My Daughter-in-Law Wanted a Foot Massage. I Said No. Now She Wants Payback

I’m Lana, 60F, and my hands are literally shaking as I type this because I still can’t wrap my head around what my life has become. I’ve always been the kind of woman who pours herself into her family. I raised my kids with love, supported them at every turn, and showed up the second anyone needed anything.

My son and his pregnant wife live just twenty minutes away, and ever since she found out she was expecting, she has leaned on me constantly—meals, grocery shopping, rides to appointments, little favors here and there. I didn’t mind. Honestly, it felt nice to be included and needed.

But yesterday… yesterday changed everything.

She called out of nowhere, and in the most casual tone—like she was asking me to grab bread—she said, “My feet are swollen. Come over and massage them.”

The tone wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t a request. It was a command.

I froze. I’ve never refused to help her, but that crossed a line for me. I tried to lighten it with a little laugh and said, “Are you out of your mind?” expecting her to laugh along. She didn’t.

She smirked. A slow, deliberate smirk.

“You’ll regret it,” she said.

I hung up uneasy, but I thought she was being dramatic or sarcastic.

Then this morning… everything blew up in ways I never imagined.

She made a TikTok.
A viral TikTok.

In it, she shows her swollen feet while crying about not having a mother, and then claims her “cold, heartless mother-in-law” refused to help her during a medical emergency. She portrayed herself as this abandoned, suffering pregnant woman—and painted me as some cruel monster who didn’t care about her pain.

And she TAGGED me.
She tagged my entire family.
She even tagged local community groups.

My phone exploded.
Relatives calling to say they were “disappointed.”
A cousin asking what was “wrong” with me.
Even my own husband said I should’ve “just gone over and massaged her feet,” adding, “Wouldn’t you want your MIL to do the same for you?”

That cut deeper than I expected.

But the worst blow came from my son—my baby.
He said he was “embarrassed” by my behavior. That I’d made his wife miserable. Now he won’t even answer my calls.

And then I learned the part that makes me sick.

She’s been secretly recording me for WEEKS.

Little, everyday things—me sitting quietly, me looking tired, me politely turning down an unnecessary errand. She chopped them up into out-of-context clips to make me seem cold, detached, and unhelpful.

She’s been crafting this narrative long before the foot-massage demand.

I’ve always tried to be supportive without overstepping, helpful without crowding them, present without being controlling. But now it feels like I’m living in a version of reality she constructed—one where I’m the villain and she’s the wounded heroine.

Am I supposed to abandon my own boundaries just because she’s pregnant?
Does helping mean turning into her personal servant so I don’t get dragged online?
Do I have to sacrifice my dignity just to avoid being smeared?

I feel betrayed.
Trapped.
And honestly, heartbroken.

I look at my family now… and I barely recognize any of them.