Betrayal Weekly - Helen | Betrayal Weekly

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

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. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at [e-mail] and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod  To access our newsletter and additional content and to connect with the Betrayal community, join our Substack at betrayal.substack.com.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the, cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't

resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast, Eating While Broke, is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer,

and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed. Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John Hobrient, I sit down with Tiffany the budgetista aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.

What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here? We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts. Too many of us were never, ever taught. If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more. Listen to money and wealth with John Hope. Ryan from the Black Effect Network on the I'd Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There's this feeling that 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. I'm Andre Gunning and this is betrayal, a show about the people we trust the most and the perceptions that change everything. Today we're telling Helen Naylor's story. Helen grew up in the Midlands of the UK. 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 10 people I knew.

She was an only child. Her parents were Eleanor and Alan. We lived in a really nice three-bedroom semi-detached, which was painted yellow with a bright blue door. They have very 70s taste in decor, so it's like swirly brown carpets and very peach. If there was a color choice, it was peach. Helen's parents were older than her friend's parents. Mum was 35 when she had me. My dad was over 40.

And at the time, that was quite a big deal. Helen was very young when her dad's health took a turn for the worse. When I was seven, my dad. My dad was diagnosed with heart and lung problems. He had cardiomyopathy and asthma that eventually became emphycina. 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 M.E., myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

It can cause muscle and joint pain, dizziness and headaches. The most common symptom is extreme tiredness, making any activities difficult. Going for a shower, going to work, you can not sleep well, you can have problems cognitively. 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.

My mum 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. 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. It completely shaped my life. I was the child of two disabled people, and that was my identity.

While her friends were in first grade learning to read, Helen was worrying about her parents, especially her mom. Although I knew that my dad's illnesses were more serious, life revolved around my mom. Her mom's chronic fatigue took over their family's life completely. Eleanor slept for 18 hours a day and didn't even have enough energy to walk to the mailbox. 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. 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 rode a mobility scooter. 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. But over time, Helen got over the embarrassment and learned to accept her mom. Helen became her primary caretaker because they did. didn't have any extended family nearby, and Helen's dad spent most nights at the pub drinking. 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, 100%. I can't remember seeing him anything but a happy drunk. He wasn't aggressive, but undoubtedly he was an alcoholic. So Helen and her Her mom leaned on each other.

It was them against the world. 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. But her mom needed a lot of support.

And there was a sense of if my mom said jump, then you had to jump. 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. We would watch them 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. Eleanor's Emmy was debilitating. But over time, she found other people who struggled with the same symptoms. She was part of an M.E 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 M.E. group. Helen was proud of her mom for finding purpose and community, even though she was struggling with her disease. She actually won an award for being a health champion. Helen's mom went to bed early every night. My mum 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 mum. So I would watch TV with subtitles on and no sound.

When her own world in her little yellow house got too small, Helen escaped into her dream world. She loved to write. 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 garden singing. I'm sure the neighbours loved it. One day when Helen was eight, she overheard her mom talking about her dad's health. I heard my mum 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. 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. She used to tell me my likes and dislikes.

I liked salad. I liked strawberries. Those were my favorites. I defer to her opinion. 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. 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.

But then when Helen was 16, there was finally a break from their quiet, careful routine. We went on this like once in a lifetime holiday. We decided to go to America. 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 the trip would take on her mom. We went to the airport and she was in a wheelchair, being wheeled to the airplane. But to Helen's surprise. We got to America and for two weeks, she was just a normal mom.

She was walking around. Literally, we had a non-stom. 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 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 mom said the heat made my dad's chest better. The climate also seemed to help with her mom's chronic fatigue. I just thought, oh my goodness,

America has cured my parents. America has made them better. 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. 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. 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 you could be well. We've got the answer. Let's just go.

I prayed every night for my parents to be better. The idea that it was within grasp was just like, I couldn't understand. Everyone, I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day

and I was like and dad I think I want to really give this a shot I don't know what that means but I just know the groundlings I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent he said if it was based solely on talent

I wouldn't worry about you which is really sweet he goes but there's so much luck involved and he's like just give it a shot he goes but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore it's okay to quit

If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats.

I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside.

We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On a family trip to the U.S., 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 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.

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 you could be well. We've got the answer. Let's just go. 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 of her own. I did really well in my A-levels, and then off I went to university. And I went to Nottingham, which 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 town and I didn't see anyone I knew. That was really shocking to me. Helen had spent her childhood in teenage years hyper-focused on her parents' help, living in a town

where she knew everyone. When she left for college, she was plunged into a completely foreign world. 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. 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. So although 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. Sure enough, Helen found her stride at college. And during her first year there, she met a boy named Peter. I met Peter through 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. Helen and Peter began to spend more and more time together. The connection between them was instant. We got together and we got engaged after six months.

We got married 12 months later. It was all very whirlwind. But at 21 you feel like a proper grown-up. So that's what you do. But Eleanor was not welcoming to Peter. She was very mocking about my relationship. Like, are you going to call your lover? Do you love him, 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 20. My parents didn't do any of that.

they were just like, oh, great. Let's arrange the wedding. At first, Helen struggled to accept that Peter actually wanted to be with her. 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. Shortly after Helen and Peter got married, Helen's dad collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital. 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 4 a.m. phone calls saying, this is it, you've got to come. And I remember jumping in the car with my husband and rushing, thinking, are we going to make it? Are we going to make it? Her whole life, Helen had been afraid that her dad could die at any minute. But during those two years, the constant hum of worry grew into a fever pitch. 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 nurse said, I'm really sorry, but he's passed away. and my mum just collapsed to the floor and I don't even remember crying initially because it was all about looking after my mum 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 mum was so snappy with me and was like well just 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 mum said, well, this is it, isn't it, Helen?

He's dead. Of course he's not going to come with us. Eleanor had no room for her daughter's grief. 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 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. As the years went on, Helen remained her mom's caretaker. 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, see you later. 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.

I hated Christmas because Peter really, really struggled with my mum's behaviour. My mum would be attention-seeking and difficult, and I felt like I just had to keep the peace. Helen and Peter had been trying for a baby and had suffered a difficult miscarriage. Finally, Helen became pregnant, but the pregnancy was quickly overshadowed. At exactly the same time, my mom got a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. The consultant called it mild Parkinsonism.

Despite the early diagnosis, her mom's health was declining quickly. 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.

Soon, Eleanor required constant care and moved into a nursing home. She started having falls. And it was happening so frequently. that the paramedics were actually told on her notes not to take it to hospital. 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 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 need to go to bed. And I was like, okay, come on then, you know, I'll help you up and 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.

She was sort of crawling along the floor and saying, fine, I'll crawl there then. Is this what you want? Is this what you want from me, you lift a bitch? Her mom had never used a word like that before. And it shook Helen. 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. After that, Helen stopped visiting. Her husband Peter supported her decision to pull back from her mother. 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. Eleanor's health was declining rapidly. doctors were constantly scrambling to help her and find answers. 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 under the sun.

They literally tested her for everything. And eventually they said that they 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 I needed to find out what's going on. And they basically said to me, we've tested her for everything, and we can't help. Doctors had run out of ways to help her mom. And Helen had too. I tried to stay in contact with her

but she didn't really want it Obviously it 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 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. 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, son? 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, your mom's died. 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 her own grief.

It was a shock. It was a real shock. Because we were estranged, I think quite, a few people thought, I wouldn't grieve, 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, 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 complex. Ever since she was a little girl, Helen used her writing as a tool to make sense of her messy and confusing world. 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. 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. 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 12 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. This wasn't one or two diaries. Her mom had made daily entries for 55 years. So obviously that is a huge amount to read.

So 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. At first glance, these entries were boring. She just writes about the basics. The weather, where's she been, what's she done. There's no real feelings. If you read my diaries from when I was a teenager, gosh, the teenage angst that would seep out of those pages. And yet there's nothing like that in my mum's diaries. She doesn't fancy anyone. She doesn't like have any friendship problems. There's no feelings.

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 12 years old

onwards. 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'd just read a few pages. Over the years, Helen had heard her mom tell the story of her life many times. She knew it well. What I expected to find was exactly what she 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 was just completely wrong. Helen started reading passages in her mom's diary that diaries. diverged from the story she'd been told. Then Helen saw the line that stopped her in her tracks. She writes, I have found my illness. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom.

My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, who, who, who, who. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day. And I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.

I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And Rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care.

So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You can have opinions.

You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, earners, what's up? Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth. On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship. From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand. because the truth is, most people will never taught how money really works.

But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it. That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities not just for yourself, but for the next generation. If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, earn your leisure is the podcast for you. Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. After her mother died, Helen decided to run. 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 50 years. That's when Helen saw the line that changed everything. She writes, I have found my illness. 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 ME. She goes on to nag the doctor to diagnose her, and then very quickly she's into getting the sick,

getting mobility scooters. 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. 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.

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. At the time, it was almost like you don't have anything else, so it must be this. For her whole childhood, Helen was consumed with worry, watching her mom lay in bed in chronic pain. When Helen went off to school, she was constantly concerned about how her mom would take care of, of herself. But the diary told a very different story.

The things 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. That really hurt. 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 mom.

Helen couldn't believe what she was reading. She felt sick. 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. 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? She had money, she had health, she had friends. She could have had a really good life. And yet she chose something so destructive. Helen scoured her mom's diaries, trying to find an answer. 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. Helen started to get an understanding of her mom's inner world. She has 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. 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. What was really striking for me was that, From the beginning, she is obsessed with illness. In her 20s, and we're talking like early 20s, she's constantly going to the doctor for things. Breast scans, brain scans, has she broken this?

Has she done this? You know, everything, she's being constantly checked for. And she doesn't just take what the doctor says. She needs to go to the consultant and have the highest opinion on things. I really didn't expect the obsession to be so early. 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. 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.

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 documented it in her diaries. 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 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 cruel. She doesn't try to hide anything. which is interesting, or make excuses for anything. 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. According to the diaries, she did it. I definitely broke my arm. My mom probably caused it. And I don't know how. Helen learned that social services got involved.

And somehow, her mom explained the injury away. 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 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. I can make excuses for him.

I can say that he was a man of a different era 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 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. 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 door. dark path long before she was born, and none of it was her fault.

It was really like, oh gosh, this hasn't been the story that I thought it was going to be. I really believed I'd ruined her life that she'd had me and I had broken everything, that if I haven't existed, she would have had a happy life. And that's not what I read at all. this was always going to happen. It didn't matter whether I was there or not. 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 M.E. or Parkinson's. She was mentally ill with a condition called M. Munchausen syndrome. People with Munchausen's fake or exaggerate medical conditions as a means of gaining control, sympathy or power. What I realized was that for women with narcissistic 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. Munchausen's is kind of perfect 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 all the pieces together. There's lots of events that I see differently now. 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. My mum said to me, dad is better in the heat. And yet 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 me, which one was it? And I was like, oh my goodness, I've held this for 30 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 that a parent has over a child. I was talking to my daughter about a cushion downstairs once, and I said to her, the grey one. you know the grey one she was like you mean the blue one i was like no the grey one the grey one she was like oh okay and she said she was trying to convince herself that this blue cushion was grey because i'd said

that it was grey and when i got downstairs i was like oh it's not grey 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 mum must be right, so I must be seeing this wrong. If you need to accept the lie to live, then you accept the lie, right? Slowly, Helen began writing the book about her mom. 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. 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 diaries. She published her book, which is titled My Mother, Lund Chalzins, and me. 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 100 people contact me. from all over the world.

Some people told me that I've explained their life to them and, you know, I've had people saying I'm 60 and I've just realized what's happened. Helen realized she had concrete answers that many people in her situation never get. 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 through this and being able to write about it, which is quite unusual,

but it is amazing because I can hopefully verbalise for people who can't say it what's happened. Helen will never be able to get those years of her childhood back. 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 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. Helen says her relationship with her husband has been healing. Luckily for me, I picked the right guy. He's a wonderful, faithful, fabulous person, which is very janny. 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 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. 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. I do think in a way my mom neglecting me was a real downfall because it meant I became so self-sufficient. It just absolutely defeated everything she wanted me to be. I was supposed to fail at her thing, but I'd learned to look after myself. 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 your story? 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, moms 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 be true. She's your mum,

as if being a mum and being a bad person don't go together. And I really wanted to challenge that. On the next episode of Betrayal Weekly. I came up with my plan, which was, I'm going to buy a gun. That's my way out. 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. 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.com. That's Betrayal P-O-D at Gmail.com. Or follow us on Instagram at Betrayalpod. You can also connect with me on Instagram

at it's Andrea Gunning. To access our newsletter, view additional content, and connect with the betrayal community, join our substack at Betrayal.substack.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 a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with IHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin, hosted and produced by me, Andrea Gunning.

This episode was written and produced by Olivia Hewitt and Monique Laborde, with additional production from Ben Federman. Casting support from Curry Richmond. Our I-Hard team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio. Additional audio editing by Tanner Robbins. Betrayals theme composed by Oliver Baines. music library provided by Mib Music.

And for more podcasts from IHeart, visit the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone, I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

It's Financial Literacy Month and the podcast Eating While Broke. is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer, and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed. Listen to Eating Wallbrook from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.

Gorsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They holding Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real House Wise franchise. The drama, the alliances, M&T, everybody's talking about. to hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed Human.