Betrayal - 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.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 deceptions 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 ten 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. Mom 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 was diagnosed with heart and lung problems. He had cardiomyopathy. asthma that eventually became emphyseeing her.

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, 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. M.E. 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 imperfect.

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 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 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 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. Eleanor's ME 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 mom. 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 mum. She was walking around. And 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 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,

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. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors.

For the next era of gaming, upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. Lenovo. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.

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It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world.

Like, your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but like, you don't even know. You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The force is shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know

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every weekday afternoon 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' health, 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, this 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 mum 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 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. 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'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 be. 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 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 In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down.

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Lenovo. Lenovo. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.

Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show.

We're going to have plenty of robber barons. so many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast health stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. Yes, I'm Dr. Priyankowali, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, do I have scurvy at 3 a.m. On health stuff, we're talking about health in a different way.

It's not only about what we can do to improve our health, but also what our health says about us and the way we're living. Like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Or our in-depth analysis of how incredible mangoes are. Oh, it's hard to explain to the rest of the world that your mangoes are fine because mangoes are incredible, but, like, you don't even know.

You don't know. You don't know. It's going to be a fun ride. So tune in. Listen to Health Stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the Central Texas Plains,

teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents, and brutal murders. In what seems to be, a plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people. There are people out there that absolutely know what happened. Listen to paper ghosts, the Texas teen murders, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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 mom 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 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 ME, what she couldn't do, and it wasn't true.

She could have just been a totally normal mum. 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 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. 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 was 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, as 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 at 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 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 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. Munchausens 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 different. 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 mom 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. 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 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. 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, Lenthausens, 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 a 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 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 been 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 mum 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 live 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 spend 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 Betrayal Pod. 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 IHeart 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. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down.

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