Feral Truths & Tangled Threads: My Mum Ruined That

On the Inherited Horror of Watching Your Mum Fancy Hercules (and Other Crimes Involving No Doubt and Haircuts)

Feral Truths & Tangled Threads
Raw, personal essays weaving together intimate stories and cultural reflections that uncover the complexities of identity, power, and belonging.

There are albums I’ve never forgiven.
Not because they were bad—because they were used against me.

There’s a specific kind of cultural trauma that happens when your mother goes through a breakup and suddenly the house becomes a sound bath of curated sorrow. You don’t get a say. You just inherit the mood.

For me, it was Tragic Kingdom by No Doubt. I used to love Gwen Stefani. Huge fan. Tragic brows. Excessive eyeliner. Fully committed. But then came The Breakup. Not mine—my mum’s. She bought the CD and played it on repeat for what felt like the entirety of summer, like she was trying to salt the house with regret.

It wasn’t just that she was sad—it was that I was forced to witness the sadness on loop. Every time “Don’t Speak” started up, the air got heavier. Every room in the house was suddenly Gwen’s. And there was no escape.

I didn’t understand adult heartbreak yet. But I understood enough to know that the stereo had been weaponised. That love, when it died, came with a track list. That ballads were not just songs—they were messages, and sometimes the person they were aimed at had already moved out.

Act I: The Summer of “Don’t Speak”

There was no official rule, but we all knew it: don’t touch the stereo.
Not during that summer. Not when Don’t Speak was playing.

It started softly, like a warning. Then the chorus would hit, and suddenly my mother would be in the kitchen staring vaguely out the window, tea going cold in her hand. The whole house had to adjust its mood.

I don’t know how many times she played that song. Hundreds, probably. Enough that I still can’t hear the opening guitar line without clenching. Enough that Gwen Stefani now lives in the part of my brain reserved for mild emotional threats.

And what really hurt was that I had liked No Doubt. I wanted to be Gwen—platinum hair, tragic love, tank tops. But after that summer, I couldn’t do it. The album wasn’t mine anymore. It belonged to the heartbreak. It belonged to Mum. It belonged to the version of me that stood very still in the hallway trying not to breathe too loudly while “Don’t tell me 'cause it hurts” echoed down the hall.

That’s when I learned: you don’t always get to choose what gets ruined.

Act II: The Haircuts (Or: The Day Mum’s Perm Tried to Kill Us)

One of the worst things she ever did was cut her hair.

Not mine—hers.

Mum had long, straight, quietly majestic hair for most of my childhood. It was one of those foundational mum things—like knowing how to make gravy without measuring or having a look that could shut down a sibling war. Her hair meant stability. Continuity. The world turning steadily on its axis.

Until the day she permed it.

She picked us up from the top of Skudders Beach Hill, where the school bus dropped us off. We lived at the bottom, but it wasn’t safe for primary kids to walk the whole way down. So she’d wait for us—every afternoon—in her first car. It might have been a Ford Cortina. I’m still not sure. All I remember is the brown glitter paint job and the overwhelming sense that this car had dreams it could never quite live up to.

She was so proud of it.
And I—well, I was mortified.
I used to hunch down in the passenger seat at school drop-off like I was smuggling shame under a windbreaker. Sorry, Mum.

But that day, the car wasn’t the main event. The doors opened, and a blast of eggy chemical stench hit us first. Then we saw her. The hair was damp, puffed, permed, and defiant. It didn’t sit. It hovered. And she was beaming. Absolutely radiating post-salon reinvention vibes.

We climbed in silently. The smell travelled. I remember staring out the window, wondering how long it would take for her real hair to grow back. Wondering if it ever would.

That was the day I learned transformation doesn’t always smell like lavender and liberation.
Sometimes it smells like sulphur and makes your kids question the bloodline.

Act III: The Parent Trap Betrayal

Later, I fell in love—with a haircut. Hayley Mills’ razor-sharp little pixie cut in The Parent Trap. It felt fresh. Rebellious. Sophisticated. I begged Mum to take me to the hairdresser.

She said yes. She booked the appointment. We walked in.
And then—she went first.

I sat in that beige swivel chair and watched, horrified, as she told the stylist to chop it all off. Her hair. My future. Gone.

She laughed. She beamed. She swished her new head like a Pantene ad from a parallel dimension. I started crying.

When it was my turn, I refused the chair.
The moment had been hijacked.
The haircut was no longer mine.
Hayley Mills was dead to me.

Act IV: Hercules Is Not Your Boyfriend, Mum

Thirst Thursdays and the sacred power of sending your children to bed early

There’s something uniquely jarring about realising your mum is down bad for a syndicated television demigod.

In our house, it was Kevin Sorbo. Specifically, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys—a man whose acting range hovered between “mildly concerned” and “heroic grunt,” and whose wardrobe consisted mostly of distressed linen vests and glistening forearms.

It aired on a Thursday night, 8:30 sharp.
And on Thursdays, we weren’t just sent to bed—we were banished.
No lingering in the lounge. No excuses. No water. No eye contact.
This wasn’t about school schedules. This was about ritual.

Mum would settle into the couch with the focus of someone preparing for divine communion. This was her time. Sacred. Sensual. Sorbo-centric. The rest of us were instructed to vanish into our rooms and not disturb her. The vibe was less “night-time routine” and more “I need complete silence for this spiritual experience.”

I remember lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, while the faint sound of sword fights and longing drifted down the hallway. Every now and then, I’d catch her whispering “he’s so strong” like it was both a prayer and a warning.

Even now, I can’t look at Kevin Sorbo without feeling a little bit like I’ve seen something I wasn’t meant to see.

Act V: The Kitchen Concert (But Never Tragic Kingdom)

The thing is—I didn’t actually hate all of her music.

Not really.

I performed the hatred. I rolled my eyes. Groaned. Made a show of being above it all. But when the house emptied out and I knew I had time, I’d put her CDs on full blast in the kitchen and give a private concert worthy of a televised special. Full body soul. Sold-out energy. No one watching—except me.

Joan Armatrading’s Me Myself I was an anthem. A manifesto. I sang it like I’d lived three lives and lost two of them. Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable made me feel elegant and bruised, like a lounge singer ghosted by time. Carole King got rotation. So did Tracy Chapman, depending on the weather and the emotional tone of the toast I was making.

But never Tragic Kingdom.

That one stayed shut.
Tainted by association.
It had been played too often, too loudly, too close to the bone.
There was no room left in it for me.

Some albums are like sealed griefs—airtight and vaguely dangerous if opened.

And through all of this, I kept a steady eye on the bend of our one-kilometre gravel driveway, watching for the puff of dust that meant Mum was coming home. That was my cue. The signal to cut the stereo, switch off the lights, sprint to my room, and resume the blank teenage face of moody indifference.

She could have the heartbreak.
But I was keeping the performance.

Bonus Track: Gwen, One Last Time

There was one moment—just one—when Gwen was mine again.

I was fifteen. Camping at Elliott’s Bay near Russell with my cousin from Auckland and her dad. We had a bit of cash to burn and not many options, so we did what any vaguely unsupervised teenagers would do: we went to the chemist in Russell and bought something ridiculous.

That’s where I found it—a plastic tub of temporary hair colour. Ice blue. Vaguely suspicious. And immediately, I thought of Gwen.

Not Tragic Kingdom Gwen—she was still emotionally off-limits. Too linked to Mum’s sad kitchen vibes. But 1998 MTV Awards Gwen? With the fur bikini top and ice-blue hair and intergalactic confidence? I’d seen her in Dolly magazine and imprinted like a baby duck.

So there I was, in a Northland campground bathroom, scooping this weird, cold jelly out of the tub with my bare hands and smearing it across my scalp like a child doing crafts unsupervised. I had thick hair. A lot of hair. I used almost the whole tub in one go, because that’s how dreams work—you overdo it and hope for the best.

The colour barely showed on my dark brown base. It had more of a translucent shimmer—like sadness dressed up for a school disco. And the texture? Devastating. It dried into stiff, flaky sheets that moved as one, like helmet hair but stickier. It looked—and felt—like my hair had been laminated by someone with regrets.

And still—I loved it.

Because for that one afternoon, Gwen was mine again. Not Mum’s breakup mascot. Not the voice of grief on loop. Just a girl in Dolly, with ice-blue hair and big energy. Someone I could be, even briefly, even badly.

It washed out fine. I never used the tub again. But for a moment, I was living it.
In crunch. In colour. In full delusional glory.

Coda: Things I Can’t Reclaim, and That’s Okay

There are parts of culture you can’t take back.

Not because they’re gone, but because someone else got there first—grieving into them, thirsting through them, reinventing themselves while you watched from the backseat, the hallway, or your room with the lights off.

Mum’s heartbreak lives in Don’t Speak.
Her yearning lives in Kevin Sorbo’s forearms.
Her transformation lives in a brown glitter car with a terrible smell and the windows cracked just wide enough to let the damage breathe.

And I carry all of it.

I’ve spent my adult life trying to work out what’s mine and what was just ambient. What I chose, and what I absorbed like carpet smoke in a rental. And honestly? Some things I’m happy to leave ruined.

Not everything needs reclaiming.
Not everything is worth healing.
Some things are just part of the weird little sediment of who you turned out to be.

And if I ever catch myself humming Don’t Speak, I stop.
Because some ghosts are better left in the CD wallet, between the cracked jewel cases and the ones that still smell faintly like perm.

About the Series:
Feral Truths & Tangled Threads invites you into a space where fiercely honest personal narratives meet layered cultural and political reflections. These essays explore how the wild edges of experience connect to broader stories of identity, history, and community.

Author Bio:
Hayley Walmsley is a conceptual artist, writer, and curator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Whakapapa to Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou, and Ngāti Pākehā, her work explores identity, memory, and decolonial narratives through layered storytelling and cultural critique. She is the founder of Provocation Station, an evolving platform for conceptual art and critical reflection. Recent projects include the exhibition Migratory Patterns, and she has essays forthcoming in SCOPE: Art & Design, SCOPE: Tirou and an article In Browntown vol. 1. Through her writing and curatorial practice, she invites audiences to engage with the complexities of place, belonging, and power.