Dear Cali Chica:

I have never read a post here on this website or anywhere at all as intelligent and wise, beautifully worded, honest, thorough, caring, decent… I have no words, really to express my appreciation of you, the one who wrote this. I intend to print your post above for keep. There is so much in it that I like, agree with, delight in reading, that mentioning it all will make this as long a post as yours, simply repeating all that you wrote.

I want to share with you something I learned recently, learned to a greater depth than before. It relates to #4, 5 and 6 in the last part of your post, what your mother/ parents would say: “what will you do when we are older… after all we have done for you?Most children stay close to their parents…maybe your husbands’ parents brainwashed you… that’s their master plan…that’s just like you, to use everyone around you to climb up to the top..” –

These words I imagine your mother saying, consistent with  what she said before many times. I learned that what motivates a person to say these things is anger. I now understand that what most likely motivated your mother all these years to say things like that was anger. Not hurt, not fear, not sadness.

What this means is that when she told you these things in the past, every time she did, she intended to hurt you. She said those things with the aim of causing you to feel pain (recent example of such is what she told you on the phone while they were on a ride to the hospital).

I call this understanding of mine, expressed here, as a building-blocks-understanding, that is understanding of the very basics in human/ animal behavior. Anger motivates an animal to hurt another: bite, hit, kill, injure, etc.

It was very difficult for me to imagine that my own mother intended to hurt me. It is a very threatening concept for a child, one that the child can not accept. I am able to accept it now.

Before understanding this, when I was in contact with my mother, I thought of her as a victim, a victim of her own childhood, a victim of her own sickness, of her own faulty thinking and believing, a victim of me… a grand victim, assuming all along that her intentions were good. I tried to correct her thinking, to explain to her, I tried to be good to her… but all along I didn’t understand that she was motivated by anger and that her intent was not to correct her thinking, to consider a different view or belief, to feel loved by me, etc. Her intent was to hurt me, to cause me pain.

Again, a delight to read (and will be saving) your post, more than I can express.

anita