quite swirly brown
carpets and very peach. If there was a color choice,
it was peach.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Helen's parents were older than her friend's parents.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Mum was thirty five when she had me. My dad
was over forty, and at the time that was quite
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Helen was very young when her dad's health took a
turn for the worse.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
When I was seven, my dad was diagnosed with heart
and lung problems. He had cardia myopathy and asthma that
eventually became emphysina.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Not long after her dad's diagnosis, Helen's mom, Eleanor, also
got sick. She stopped getting out of bed and stopped
being able to play with Helen. She was diagnosed with
ME my algic and cephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
It can cause muscle and join pain, dizziness, and headaches.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The most common symptom is extreme tiredness, making any activities difficult,
going for a shour, going to work. You can not
sleep well, you can have problems cognitively.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
ME can cause debilitating exhaustion. It's chronic, and there is
no cure. The disease sometimes occurs after a viral infection,
kind of like a long COVID. Treatments are designed to
help patients manage their symptoms and learn to adjust to
a much slower pace of life.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
My mom used to say if she wanted to do something,
she'd have to spend a week resting to prepare to
do that thing, and then a week after resting to
get over it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Her mom retired early because of her illness. So from
the age of seven on, Helen grew up with two
sick parents. Her life revolved around their illnesses.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
It completely shaped my life. I was the child of
two disabled people, and that was my identity.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
While her friends were in first grade learning to read,
Helen was worrying about her parents, especially her mom.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Although I knew that my dad's illnesses were more serious,
life revolved around my mom.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Her mom's chronic fatigue took over their family's life completely.
Eleanor slept for eighteen hours a day and didn't even
have enough energy to walk to the mailbox.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
She wouldn't walk me to the end of the road.
We're talking like a small road with a corner shop
at the bottom, and she wouldn't walk me there because
she couldn't. She would be in bed every afternoon that
I remember. We didn't go out at weekends.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
On the rare occasion that they did leave the house together,
they had to adapt their activities around her mom if
they went shopping. Eleanor wrote a mobility scooter.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
As a teenager. That was so embarrassing, Like already I
had these parents who were older, and they stood out
and now she was on this scooter like hurling around
the shopping center. I was just so mortified.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
But over time, Helen got over the embarrassment and learned
to accept her mom. Helen became her primary caretaker because
they didn't have any extended family nearby, and Helen's dad
spent most nights at the pub drinking.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
My dad was a really isolated figure. He didn't have
many friends, he wasn't at work, he didn't have close
family members. He was a functioning alcoholic one hundred percent.
I can't remember seeing him anything but a happy drunk.
He wasn't aggressive, but undoubtedly he was an alcohol.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So Helen and her mom leaned on each other. It
was them against the world.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I had a really close relationship with my mom. She
was my best friend. I talked to her about everything.
I absolutely adored her. I thought she was perfect, absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But her mom needed a lot of support.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And there was a sense of if my mom said jump,
then you had to jump.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Helen would come home from school and go straight to
her mom's bedside. She'd sit on the edge of the
bed and tell her mom about her day. Then Helen
would make her mom a snack and set up a
place for her to rest on the couch.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
We would watch on TV together and drink a cup
of tea. I felt very very responsible for her. I
was responsible for my parents' happiness and my parents' emotional stability.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Eleanor's emmy was debilitating, but over time she found other
people who struggled with the same simils dumbs.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
She was a part of an m group in the
town and ended up leading it, and so every week
she would have to sort of run these meetings. She'd
do all this research to then write newsletters for the
me group.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Helen was proud of her mom pro finding purpose in
community even though she was struggling with her disease.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
She actually won an award for being a health champion.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Helen's mom went to bed early every night.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
My mom would go to bed, my dad would go
down the pub, and I was just left to entertain myself.
It was important that I was silent, because if I
made any noise then I would wake my mom. So
I would watch TV with subtitles on and no sound.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
When her own world in her little yellow house got
too small, Helen escaped into her dream world. She loved
to write.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I wrote a lot of stories. I wrote a story
about a girl who went into her loft and disappeared
into a wonderful alternative reality with a happy family. I
used to dance around the guard and singing. I'm sure
the neighbors loved it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
One day, when Helen was eight, she overheard her mom
talking about her dad's health.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I heard my mom say the doctor said he could
just drop dead at any minute. I remember switching around
and looking at her, absolutely horrified, and that weighed on
me for the rest of my childhood.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Hearing that shifted Helen's mindset. Even as a child, she
felt responsible for her mom. She also learned to be
extremely tuned into her mom. She tried to do whatever
she could to make her happy. Over time, Helen lost
track of where her mom's needs ended and where hers began.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
She used to tell me my likes and dislikes. I
liked Sally, I liked strawberries. Those were my favorites. I
deferred to her opinion.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Helen learned to look to her mom for answers she
idolized her. As a teenager, Helen missed out on typical
teenage experiences because as soon as school ended, she went
home to take care of her parents.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
In my teens, my average day would look like I
would get up and go to school. My parents were
both at home all day every day. My dad would
go to the pub every day, then my mom would
go for a nap every day, and then I'd come
home and it was just all very insulated.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
But then when Helen was sixteen, there was finally a
break from their quiet, careful routine.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We went on this like once in a lifetime holiday.
We decided to go to America.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
They planned to spend a few days in Chicago, then
two weeks vacationing in Wisconsin and visiting extended family that
lived there. Helen was worried about the strain and the
trip would take on her mom.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We went to the airport and she was in a
wheelchair being wheeled to the aeroplane.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But to Helen's surprise, we.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Got to America and for two weeks she was just
a normal mum. She was walking around. Literally, we had
a non stop holiday. We did something every single day.
We went to water shows, water parks. We got up
in the morning and went to a diner, and then
(09:34):
went and saw my cousins and then went out for
the day and did something ridiculously American, and then we
did something in the evening. It was just this incredible
experience for me, like life changing. And what was the
most amazing was that my parents were both well. My
(09:55):
mom said the heat made my dad's chest better.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The climate also seemed to help with her mom's chronic fatigue.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I just thought, oh, my goodness, America has cured my parents.
America has made them better.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Helen was ecstatic. It was like she slipped into a
better world where her parents were healthy and they were
a normal, happy family. But the dream didn't last.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
We got on the plane to come home, and we
got back to the UK and she was back in
that wheelchair being wheeled back through the airport, as if
the last two weeks hadn't happened. It was a huge
moment for me. I saw what my life could be like.
(10:41):
And I was like, why are we not going to America?
Why are we not packing up and going because you
could be well, you tell me all the time how
you wish she could be. Well, we've got the answer.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Let's just go.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I prayed every night for my parents to be better.
The idea that it was within gross was just like
I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
On a family trip to the US, Helen's mom, who
was normally chronically ill and stuck in bed, experienced major
relief from her symptoms. Her dad, who had serious heart
and lung problems, was doing much better too. On their trip,
both her parents had energy and they went on adventures
together every day. Helen was overjoyed they had found a
(11:57):
cure for her parents America, but when they got back
to England, their symptoms became as debilitating as they were before.
Helen wasn't ready to accept that this was their normal again.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It was a huge moment in that I saw what
my life could be like, and I was like, why
are we not going to America? Why are we not
packing up and going because you could be well, you
tell me all the time how you wish she could be. Well,
we've got the answer, Let's just go.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But her parents didn't want to move to the US,
so Helen channeled her energy into doing well in school
so that she could have a life.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Ever on, I did really well in my A levels
and then off I went to university and I went
to Nottingham, which it isn't even the top three cities
in the UK. Yet I felt like I was in
this enormous city that was totally overwhelming. I walked through
(13:09):
ten and I didn't see anyone I knew. That was
really shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Helen had spent her childhood in teenage years hyper focused
on her parents' health, living in a town where she
knew everyone. When she left for college, she was plunged
into a completely foreign world.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I did feel really lost. It was scary. It was
obviously brilliant because I never thought i'd get away. The
freedom was incredible. At the same time, I hadn't been
given any life skills by my parents.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Helen didn't have the same street smarts or life experiences
as her peers, but she certainly knew how to take
care of herself. She'd been doing it since she was seven.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So it was a really steep learning curve. I have
the skills to do it, and I had the confidence
that I'd been doing this forever and that I could
do it again.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Sure enough, Helen found her stride at college, and during
her first year there, she met a boy named Peter.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I met Peter three friends. We used to meet up
with another guy and another girl and just hang out.
Peter would walk me home and we got chatting, and
I found out that his dad had also had heart problems,
and he just understood the situation that I was in
in a way that no one else understood.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Helen and Peter began to spend more and more time together.
The connection between them was instant.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
We got together and we got engaged after six months,
we got married twelve months later. It was all very whirlwind,
but at twenty one, you feel like a proper grown up,
so that's.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
What you do. But Eleanor was not welcoming to Peter.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
She was very mocking about my relationship, like, are you
going to call your lover?
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Do you love him?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Helen? Are you in love with him? There was no safeguarding.
There was no sort of like, well hold on, let
me check this person out and see what I think
of them if you're going to marry them, and like
you're going to marry them six months after you started
dating them, Like that's actually ridiculous, you're twenty. My parents
didn't do any of that. They were just like, oh great,
(15:31):
let's arrange the wedding.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
At first, Helen struggled to accept that Peter actually wanted
to be with her.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I spent a long time thinking that I'd put on
a mask when he met me, and that I tricked
him into marrying me.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Shortly after Helen and Peter got married, Helen's dad collapsed
and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
His health declined significantly after that, so then he was
on oxygen. The last two years of his life were
a nightmare. He was just having heart attacks all the time.
It would be like four am phone calls saying this
is it, You've got to come. And I remember jumping
(16:19):
in the car with my husband and rushing thinking are
we going to make it? Are we going to make it?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Her whole life, Helen had been afraid that her dad
could die at any minute, but during those two years,
the constant ham of worry grew into a fever pitch.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I went into a real period of depression, really really
struggled dealing with that situation. Me and my husband had
visited one weekend. We got the phone call, then went
straight upstairs to where he was in the ward. The
nest said, I'm really sorry, but he's passed away, and
my mum just collapsed to the floor and I don't
(17:00):
I remember crying initially because it was all about looking
after my mom and caring for her and making sure
she was okay. I remember holding his hand and he
was still warm. His eyes were open, and I was like,
this is weird. His eyes are open. And my mom
was so snappy with me and was like, well just
(17:21):
close them then, and I got really upset. It just
sort of finally hit me and I said, I don't
want to leave without him, and my mom said, well,
this is it, isn't it, Helen, he's dead. Of course
he's not going to come with us.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Eleanor had no room for her daughter's grief.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
This was her moment, and it wasn't about me. After
his death, she used to say to me, it was
just your dad, but it was my husband. So every
single occasion that could possibly bring up those feelings for her,
I would send her flowers, I would call I would
(18:03):
really make a big deal of it. And for years,
years and years, she didn't even acknowledge that Father's Day
might be a bit difficult for me.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
As the years went on, Helen remained her mom's caretaker.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Because she was my mom, and because I was an
only child, it wasn't like I could just say, right,
I'm married now Celia. I couldn't let her go. I
felt very very responsible for her. We would have her
to our house every Christmas and it would be really strained.
(18:40):
I hated Christmas because Peter really really struggled with my
mum's behavior. My mum would be attention seeking and difficult,
and I felt like I just had to keep the peace.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Helen and Peter had been trying for a baby and
a difficult miscarriage. Finally Helen became pregnant, but the pregnancy
was quickly overshadowed.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
At exactly the same time, my mum got a diagnosis
of Parkinson's disease. The consultant called it mild parkinson Ism.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Despite the early diagnosis, her mom's health was declining quickly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
She was getting worse and worse, so she was getting
more medication. She was going to these Parkinson's support groups.
She wasn't interested in how my pregnancy was going. She
wasn't interested in what scans I'd had, She wasn't interested
in me thinking about baby names. She just wanted to
talk about Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Soon Eleanor required constant care and moved into a nursing home.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
She started having fools and it was happening so frequently
that the paramedics were actually told on her notes not
to take to a hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Helen tried to be there for her mom. It was
hard to see her struggling in this way. She visited
the nursing home often, and one day they had plans
to go shopping in town together, so Helen went to
go pick her mom up. When she got there, her
mom was sitting on the couch and then she sort.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Of pretended to fall. It was very slow motion, and
when she got to the floor, she said, oh, my goodness,
did you see that? I just fell off the sofa.
And I was like, not really, and she said I
(20:41):
need to go to bed. And I was like, okay,
come on then, you know, i'll help you up. I'll
put you to bed. And she said I can't walk,
You'll have to carry me. And I said, well, i'll
help you, but like I can't carry you, you know,
come on, get up, and she sort of turned demonic.
(21:04):
She was sort of crawling along the floor and saying, fine, oh,
cruel there, then, is this what you want? Is this
what you want from me? Lift a bitch?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Her mom had never used a word like that before.
And it shook Helen.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It was kind of terrifying, so I ended up hiding
in the kitchen, thinking what am I going to do.
I tried calling Peter and he was like, just leave,
but I didn't feel like I could leave.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
After that, Helen stopped visiting her husband. Peter supported her
decision to pull back from her mother.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We were having to kind of back off her more
and more and we would just be like, Okay, she
can't be around the children anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Eleanor's health was declining rapidly. Doctors were constantly scrambling to
help her and find answers.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
She bound her hands up into fists so that she
couldn't unclench them. She wasn't eating, she was just getting
worse and worse. She was referred to a hospital where
they did every test end of the sum They literally
tested her for everything, and eventually they said that they
(22:28):
had found nothing physically or mentally wrong with my mum,
but she would die in the next few months. By
that point, I'd spent three four years banging my head
on a brick wall trying to get someone to listen
to me, to say this isn't right, something's wrong, and
(22:49):
I need you to find out what's going on, and
they basically said to me, we've tested her for everything
and we can't help.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Doctors had run out of ways to help her mom,
and Helen had to.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I tried to stay in contact with her, but she
didn't really want it. Obviously. There was a massive decision
not to go and see her in her final months.
I decided it was better this way. I mean, that's
a horrible decision to make and not something I took lightly,
but actually having contact with her was more damaging.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
It was painful for Helen not to visit. She still
loved her mom very much. She got occasional updates from
the medical team. One day, the call was different.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I'd had this phone call a few days earlier saying
your mom's got a mouth infection. I was like, okay,
so will you let me know how that goes then,
and like call me back in a few days, and
they were like, well, yeah, it might not be that long.
A few days later they rang me and they said,
(24:00):
your mom's died.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
For a moment, everything stood still. Helen's mom had been
the center of her attention for her entire life. Her
mom's sickness had been the guiding force in every decision
she made. And now it was all over, with her gone,
everything was all mixed up. Nothing made sense, not even
(24:26):
her own grief.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It was a shock. It was a real shock because
we were estranged. I think quite a few people thought
I wouldn't grief, or perhaps I wouldn't feel sad about it.
It's just such a complex grief. It isn't straightforward, it
isn't normal. It was worse than my dad. My dad,
(24:51):
I was sad, but it was really straightforward. I missed him,
and I was sad that he was gone, whereas this
was so much more or complex.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Ever since she was a little girl, Helen used her
writing as a tool to make sense of her messy
and confusing world.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That's a way of me making sense of things and
getting things straight in my head. So it was kind
of a natural reaction for me to write about what
had happened.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Helen began writing a book about her life with her mom,
and as a part of her writing process, she decided
to read her mom's diaries.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I knew that my mom had written daily diaries. I'd
seen her writing them when I was a teenager, so
she'd written it from when she was twelve till the
year before she died, and she was on it. She
really didn't miss a day, and so I decided that
I needed to read them as part of writing this.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
This wasn't one or two diaries. Her mom had made
daily entries for fifty five years.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
So obviously that is a huge amount to read. It
took a while. It took me probably at least a
year to read them, and I did have to have
breaks because it was quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
At first glance, these entries were boring.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
She just writes about the basics, the weather, where's she being,
what she done. There's no real feelings. A few read
my diaries from when I was a teenager. Gosh, the
teenage ants that would seep out of those pages, and
yet there's nothing like that in my mom's diaries. She
doesn't fancy anyone, she doesn't have any friendship problems, there's
(26:37):
no feelings.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Reading the diaries became part of Helen's daily routine. She
was slowly reading her way through her mom's life from
when she was twelve years old onwards.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I read it like i'd read a novel or something.
I just always had one with me. They were tiny
so I could just keep them in my handbag, and
whenever I had five minutes, I just read it few pages.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Over the years, Helen had heard her mom tell the
story of her life many times. She knew it well.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What I expected to find was exactly what she'd told me.
She'd had a really hard childhood with a really difficult
sister and difficult parents, and then she'd had a really
successful time at work, met my dad decided to have me,
and then from that point she'd got ill. And that
(27:32):
was just completely wrong.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Helen started reading passages in her mom's diary that diverged
from the story she'd been told. Then Helen saw the
line that stopped her in her tracks.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
She writes, I have found my illness.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
After her mother died, Helen decided to write a book
about what it was like growing up with her as
a parent. As part of her writing process, she read
through the daily diaries her mom had kept for over
fifty years. That's when Helen saw the line that changed everything.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
She writes, I have found my illness.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Helen read and reread the words to make sure she
wasn't imagining it, but there it was in her mom's handwriting.
For the first time she learned the real story of
how her mom got diagnosed with EMMY.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
She goes on to nag the doctor to diagnose her,
and then verylically, she's into getting the sick, getting mobility scooters.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
The picture came into focus. Her mom had handpicked her
illness and then spent years performing it. The diaries revealed
an elaborate deception, the tale of a double life that
her mother lived, one where she was perfectly healthy.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, one part, she's recording how ill she is every day,
and yet it doesn't actually match up to what she's doing.
So she'll say, this was a really bad day, and
yet she's been apple picking, or you know, this was
a really terrible day. I went shopping all day.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It was possible for Helen's bomb to fake having m
E because there was no definitive way to test for it.
Diagnoses were primarily based on a patient's own account of
their symptoms, and most of the time people don't lie
to doctors. Most people don't choose to be bedridden.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
At the time. It was almost like, you don't have
anything else, so it must be this.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
For her whole childhood, Helen was consumed with worry, watching
her mom lay in bed in chronic pain. When Helen
went after school. She was constantly concerned about how her
mom would take care of herself. But the diary told
a very different story.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
The thing she said to me and to other people
about how she needed to rest and plan and do
all that, that's just out the window. None of it
was true. She was going apple picking, and she was
going on city trips and going shopping.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That really hurt.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
My whole childhood was shaped by the emmy what she
couldn't do, and it wasn't true. She could have just
been a totally normal mum.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Helen couldn't believe what she was reading. She felt sick.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I was unraveling what had happened and what had happened
to me, My story of how I am the child
of two disabled parents and have cared for them. That's
actually a lie.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
We could have been living a normal life for years.
Helen's mom lived a lie. But it didn't make sense
to Helen. Why would her mom choose this?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
She had money, she had health, she had friends, She
could have had a really good life, and yet she
chose something so destructive.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Helen scoured her mom's diaries trying to find an answer.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It was like she was totally unveiling herself. Her mask
sort of slips, and she writes about how everyone is special,
but I'm really special, and just goes into this rant
about how special she is and how no one has
appreciated how special she is.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Helen started to get an understanding of her mom's inner world.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
She had been a narcissist from birth. There's always a
huge vanity. So she talks about how beautiful she is
and how long her legs are, how slender her hands are,
in a way I can't even imagine writing about myself.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Helen's mom had always told her that she'd gotten sick
after giving birth to her, that before that she had
lived a happy, healthy life, But her diaries told a
different story. As Helen read, it was like she was
being reintroduced to her own mother. Eleanor's pattern of fake
illnesses had started when she was a child.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
What was really striking for me was that from the
beginning she was obsessed with illness. In her twenties and
we're talking about early twenties, she's constantly going to the
doctor for things breast scams, brain scams. Has she broken this?
Has she done this, you know everything, She's been constantly
checked for, and she doesn't just take what the doctor says.
(33:04):
She needs to go to the consultant and has the
highest opinion on things. I really didn't expect the obsession
to be so early.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Eleanor's view of her own life was at best self
centered and at worst delusional. Her entries paint a picture
of a world where she is in complete control. Like
when she wrote about getting pregnant with Helen.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Nothing about wanting a baby, nothing about thinking about a
family is one day, she just writes in her diary,
decided I was pregnant. So she's some sort of omnipotent god.
She's created a pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
As she read on, Helen came across something else that
was incredibly disturbing. Events from her own childhood that she
had no memory of. Her mom had abused her growing up,
and she died mented it in her diaries.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
She drugged me. I was six months old, and she
feeds me Chinese food washed down with whiskey. When I
was a week old, she went shopping and just left
me at home. It's neglect, but it's also abuse, And
I really didn't expect to find that what was really
(34:22):
hard about reading. It was that there'd be months of
her talking about the weather or going to the supermarket,
and then suddenly there would be she's drugged me, or
she's in some way injured me. It's just so emotionless.
She's so cool. She doesn't try to hide anything which
(34:45):
is interesting or make excuses for anything.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
One of Helen's earliest memories was falling off a chair
and breaking her arm, but as she read through her
mom's diaries, she learned that didn't happen the way she
remembered it. Her mom talks about having broken Helen's arm
herself when Helen was only two.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
According to the diaries, she did it. I definitely broke
my arm. My mom probably caused it, and I don't
know how.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Helen learned that social services got involved and somehow her
mom explained the injury away.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Reading that when I had small children and I've got
a very recently two year old, I can see how
small her arm is, and I can see how easy
that would be to break.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
As an adult, Helen's mind turned to her father. He
had been there and witnessed a lot of the abuse,
so in many ways he was complicit, but it seems
like Eleanor had a lot of power over him too.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
I can make excuses for him. I can say that
he was a man of a differents who relied on
the fact that his wife was the mother and that
she would know everything and do the right thing. I
can say that he was isolated, and that I suspect
(36:14):
she said she'd leave him and take me with her.
Does that excuse it all? No? Do I think he
had a really awful life. Yeah, So it's just like
holding all of those things at the same time.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Growing up, Helen had carried immense guilt for ruining her
mom's life. She knew her mom had gotten sick after
she was born. She felt like everything was her fault.
But now Helen revised the story of her life. Her
mom had gone down a dark path long before she
was born, and none of it was her fault.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
It was really like, oh gosh, this hasn't been the
story that I thought it was going to be. I
really believe I'd ruined her life, that she'd had me
and I had breaken everything, that if I haven't existed,
she would have had a happy life. And that's not
(37:13):
what I read at all. This was always going to happen.
It didn't matter whether I was there or not.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Every neatly penciled, diligently dated diary entry was like a
puzzle piece. At first, it was a scrambled and confusing mess,
but slowly pieces started to click into place. Helen saw
that everything, the narcissism, the faked illness, was all connected.
Her mom was not sick with EMMY or Parkinson's. She
(37:45):
was mentally ill with a condition called Munchausen syndrome. People
with Munchausen's fake or exaggerate medical conditions as a means
of gaining control, sympathy, or power.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
What I realized was that for women with not statistic
personality disorder, it often doesn't look like masculine narcissism. It
often looks like victimhood. It's about getting attention and about
being the poor little woman. Munchasen's is kind of perfect
(38:17):
for that, because who questions an ill person and says,
I think you're making it up? Who would do that?
Without the diaries, I think I would still be in
the dark. I don't think I would have properly been
able to pull the pieces together. There's lots of events
that I see differently now.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Like the trip to America, where her parents seemed miraculously cured.
Her mom could choose when she felt well based on
what was convenient for her, and her dad hadn't actually
been doing as well as her mom told her.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
My mum said to me, Dad is better in the heat,
and yeah, at the same time, I remember him gasping
for air because it was so hot and he couldn't breathe.
And I didn't realize that those two things were opposites
until I wrote my book and my agent said to
(39:16):
me which one was it? And I was like, oh,
my goodness, I've held this for thirty years and never
put it together. My dad wasn't better there, but she
told me that he was, so I believed her. It
seems incredible. I don't think you can underestimate the power
(39:39):
that a parent has over a child. I was talking
to my daughter about a cushion downstairs once and I
said to her, the gray one, you know, the gray one.
She was like, in the blue one. I was like, no,
the gray one, the gray one. She was like, oh okay,
And she said she was trying to convince her that
(40:00):
this blue cushion was gray because I'd said that it
was gray, and when I got downstairs, I was like, oh,
it's not gray, it's blue. Sorry, I got that wrong.
But the power that we have as adults over children
to say that this is this that even when you're
looking at something, you're like, my mom must be right,
(40:21):
so I must be seeing this wrong. If you need
to accept the lie to live, then you accept the
lie right.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Slowly, Helen began writing the book about her mom.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
It took me quite a few attempts to write it
because I didn't really know how to put it all together.
She wasn't a cartoon villain.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Helen pulled together all the strands of truth and fiction
that had shaped her world growing up, her mom's version
of events, her own memories, and the diary. She published
her book, which is titled My Mother Munchausen's and Me.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I thought I was going to be the only person
in the whole world who had been through this. That
turned out to be completely wrong. I have had probably
one hundred people contact me from all over the world.
Some people have told me that I've explained their life
to them, and you know, I've had people saying I'm
(41:28):
sixty and I've just realized what's happened.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Helen realized she had concrete answers that many people in
her situation never get.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I've got the diaries, and I've got so much proof
in a way that a lot of people don't. I
think I'm quite unusual in that a lot of people
who've been through something like this unsurprisingly go down some
really dark roads with their mental health and with ways
of coping with that. And for some reason I've got
(42:02):
through this and being able to write about it, which
is quite unusual. But it is amazing because I can
hopefully verbalize for people who can't say it, what's happened.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Helen will never be able to get those years of
her childhood back.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
It's a huge betrayal. So much of my life was
sacrificed to what she needed, which was actually what she wanted.
So much of who I am had to be hidden.
It's taken me until the last five years to start
(42:40):
to get back to who I am, what do I like,
what do I want to do? Believing that my opinion
matters and that I matter enough to be looked after.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Helen says her relationship with her husband has been healing.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Luckily for me, I picked the right guy. He's a wonderful, faithful,
fabulous person, which is very jammy. It's taken me a
long time to believe that he loves me, because I
just didn't think I was lovable. It's taken me a
(43:20):
really long time to accept that he wasn't tricked, that
he did want this, and that we both make each
other much happier than we'd be without each other.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Eleanor went to extreme lengths to control and abuse her daughter,
to keep Helen's world small and make sure it would
always revolve around her, but she underestimated her daughter's resilience.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I do think in a way, my mum neglecting me
was a real doubtful because it meant I became so
self sufficient. It just absolutely defeated everything she wanted me
to be. I was supposed to fail it at a thing,
but I'd learned to look after myself.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Today, Helen has built the life she always dreamed of. She, Peter,
and their kids lived together in Nottingham, where Peter and
Helen met and fell in love. They go on weekend
trips with their kids, play the TV loudly, and treasure
every day they spent together. We end every weekly episode
with the same question, why do you want to share
(44:34):
your story?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
A really big thing for me to say was that
mothers aren't necessarily good. There's this feeling that moms are
good no matter what. Mums are good even if they
do the wrong thing. It's because they love you so much.
I'd had so many people saying to me, this can't
(44:55):
be true, she's your mom, as if being a mum
and being a bad person don't go together, and I
really wanted to challenge that.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly, I came up
with my plan, which was I'm gonna buy a gun.
That's my way out.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Walking into this gun store thinking that I cannot believe
this is my life. I can't believe this is my life.
I was floored. I had never felt so helpless in
my life.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com, or follow us on Instagram at
Betrayal Pod. You can also connect with me on Instagram
at It's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, you additional
(46:00):
content and connect with the Betrayal community. Join our substack
at Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
(46:21):
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced
by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Leboord, with additional production from
Ben Fetterman. Casting support from Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team
(46:44):
is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing
by Matt Delvecchio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's
theme composed by Oliver Bain's music library provided by myb Music.
And For more podcasts from Heart, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's this feeling there. Moms are good no matter what.
Moms are good even if they do the wrong thing.
It's because they love you so much. If you need
to accept the lie to live, then you accept the lie.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Today we're telling Helen Naeler's story. Helen grew
up in the Midlands of the UK.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
The place where I was born was a really little town,
so you basically knew everybody, and I'd walk through town
and bump into ten people I knew.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
She was an only child. Her parents were Eleanor and Allan.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
We lived in a really nice three bedroom semi detached
which was painted yellow with a brightly door. They have
very seventies taste in decor, so it quite swirly brown
carpets and very peach. If there was a color choice,
it was peach.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Helen's parents were older than her friend's parents.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Mum was thirty five when she had me. My dad
was over forty, and at the time that was quite
a big deal.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Helen was very young when her dad's health took a
turn for the worse.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
When I was seven, my dad was diagnosed with heart
and lung problems. He had cardia myopathy and asthma that
eventually became emphysina.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Not long after her dad's diagnosis, Helen's mom, Eleanor, also
got sick. She stopped getting out of bed and stopped
being able to play with Helen. She was diagnosed with
ME my algic and cephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
It can cause muscle and join pain, dizziness, and headaches.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The most common symptom is extreme tiredness, making any activities difficult,
going for a shour, going to work. You can not
sleep well, you can have problems cognitively.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
ME can cause debilitating exhaustion. It's chronic, and there is
no cure. The disease sometimes occurs after a viral infection,
kind of like a long COVID. Treatments are designed to
help patients manage their symptoms and learn to adjust to
a much slower pace of life.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
My mom used to say if she wanted to do something,
she'd have to spend a week resting to prepare to
do that thing, and then a week after resting to
get over it.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Her mom retired early because of her illness. So from
the age of seven on, Helen grew up with two
sick parents. Her life revolved around their illnesses.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
It completely shaped my life. I was the child of
two disabled people, and that was my identity.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
While her friends were in first grade learning to read,
Helen was worrying about her parents, especially her mom.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Although I knew that my dad's illnesses were more serious,
life revolved around my mom.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Her mom's chronic fatigue took over their family's life completely.
Eleanor slept for eighteen hours a day and didn't even
have enough energy to walk to the mailbox.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
She wouldn't walk me to the end of the road.
We're talking like a small road with a corner shop
at the bottom, and she wouldn't walk me there because
she couldn't. She would be in bed every afternoon that
I remember. We didn't go out at weekends.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
On the rare occasion that they did leave the house together,
they had to adapt their activities around her mom if
they went shopping. Eleanor wrote a mobility scooter.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
As a teenager. That was so embarrassing, Like already I
had these parents who were older, and they stood out
and now she was on this scooter like hurling around
the shopping center. I was just so mortified.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
But over time, Helen got over the embarrassment and learned
to accept her mom. Helen became her primary caretaker because
they didn't have any extended family nearby, and Helen's dad
spent most nights at the pub drinking.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
My dad was a really isolated figure. He didn't have
many friends, he wasn't at work, he didn't have close
family members. He was a functioning alcoholic one hundred percent.
I can't remember seeing him anything but a happy drunk.
He wasn't aggressive, but undoubtedly he was an alcohol.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
So Helen and her mom leaned on each other. It
was them against the world.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I had a really close relationship with my mom. She
was my best friend. I talked to her about everything.
I absolutely adored her. I thought she was perfect, absolutely perfect.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
But her mom needed a lot of support.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And there was a sense of if my mom said jump,
then you had to jump.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Helen would come home from school and go straight to
her mom's bedside. She'd sit on the edge of the
bed and tell her mom about her day. Then Helen
would make her mom a snack and set up a
place for her to rest on the couch.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
We would watch on TV together and drink a cup
of tea. I felt very very responsible for her. I
was responsible for my parents' happiness and my parents' emotional stability.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Eleanor's emmy was debilitating, but over time she found other
people who struggled with the same simils dumbs.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
She was a part of an m group in the
town and ended up leading it, and so every week
she would have to sort of run these meetings. She'd
do all this research to then write newsletters for the
me group.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Helen was proud of her mom pro finding purpose in
community even though she was struggling with her disease.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
She actually won an award for being a health champion.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Helen's mom went to bed early every night.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
My mom would go to bed, my dad would go
down the pub, and I was just left to entertain myself.
It was important that I was silent, because if I
made any noise then I would wake my mom. So
I would watch TV with subtitles on and no sound.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
When her own world in her little yellow house got
too small, Helen escaped into her dream world. She loved
to write.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I wrote a lot of stories. I wrote a story
about a girl who went into her loft and disappeared
into a wonderful alternative reality with a happy family. I
used to dance around the guard and singing. I'm sure
the neighbors loved it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
One day, when Helen was eight, she overheard her mom
talking about her dad's health.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I heard my mom say the doctor said he could
just drop dead at any minute. I remember switching around
and looking at her, absolutely horrified, and that weighed on
me for the rest of my childhood.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Hearing that shifted Helen's mindset. Even as a child, she
felt responsible for her mom. She also learned to be
extremely tuned into her mom. She tried to do whatever
she could to make her happy. Over time, Helen lost
track of where her mom's needs ended and where hers began.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
She used to tell me my likes and dislikes. I
liked Sally, I liked strawberries. Those were my favorites. I
deferred to her opinion.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Helen learned to look to her mom for answers she
idolized her. As a teenager, Helen missed out on typical
teenage experiences because as soon as school ended, she went
home to take care of her parents.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
In my teens, my average day would look like I
would get up and go to school. My parents were
both at home all day every day. My dad would
go to the pub every day, then my mom would
go for a nap every day, and then I'd come
home and it was just all very insulated.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
But then when Helen was sixteen, there was finally a
break from their quiet, careful routine.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
We went on this like once in a lifetime holiday.
We decided to go to America.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
They planned to spend a few days in Chicago, then
two weeks vacationing in Wisconsin and visiting extended family that
lived there. Helen was worried about the strain and the
trip would take on her mom.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
We went to the airport and she was in a
wheelchair being wheeled to the aeroplane.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But to Helen's surprise, we.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Got to America and for two weeks she was just
a normal mum. She was walking around. Literally, we had
a non stop holiday. We did something every single day.
We went to water shows, water parks. We got up
in the morning and went to a diner, and then
(09:34):
went and saw my cousins and then went out for
the day and did something ridiculously American, and then we
did something in the evening. It was just this incredible
experience for me, like life changing. And what was the
most amazing was that my parents were both well. My
(09:55):
mom said the heat made my dad's chest better.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
The climate also seemed to help with her mom's chronic fatigue.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
I just thought, oh, my goodness, America has cured my parents.
America has made them better.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Helen was ecstatic. It was like she slipped into a
better world where her parents were healthy and they were
a normal, happy family. But the dream didn't last.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
We got on the plane to come home, and we
got back to the UK and she was back in
that wheelchair being wheeled back through the airport, as if
the last two weeks hadn't happened. It was a huge
moment for me. I saw what my life could be like.
(10:41):
And I was like, why are we not going to America?
Why are we not packing up and going because you
could be well, you tell me all the time how
you wish she could be. Well, we've got the answer.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Let's just go.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I prayed every night for my parents to be better.
The idea that it was within gross was just like
I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
On a family trip to the US, Helen's mom, who
was normally chronically ill and stuck in bed, experienced major
relief from her symptoms. Her dad, who had serious heart
and lung problems, was doing much better too. On their trip,
both her parents had energy and they went on adventures
together every day. Helen was overjoyed they had found a
(11:57):
cure for her parents America, but when they got back
to England, their symptoms became as debilitating as they were before.
Helen wasn't ready to accept that this was their normal again.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
It was a huge moment in that I saw what
my life could be like, and I was like, why
are we not going to America? Why are we not
packing up and going because you could be well, you
tell me all the time how you wish she could be. Well,
we've got the answer, Let's just go.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
But her parents didn't want to move to the US,
so Helen channeled her energy into doing well in school
so that she could have a life.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Ever on, I did really well in my A levels
and then off I went to university and I went
to Nottingham, which it isn't even the top three cities
in the UK. Yet I felt like I was in
this enormous city that was totally overwhelming. I walked through
(13:09):
ten and I didn't see anyone I knew. That was
really shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Helen had spent her childhood in teenage years hyper focused
on her parents' health, living in a town where she
knew everyone. When she left for college, she was plunged
into a completely foreign world.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I did feel really lost. It was scary. It was
obviously brilliant because I never thought i'd get away. The
freedom was incredible. At the same time, I hadn't been
given any life skills by my parents.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Helen didn't have the same street smarts or life experiences
as her peers, but she certainly knew how to take
care of herself. She'd been doing it since she was seven.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So it was a really steep learning curve. I have
the skills to do it, and I had the confidence
that I'd been doing this forever and that I could
do it again.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Sure enough, Helen found her stride at college, and during
her first year there, she met a boy named Peter.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I met Peter three friends. We used to meet up
with another guy and another girl and just hang out.
Peter would walk me home and we got chatting, and
I found out that his dad had also had heart problems,
and he just understood the situation that I was in
in a way that no one else understood.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Helen and Peter began to spend more and more time together.
The connection between them was instant.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
We got together and we got engaged after six months,
we got married twelve months later. It was all very whirlwind,
but at twenty one, you feel like a proper grown up,
so that's.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
What you do. But Eleanor was not welcoming to Peter.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
She was very mocking about my relationship, like, are you
going to call your lover?
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Do you love him?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Helen? Are you in love with him? There was no safeguarding.
There was no sort of like, well hold on, let
me check this person out and see what I think
of them if you're going to marry them, and like
you're going to marry them six months after you started
dating them, Like that's actually ridiculous, you're twenty. My parents
didn't do any of that. They were just like, oh great,
(15:31):
let's arrange the wedding.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
At first, Helen struggled to accept that Peter actually wanted
to be with her.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I spent a long time thinking that I'd put on
a mask when he met me, and that I tricked
him into marrying me.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Shortly after Helen and Peter got married, Helen's dad collapsed
and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
His health declined significantly after that, so then he was
on oxygen. The last two years of his life were
a nightmare. He was just having heart attacks all the time.
It would be like four am phone calls saying this
is it, You've got to come. And I remember jumping
(16:19):
in the car with my husband and rushing thinking are
we going to make it? Are we going to make it?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Her whole life, Helen had been afraid that her dad
could die at any minute, but during those two years,
the constant ham of worry grew into a fever pitch.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I went into a real period of depression, really really
struggled dealing with that situation. Me and my husband had
visited one weekend. We got the phone call, then went
straight upstairs to where he was in the ward. The
nest said, I'm really sorry, but he's passed away, and
my mum just collapsed to the floor and I don't
(17:00):
I remember crying initially because it was all about looking
after my mom and caring for her and making sure
she was okay. I remember holding his hand and he
was still warm. His eyes were open, and I was like,
this is weird. His eyes are open. And my mom
was so snappy with me and was like, well just
(17:21):
close them then, and I got really upset. It just
sort of finally hit me and I said, I don't
want to leave without him, and my mom said, well,
this is it, isn't it, Helen, he's dead. Of course
he's not going to come with us.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Eleanor had no room for her daughter's grief.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
This was her moment, and it wasn't about me. After
his death, she used to say to me, it was
just your dad, but it was my husband. So every
single occasion that could possibly bring up those feelings for her,
I would send her flowers, I would call I would
(18:03):
really make a big deal of it. And for years,
years and years, she didn't even acknowledge that Father's Day
might be a bit difficult for me.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
As the years went on, Helen remained her mom's caretaker.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Because she was my mom, and because I was an
only child, it wasn't like I could just say, right,
I'm married now Celia. I couldn't let her go. I
felt very very responsible for her. We would have her
to our house every Christmas and it would be really strained.
(18:40):
I hated Christmas because Peter really really struggled with my
mum's behavior. My mum would be attention seeking and difficult,
and I felt like I just had to keep the peace.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Helen and Peter had been trying for a baby and
a difficult miscarriage. Finally Helen became pregnant, but the pregnancy
was quickly overshadowed.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
At exactly the same time, my mum got a diagnosis
of Parkinson's disease. The consultant called it mild parkinson Ism.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Despite the early diagnosis, her mom's health was declining quickly.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
She was getting worse and worse, so she was getting
more medication. She was going to these Parkinson's support groups.
She wasn't interested in how my pregnancy was going. She
wasn't interested in what scans I'd had, She wasn't interested
in me thinking about baby names. She just wanted to
talk about Parkinson's disease.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Soon Eleanor required constant care and moved into a nursing home.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
She started having fools and it was happening so frequently
that the paramedics were actually told on her notes not
to take to a hospital.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Helen tried to be there for her mom. It was
hard to see her struggling in this way. She visited
the nursing home often, and one day they had plans
to go shopping in town together, so Helen went to
go pick her mom up. When she got there, her
mom was sitting on the couch and then she sort.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Of pretended to fall. It was very slow motion, and
when she got to the floor, she said, oh, my goodness,
did you see that? I just fell off the sofa.
And I was like, not really, and she said I
(20:41):
need to go to bed. And I was like, okay,
come on then, you know, i'll help you up. I'll
put you to bed. And she said I can't walk,
You'll have to carry me. And I said, well, i'll
help you, but like I can't carry you, you know,
come on, get up, and she sort of turned demonic.
(21:04):
She was sort of crawling along the floor and saying, fine, oh,
cruel there, then, is this what you want? Is this
what you want from me? Lift a bitch?
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Her mom had never used a word like that before.
And it shook Helen.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It was kind of terrifying, so I ended up hiding
in the kitchen, thinking what am I going to do.
I tried calling Peter and he was like, just leave,
but I didn't feel like I could leave.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
After that, Helen stopped visiting her husband. Peter supported her
decision to pull back from her mother.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We were having to kind of back off her more
and more and we would just be like, Okay, she
can't be around the children anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Eleanor's health was declining rapidly. Doctors were constantly scrambling to
help her and find answers.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
She bound her hands up into fists so that she
couldn't unclench them. She wasn't eating, she was just getting
worse and worse. She was referred to a hospital where
they did every test end of the sum They literally
tested her for everything, and eventually they said that they
(22:28):
had found nothing physically or mentally wrong with my mum,
but she would die in the next few months. By
that point, I'd spent three four years banging my head
on a brick wall trying to get someone to listen
to me, to say this isn't right, something's wrong, and
(22:49):
I need you to find out what's going on, and
they basically said to me, we've tested her for everything
and we can't help.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Doctors had run out of ways to help her mom,
and Helen had to.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
I tried to stay in contact with her, but she
didn't really want it. Obviously. There was a massive decision
not to go and see her in her final months.
I decided it was better this way. I mean, that's
a horrible decision to make and not something I took lightly,
but actually having contact with her was more damaging.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
It was painful for Helen not to visit. She still
loved her mom very much. She got occasional updates from
the medical team. One day, the call was different.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
I'd had this phone call a few days earlier saying
your mom's got a mouth infection. I was like, okay,
so will you let me know how that goes then,
and like call me back in a few days, and
they were like, well, yeah, it might not be that long.
A few days later they rang me and they said,
(24:00):
your mom's died.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
For a moment, everything stood still. Helen's mom had been
the center of her attention for her entire life. Her
mom's sickness had been the guiding force in every decision
she made. And now it was all over, with her gone,
everything was all mixed up. Nothing made sense, not even
(24:26):
her own grief.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
It was a shock. It was a real shock because
we were estranged. I think quite a few people thought
I wouldn't grief, or perhaps I wouldn't feel sad about it.
It's just such a complex grief. It isn't straightforward, it
isn't normal. It was worse than my dad. My dad,
(24:51):
I was sad, but it was really straightforward. I missed him,
and I was sad that he was gone, whereas this
was so much more or complex.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Ever since she was a little girl, Helen used her
writing as a tool to make sense of her messy
and confusing world.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
That's a way of me making sense of things and
getting things straight in my head. So it was kind
of a natural reaction for me to write about what
had happened.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Helen began writing a book about her life with her mom,
and as a part of her writing process, she decided
to read her mom's diaries.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I knew that my mom had written daily diaries. I'd
seen her writing them when I was a teenager, so
she'd written it from when she was twelve till the
year before she died, and she was on it. She
really didn't miss a day, and so I decided that
I needed to read them as part of writing this.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
This wasn't one or two diaries. Her mom had made
daily entries for fifty five years.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
So obviously that is a huge amount to read. It
took a while. It took me probably at least a
year to read them, and I did have to have
breaks because it was quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
At first glance, these entries were boring.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
She just writes about the basics, the weather, where's she being,
what she done. There's no real feelings. A few read
my diaries from when I was a teenager. Gosh, the
teenage ants that would seep out of those pages, and
yet there's nothing like that in my mom's diaries. She
doesn't fancy anyone, she doesn't have any friendship problems, there's
(26:37):
no feelings.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Reading the diaries became part of Helen's daily routine. She
was slowly reading her way through her mom's life from
when she was twelve years old onwards.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I read it like i'd read a novel or something.
I just always had one with me. They were tiny
so I could just keep them in my handbag, and
whenever I had five minutes, I just read it few pages.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Over the years, Helen had heard her mom tell the
story of her life many times. She knew it well.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
What I expected to find was exactly what she'd told me.
She'd had a really hard childhood with a really difficult
sister and difficult parents, and then she'd had a really
successful time at work, met my dad decided to have me,
and then from that point she'd got ill. And that
(27:32):
was just completely wrong.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Helen started reading passages in her mom's diary that diverged
from the story she'd been told. Then Helen saw the
line that stopped her in her tracks.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
She writes, I have found my illness.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
After her mother died, Helen decided to write a book
about what it was like growing up with her as
a parent. As part of her writing process, she read
through the daily diaries her mom had kept for over
fifty years. That's when Helen saw the line that changed everything.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
She writes, I have found my illness.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Helen read and reread the words to make sure she
wasn't imagining it, but there it was in her mom's handwriting.
For the first time she learned the real story of
how her mom got diagnosed with EMMY.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
She goes on to nag the doctor to diagnose her,
and then verylically, she's into getting the sick, getting mobility scooters.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
The picture came into focus. Her mom had handpicked her
illness and then spent years performing it. The diaries revealed
an elaborate deception, the tale of a double life that
her mother lived, one where she was perfectly healthy.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, one part, she's recording how ill she is every day,
and yet it doesn't actually match up to what she's doing.
So she'll say, this was a really bad day, and
yet she's been apple picking, or you know, this was
a really terrible day. I went shopping all day.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
It was possible for Helen's bomb to fake having m
E because there was no definitive way to test for it.
Diagnoses were primarily based on a patient's own account of
their symptoms, and most of the time people don't lie
to doctors. Most people don't choose to be bedridden.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
At the time. It was almost like, you don't have
anything else, so it must be this.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
For her whole childhood, Helen was consumed with worry, watching
her mom lay in bed in chronic pain. When Helen
went after school. She was constantly concerned about how her
mom would take care of herself. But the diary told
a very different story.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
The thing she said to me and to other people
about how she needed to rest and plan and do
all that, that's just out the window. None of it
was true. She was going apple picking, and she was
going on city trips and going shopping.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That really hurt.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
My whole childhood was shaped by the emmy what she
couldn't do, and it wasn't true. She could have just
been a totally normal mum.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Helen couldn't believe what she was reading. She felt sick.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I was unraveling what had happened and what had happened
to me, My story of how I am the child
of two disabled parents and have cared for them. That's
actually a lie.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
We could have been living a normal life for years.
Helen's mom lived a lie. But it didn't make sense
to Helen. Why would her mom choose this?
Speaker 1 (31:20):
She had money, she had health, she had friends, She
could have had a really good life, and yet she
chose something so destructive.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Helen scoured her mom's diaries trying to find an answer.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It was like she was totally unveiling herself. Her mask
sort of slips, and she writes about how everyone is special,
but I'm really special, and just goes into this rant
about how special she is and how no one has
appreciated how special she is.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Helen started to get an understanding of her mom's inner world.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
She had been a narcissist from birth. There's always a
huge vanity. So she talks about how beautiful she is
and how long her legs are, how slender her hands are,
in a way I can't even imagine writing about myself.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Helen's mom had always told her that she'd gotten sick
after giving birth to her, that before that she had
lived a happy, healthy life, But her diaries told a
different story. As Helen read, it was like she was
being reintroduced to her own mother. Eleanor's pattern of fake
illnesses had started when she was a child.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
What was really striking for me was that from the
beginning she was obsessed with illness. In her twenties and
we're talking about early twenties, she's constantly going to the
doctor for things breast scams, brain scams. Has she broken this?
Has she done this, you know everything, She's been constantly
checked for, and she doesn't just take what the doctor says.
(33:04):
She needs to go to the consultant and has the
highest opinion on things. I really didn't expect the obsession
to be so early.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Eleanor's view of her own life was at best self
centered and at worst delusional. Her entries paint a picture
of a world where she is in complete control. Like
when she wrote about getting pregnant with Helen.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Nothing about wanting a baby, nothing about thinking about a
family is one day, she just writes in her diary,
decided I was pregnant. So she's some sort of omnipotent god.
She's created a pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
As she read on, Helen came across something else that
was incredibly disturbing. Events from her own childhood that she
had no memory of. Her mom had abused her growing up,
and she died mented it in her diaries.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
She drugged me. I was six months old, and she
feeds me Chinese food washed down with whiskey. When I
was a week old, she went shopping and just left
me at home. It's neglect, but it's also abuse, And
I really didn't expect to find that what was really
(34:22):
hard about reading. It was that there'd be months of
her talking about the weather or going to the supermarket,
and then suddenly there would be she's drugged me, or
she's in some way injured me. It's just so emotionless.
She's so cool. She doesn't try to hide anything which
(34:45):
is interesting or make excuses for anything.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
One of Helen's earliest memories was falling off a chair
and breaking her arm, but as she read through her
mom's diaries, she learned that didn't happen the way she
remembered it. Her mom talks about having broken Helen's arm
herself when Helen was only two.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
According to the diaries, she did it. I definitely broke
my arm. My mom probably caused it, and I don't
know how.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Helen learned that social services got involved and somehow her
mom explained the injury away.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Reading that when I had small children and I've got
a very recently two year old, I can see how
small her arm is, and I can see how easy
that would be to break.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
As an adult, Helen's mind turned to her father. He
had been there and witnessed a lot of the abuse,
so in many ways he was complicit, but it seems
like Eleanor had a lot of power over him too.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
I can make excuses for him. I can say that
he was a man of a differents who relied on
the fact that his wife was the mother and that
she would know everything and do the right thing. I
can say that he was isolated, and that I suspect
(36:14):
she said she'd leave him and take me with her.
Does that excuse it all? No? Do I think he
had a really awful life. Yeah, So it's just like
holding all of those things at the same time.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Growing up, Helen had carried immense guilt for ruining her
mom's life. She knew her mom had gotten sick after
she was born. She felt like everything was her fault.
But now Helen revised the story of her life. Her
mom had gone down a dark path long before she
was born, and none of it was her fault.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
It was really like, oh gosh, this hasn't been the
story that I thought it was going to be. I
really believe I'd ruined her life, that she'd had me
and I had breaken everything, that if I haven't existed,
she would have had a happy life. And that's not
(37:13):
what I read at all. This was always going to happen.
It didn't matter whether I was there or not.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Every neatly penciled, diligently dated diary entry was like a
puzzle piece. At first, it was a scrambled and confusing mess,
but slowly pieces started to click into place. Helen saw
that everything, the narcissism, the faked illness, was all connected.
Her mom was not sick with EMMY or Parkinson's. She
(37:45):
was mentally ill with a condition called Munchausen syndrome. People
with Munchausen's fake or exaggerate medical conditions as a means
of gaining control, sympathy, or power.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
What I realized was that for women with not statistic
personality disorder, it often doesn't look like masculine narcissism. It
often looks like victimhood. It's about getting attention and about
being the poor little woman. Munchasen's is kind of perfect
(38:17):
for that, because who questions an ill person and says,
I think you're making it up? Who would do that?
Without the diaries, I think I would still be in
the dark. I don't think I would have properly been
able to pull the pieces together. There's lots of events
that I see differently now.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
Like the trip to America, where her parents seemed miraculously cured.
Her mom could choose when she felt well based on
what was convenient for her, and her dad hadn't actually
been doing as well as her mom told her.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
My mum said to me, Dad is better in the heat,
and yeah, at the same time, I remember him gasping
for air because it was so hot and he couldn't breathe.
And I didn't realize that those two things were opposites
until I wrote my book and my agent said to
(39:16):
me which one was it? And I was like, oh,
my goodness, I've held this for thirty years and never
put it together. My dad wasn't better there, but she
told me that he was, so I believed her. It
seems incredible. I don't think you can underestimate the power
(39:39):
that a parent has over a child. I was talking
to my daughter about a cushion downstairs once and I
said to her, the gray one, you know, the gray one.
She was like, in the blue one. I was like, no,
the gray one, the gray one. She was like, oh okay,
And she said she was trying to convince her that
(40:00):
this blue cushion was gray because I'd said that it
was gray, and when I got downstairs, I was like, oh,
it's not gray, it's blue. Sorry, I got that wrong.
But the power that we have as adults over children
to say that this is this that even when you're
looking at something, you're like, my mom must be right,
(40:21):
so I must be seeing this wrong. If you need
to accept the lie to live, then you accept the
lie right.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Slowly, Helen began writing the book about her mom.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
It took me quite a few attempts to write it
because I didn't really know how to put it all together.
She wasn't a cartoon villain.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Helen pulled together all the strands of truth and fiction
that had shaped her world growing up, her mom's version
of events, her own memories, and the diary. She published
her book, which is titled My Mother Munchausen's and Me.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I thought I was going to be the only person
in the whole world who had been through this. That
turned out to be completely wrong. I have had probably
one hundred people contact me from all over the world.
Some people have told me that I've explained their life
to them, and you know, I've had people saying I'm
(41:28):
sixty and I've just realized what's happened.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Helen realized she had concrete answers that many people in
her situation never get.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
I've got the diaries, and I've got so much proof
in a way that a lot of people don't. I
think I'm quite unusual in that a lot of people
who've been through something like this unsurprisingly go down some
really dark roads with their mental health and with ways
of coping with that. And for some reason I've got
(42:02):
through this and being able to write about it, which
is quite unusual. But it is amazing because I can
hopefully verbalize for people who can't say it, what's happened.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Helen will never be able to get those years of
her childhood back.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
It's a huge betrayal. So much of my life was
sacrificed to what she needed, which was actually what she wanted.
So much of who I am had to be hidden.
It's taken me until the last five years to start
(42:40):
to get back to who I am, what do I like,
what do I want to do? Believing that my opinion
matters and that I matter enough to be looked after.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Helen says her relationship with her husband has been healing.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Luckily for me, I picked the right guy. He's a wonderful, faithful,
fabulous person, which is very jammy. It's taken me a
long time to believe that he loves me, because I
just didn't think I was lovable. It's taken me a
(43:20):
really long time to accept that he wasn't tricked, that
he did want this, and that we both make each
other much happier than we'd be without each other.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Eleanor went to extreme lengths to control and abuse her daughter,
to keep Helen's world small and make sure it would
always revolve around her, but she underestimated her daughter's resilience.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
I do think in a way, my mum neglecting me
was a real doubtful because it meant I became so
self sufficient. It just absolutely defeated everything she wanted me
to be. I was supposed to fail it at a thing,
but I'd learned to look after myself.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Today, Helen has built the life she always dreamed of. She, Peter,
and their kids lived together in Nottingham, where Peter and
Helen met and fell in love. They go on weekend
trips with their kids, play the TV loudly, and treasure
every day they spent together. We end every weekly episode
with the same question, why do you want to share
(44:34):
your story?
Speaker 1 (44:35):
A really big thing for me to say was that
mothers aren't necessarily good. There's this feeling that moms are
good no matter what. Mums are good even if they
do the wrong thing. It's because they love you so much.
I'd had so many people saying to me, this can't
(44:55):
be true, she's your mom, as if being a mum
and being a bad person don't go together, and I
really wanted to challenge that.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly, I came up
with my plan, which was I'm gonna buy a gun.
That's my way out.
Speaker 3 (45:21):
Walking into this gun store thinking that I cannot believe
this is my life. I can't believe this is my life.
I was floored. I had never felt so helpless in
my life.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal
team or want to tell us your Betrayal story, email
us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod
at gmail dot com, or follow us on Instagram at
Betrayal Pod. You can also connect with me on Instagram
at It's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, you additional
(46:00):
content and connect with the Betrayal community. Join our substack
at Betrayal dot substack dot com. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts and don't forget to rate and
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
(46:21):
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced
by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Leboord, with additional production from
Ben Fetterman. Casting support from Curry Richmond. Our iHeart team
(46:44):
is Ali Perry and Jessica Krincheck. Audio editing and mixing
by Matt Delvecchio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's
theme composed by Oliver Bain's music library provided by myb Music.
And For more podcasts from Heart, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Andrea Gunning
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