Dear Ravi:

I disagree with your last statement that if you had been harsh with yourself from the beginning and severely punished yourself for abusing her, none of this would’ve happened. I strongly disagree because from my life experience and thorough observations, it is not self punishment that does the job of making us better people, but patience and gentleness with ourselves that does the job. What does patience and gentleness with yourself means: it does not mean being okay with the behaviors that are not okay. It doesn’t mean being passive and letting things be. It means being gentle and patient with yourself while you are changing the behaviors you want to change.

There simply is no other way. You already know the correspondence you last posted was vile. This is no reason to start a war against yourself! It was a verbal vile communication. And a regrettable one, one to not repeat and work very hard to change. But, Ravi, you can live with this transgression, this should not be too heavy for you to carry, to live with.

You feel badly about it, of course. So you feel bad. Let it be. Don’t hurt yourself any more.

If you had a child and the child misbehaved, a reasonable punishment will do to teach the child, not a beating! Not drawing blood! That would just make the child scared and more angry.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to stop that war against yourself! Enough already!!!

As far as your mother I wish I had a son for a doctor in the next life statements… this is making me think that she is invested in the sole objective of you becoming a doctor. As if she doesn’t care about anything at all except this one thing. She doesn’t even care if you are a good or bad person, as long as you become a doctor. I feel disgust at her motivation as I see it.

And by the way, does this make you angry, that I just wrote that your mother’s behavior disgusts me?

anita