Kevin McEnroe reflected on his relationship with his mother, Tatum O'Neal, in a heartfelt essay published ahead of Mother's Day. The piece, titled Dear Tatum and published at The Small Bow, revisits some of the most difficult years of their family life and the complicated bond that followed.
McEnroe, the son of actress Tatum O'Neal and tennis star John McEnroe, wrote that one of his earliest memories of his mother involved sending her son to buy cigarettes, throwing away her drugs and being offered a line if he wanted one. He said he sometimes still calls her Tatum, but mostly now uses Mama.
“When I was little, you were my mom, until your boyfriend gave you heroin,” he wrote, in one of the essay’s most direct lines. He added that O'Neal was his mom when she was clean and between rehabs, but sometimes she was Tatum too.
The essay lands at a moment when O'Neal’s long struggle with substance use is already part of the public record. In 2020, she suffered a near-fatal stroke that left her in a six-week coma and sent her into a treatment facility. McEnroe wrote that when he was in treatment, he was told to distance himself from his mother while she was still using, and that once he got sober it felt like abandoning her.
He described a life in which both of them were trying to stay alive in different ways. He said he always knew that being a mother was keeping her alive, even amid the chaos, and that he was told to maintain boundaries with her. But he also said the line between love and distance never stayed fixed for long.
O'Neal later said in 2023 that the stroke was caused by an overdose. She told PEOPLE, “I’ve been trying to get sober my whole life” and “Every day, I am trying.” McEnroe wrote that when she woke from the coma, she could not read, talk or walk, and that she started drinking again after the ordeal, which he attributed to her pain and rheumatoid arthritis.
He also wrote that everyone hoped the brain damage from the stroke would rid his mother of Tatum, but it did not. He said he did not care that she drank or overdosed, which caused the stroke and brain damage, and recalled that she escaped from a memory care facility. In a striking turn, he said he was proud of her in a weird way because he knew she was still alive.
The essay frames O'Neal as two people in her son's eyes: Mom and Tatum. It is also a blunt account of parallel recoveries, with McEnroe saying the stroke was the best thing that ever happened to her and their relationship, and that taking care of his mother might actually help him. For a family that has lived for decades with addiction, relapse and recovery, the point is not that the story ended, but that both are still in it.
