Post # 3,
Dear Shipp:

You wrote in the same Oct 26 post, about your mother: “she was the cause of the abuse, violence and trauma of my growing up (then later manipulation and drama), the year before she died, she had a massive stroke… I went everyday, after work, to care for her we became close…. I felt like I FINALLY had a mother and that she truly loved me. For four months”

Following her stroke and 4 months in the hospital, you found out that she died and “My world shattered. God, I’m crying as I write this. I don’t have the words to describe the depth of loss that I felt and still feel every year. I also feel cheated because I was left with so many questions unanswered.”

And you wrote: “I still talk to her… I say ‘I love you momma’. When I miss her really bad…I talk to her.”

The endless love of a little girl to her mother, a truly unconditional love. No matter what she did to you, how she hurt you, repeatedly, never repenting, never saying sorry, never correcting. It only took 4 months of her post-stroke mellowness to trigger all your love, all your hope.

As a child, you were heavily invested in seeing your mother as GOOD. This is the core belief you held on to into your 47 year of life. To maintain such a false belief, such a delusion, an untruth, you had to fit a lot of your thinking into it:

And that distorted thinking is that you are not abusive (you are), that you are not harming your children, and Emmet’s (you are), that Emmet’s children are bad seeds, born bad (they are not)…

No, no, no: it was your mother that was BAD, not you, and not your children and not Emmet’s.

You wrote on this thread that your mother was not a bad person. It is your daughters and Emmet’s children paying the price for this wishful thinking on your part.

If your mother was not a bad person, then there is no such thing as a bad person. Because no person is always angry, always intending to harm, always abusive. Every person is sometimes affectionate (to their own victims!); every person is sometimes kind to someone.

anita