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.

After 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Meredith May, pictured as a baby with her mother shortly after her first birthday in Newport, Rhode Island in 1971, says she doesn't regret 'divorcing' her 'toxic mom'

I never regretted divorcing my toxic mom. It was the first step to releasing the terrible secret trapped inside my ribcage, the one that made me gasp for air on the bathroom floor.

I had given myself permission to stop faking and start telling people that my mother and I were estranged. Being truthful invited others to tell me their toxic mom stories, which helped me feel less unlucky; less weird.

Our parents divorced when I was five and my brother Matthew was three, which sent Mom into a tailspin from which she never recovered.

She moved back into her childhood bedroom with Matthew and me and retreated to bed with her astrology books. While she sank into depression, our grandparents took care of us.

Having reached breaking point at the age of 40, Meredith sought the help of a therapist who urged her to ask her mother for a trial separation

On the rare occasions when she did emerge, her mood was unpredictable.

We never knew which mother we were going to get – the exuberant one who whisked us from garage sale to garage sale, buying us second-hand trinkets and singing along to the Bee Gees on the radio; or the raging one who yanked me out of the bathtub by my hair for using too much hot water.

Placating her became our survival strategy.

Matthew and I didn't dare skip Mother's Day. For self-preservation purposes, we participated in the family delusion that we were Hallmark-worthy.

Merdith, pictured with her brother Matthew in 1975, just after they moved into their grandparents’ house in Carmel Valley. 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

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.

If only there had been a free pass for kids like Matthew and me on Mother's Day. 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.

I never saw or heard of mothers like mine. 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.

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.

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

It's so strong that I debated writing about card shopping with my brother and opening myself up to criticism, even after all the work I've done to resist the taboo. But here's why I decided to take the risk: I obeyed the Mommy Taboo for most of my 49 years, and it almost ruined me.

My compliance began in girlhood, playing along when Granny would buy our birthday and Christmas presents, wrap them and then write Mom's name on the cards.

The ruse continued as Granny stood-in at our parent-teacher conferences, cooked the family meals, signed us up for art classes and drove us to sporting events.

We were fortunate she took over, but whenever we complained about Mom's absence, Granny corrected our thinking. Mom was 'just the way she was' and she needed 'peace and quiet' to get better.

I never invited any of my classmates to the house because I didn't want to explain why Mom was behind a closed door. Instead I took the opposite approach and wormed my way into dinners and sleepovers at my friends' homes.

Meredith became her grandfather's shadow, helping him care for his honey bees which she claims provided a sanctuary from her lonely childhood

I rotated myself among five or six girlfriends, leaving toothbrushes scattered throughout Carmel Valley Village to avoid the bed I was forced to share with my melancholy mother.

In one way this was strategic, but I didn't realize that I was hard-wiring a neediness that would come back to sabotage me in adulthood.

I was losing my confidence crumb by crumb as I learned to survive on free dinners, hand-me-down clothes, a couch to sleep on, rides to school from other mothers, invites to vacations and camping trips with families that weren't my own.

When I got to college, I still kept Mom a secret, faking it when the subject turned to mothers. The lies fell so easily from my lips: 'I got a care package from my mother, too!' 'This sweater used to belong to my mother.' 'She's coming to see me this weekend.'

Despite her closeness to her grandfather, Meredith never never invited any of her classmates to the house because she didn't want to explain why her mom was behind a closed door

The thing about pretending you don't have a toxic mom is that you think you can handle it in the moment, but you anesthetize yourself to the long-term effects that show up decades later, when you suddenly find yourself in a life rut that seemingly swallowed you out of nowhere.

Once I was on my own, I could not fathom why all my relationships crashed into a wall. At the time I blamed bad luck; now it's obvious that I freaked people out with my neediness, practically showing up on the first date with suitcases in hand.

It wasn't until the cusp of my 40th birthday, walking through the wreckage of yet another break-up, that I started to consider that perhaps the common denominator in all of this was me. And that was terrifying.

I remember curling into a fetal position and gasping for air on the bathroom floor, thinking, 'So this is what a panic attack feels like.' I feared that I was too screwed up for companionship, and I'd realized it too late. I was going to spend the second half of my life angry and alone, just like my mother.

Then my tears turned to cackling laughter as I realized the irony of trying so hard to not be like her and ending up an exact carbon copy. When I finally picked myself up from the floor, I called a therapist for the first time.

Meredith is now a fifth-generation beekeeper. In her book she discusses how her grandfather's bees helped her learn many of the life lessons that her parents never taught her about family

When we met, she posed a question that changed my life: 'Do you know you have the right to divorce your mother?'

The Mommy Taboo being what it is, the question confused me. How is that even possible? She's my mother.

With the therapist's help, I began to see that giving birth to me is not the same as loving me.

I wrote a letter asking my mother for a trial separation. I explained I needed three months without phone calls or letters, so I could work on figuring out where she ended and I began.

Writing in her memoir The Honey Bus, Meredith said she never knew what her mother was really thinking until the very end - whether she loved or despised her

The response was swift.

'I have just about taken all I am going to take from you with your damn whining about your miserable childhood and how I done you wrong,' she wrote.

'You are right. I'm so sorry that I wasn't a better parent and I have told you this ad nauseam. I was overwhelmed with unhappiness and sorrow when you were a little kid and scared to death of the responsibility that had been entirely placed on my shoulders.

'You should know I read your letter to both Granny and Grandpa and they were just appalled by your words. Granny asked me to let you know that her reaction to you is summed up in two words: your ANGER and your SELFISHNESS.'

I read the first two paragraphs before crumpling it in my fist. It wasn't the reaction I wanted, but it was the one I expected.

In the weeks that followed, Mom left dozens of long messages on my answering machine demanding an apology. Granny joined the campaign, writing to tell me I needed to respect my mother and stop being so selfish.

There was an odd sort of reassurance knowing this would happen. Only this time, I didn't respond. I'd never before been the one in control, and that felt like a filament of hope.

When her increasingly despondent mother turned violent, Meredith was forced to leave her grandfather's side and strike out alone with only his hive lessons to help her

In the decade since Mom and I parted ways, I stopped celebrating Mother's Day. I don't need to anymore. I have become my own parent.

Meredith's mother passed away in the fall of 2017 at age 73, her health having plummeted after losing her own mom.

Writing in her memoir The Honey Bus, Meredith said she never knew what her mother was really thinking until the very end: 'If she was scared, if she had regrets, if she loved or despised me.'

Meredith is now a fifth-generation beekeeper. In her book she discusses how her grandfather's bees helped her learn many of the life lessons that her parents never taught her about family.

The Honey Bus: A memoir of loss, courage and a girl saved by bees by Meredith May, published by HQ, $24.99 (£12.99) is out now.