Pictured holding Harold the cat alongside her grandpa and Matthew in Carmel Valley, 1976, Meredith said her grandparents bought their birthday and Christmas presents and passed them off as being from their mum There is an indelible Mommy Taboo in our culture that dictates we must always honor our mothers, no matter how much they may not honor us. I always felt shameful handing my mother a card that felt dishonest, and worried that I must be rotten inside if I can't find anything nice to say to my own mother. I never saw or heard of mothers like mine.

If we were a more honest society and admitted that some mothers are toxic, we could recognize that what their children need is not more roses and chocolate, but help getting through a cookie-cutter holiday. If only there had been a free pass for kids like Matthew and me on Mother's Day. We would thumb through all the cards on the shelves, searching for that four-leaf clover – a card that will keep Mom happy, yet not force us to say something we don’t feel. Behind them is the eucalyptus tree she would climb every spring to get as close as she could to the honeybees, kept in a converted WWII military bus in the backyard Merdith, pictured with her brother Matthew in 1975, just after they moved into their grandparents’ house in Carmel Valley. Here in an exclusive extract from her new book The Honey Bus, published in the UK today, Meredith reveals how ending their relationship finally set her free.

Having reached breaking point at the age of 40, suffering a panic attack as she realised she too was 'angry and alone' like her mother, Meredith sought the help of a therapist who urged her to 'divorce' her 'toxic' parent. Meredith told how she kept her mom a 'secret', never inviting friends over to the house and doing her best to spend as little time there as possible, which saw her confidence plummet and a 'neediness' instill itself which proved catastrophic in her adult life. Her mother sank into a deep depression, leaving her children to fend for themselves - with Meredith finding solace in helping her grandfather care for his honey bees which he kept in a converted WWII military bus in the garden. Becoming estranged from a parent is something many of us find difficult to fathom - but for journalist and author Meredith May, it was a devastating reality.Īfter her parents divorced when she was five, Meredith, of San Francisco, and her brother Matthew, then three, were uprooted in the dead of night and moved across the country to live with her grandparents in Big Sur, California.

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