When I was growing up, my mother didn’t like that I watched wrestling because she thought they mistreated women and gave me a skewed idea of how I should be treated. It’s entirely possible she was right, of course, as I’ve never had a healthy romantic relationship, but I pay my therapist the big bucks to help me with that and not you, dear reader.
Keeping my mother’s views on wrestling in mind, it is therefore ironic that I should return to watching it when my Mom got sick and I became her full time caregiver. She would go to bed and I would (sometimes) get 3 uninterrupted hours to watch RAW on Monday nights. Then I discovered wrestling Twitter, which I could look at while she was listening to music or watching a movie. Then I started writing a blog, and that’s when I became The Lady J - nine years ago.
It’s complicated for me to look back on any of the time between 2013 and 2020 in which I was so heavily involved in wrestling. On one hand, it brought me relief from something I almost couldn’t bare to witness. It also brought me some of my very best friends who, to this day, are people I love and admire and can count on in a crisis. On the other hand, I was naive and foolish, and I got burned for it in the process. Opening the Pandora’s Box of that time in my life makes me feel stupid and ashamed of all the bad things I could not prevent and all of the manipulation I couldn’t see was happening - especially to myself.
So it is frankly shocking, even to me, that I would find myself watching or talking about wrestling right now. Yes, some interesting things are happening in the industry, and yes, I still have friends who watch it so I have people who can catch me up or clue me in if I need it. But in between episodes of Dynamite, I have looked back through old essays, and listened to old podcast episodes to try and see what possible reason I could have to even consider allowing wrestling back into my life. And here’s what I came up with:
My Mom died.
The two previous times in my life when I could qualify myself as a “wrestling fan” were times when I needed to escape something. When I was a young, hormonal pre-teen I didn’t understand my own feelings or emotions and I definitely didn’t understand why girls weren’t allowed to be angry or aggressive, as I felt both all the time. But wrestling was a good outlet for that because there were people - even girls like me - who were loud and aggressive and who fought for themselves. And then when my Mom was sick, wrestling was a world where the good guy won and there was always hope, and where, eventually, things got better.
My Mom was sick for a long time, and the end went on far longer than anyone would want for someone they love. But no matter how much suffering you or your loved one endures, there is no preparation you can do to prevent the grief that comes when they are truly gone. I have good days and I have bad days, but I am always grieving her loss, and sometimes the weight of that is crushing.
So few weeks ago, I was laying in bed with an upset stomach on a Wednesday night and turned on the TV. It just so happens the last channel I had been watching previously was now showing AEW’s Wednesday night program. And so I watched it until I felt tired and could fall asleep. This seems innocuous to the average person - even the average wrestling fan. But what’s weird about that is it’s the same way I fell into wrestling-related things twice before: I returned to watching wrestling nine years ago while caring for my Mom because I turned on the TV one night and it was on the channel showing RAW, and then one night about five years ago while I was feeling sick I ended up watching a Progress Wrestling show that someone recommended I check out until I felt well enough to fall asleep.
Watching RAW was my gateway to becoming The Lady J. And then Progress…well, Progress changed my life. It also broke my heart and fundamentally changed me as a person forever, but it would be a lie if I said I could be where I am today without it. It’s funny, too, because this Friday the company turns 10 which should be a big deal, but probably isn’t because of everything British wrestling has been through and how much of the company’s past is now shrouded in shame and scandal. You can’t celebrate ten years worth of something you can’t even talk about anymore.
Here’s the thing: wrestling helped me to escape and also process a lot of different feelings I’ve had in my life. It gave a 13-year-old an outlet for her anger, and a 26-year-old caregiver somewhere to disappear to. I know I’ve made mistakes. Maybe I had no business getting as involved as I did. Maybe I had no business thinking I had more insight or more power than I did and definitely it was a mistake to ever let other people think it, too. I made friends with some good people, and some bad people - well, they were never really my friends at all. Those people created stories and characters I could fall into, so I was never confronted with who they really were - until it was too late.
Maybe my mother was right all along. The way some in the industry treated people - the way I was treated, too - gave me a skewed idea of my own self-worth. It also made me angry, just like I was 20-something years ago. But I’ve had almost two years to work on it, and through it, and now in her absence I feel a pull back toward it, like a child reaching for a security blanket when frightened.
It’s entirely possible I’m going to feel conflicted about professional wrestling for the rest of my life. After all, it fooled me more than once. But it never fooled her. And I guess, dear reader, therein lie the lesson.
For my mom. Always.