Dear caroline:

I can relate to feeling “guilty ..and angry at the same time” regarding my mother. My guilt has been immense and my anger intense. I no longer feel much of either guilt or anger. I have no contact with her over five years. Never will for as long as I live, for as long as she lives.

It was a very difficult experience for me to live day after day, year after year, and be in daily or weekly contact with her for decades while all along knowing (but denying it to myself at the same time) that like you, I too was “missed all the time”, meaning “not accepted and not understood”. My mother too was not being “honest… with the exception of brutal harsh honesty at times”, when she exploded in rage. My mother also did a lot of “putting others on pedestals… with a big smile on her face” while treating me “like I am not significant”, and she too made “subtle hints because she can’t be direct with me”, except when she raged. And knowing my mother’s extensive habit of talking disrespectfully about other people behind their backs, I believe she talked about me the same way, behind my back.

We need a mother who is on our side, not against us. A mother who treats us as significant people, not insignificant, a mother who values us and has our well being as her top priority.

“I guess I just have to start getting used to how it really is”. I like the saying the truth shall set you free. There is healing in seeing the truth, in seeing reality as it is, no matter how distressing it is at first. Later on there is calm in it.

Back to what you wrote: “I guess I  just have to start getting used to how it really is, that my family don’t like me and see me as a failure”-  this is my biggest benefit to cutting contact with my mother and doing the healing work afterwards: I no longer see myself as a failure, or as worthless, incapable, less than, clumsy, insignificant and so on. I no longer see myself as she saw me.

As children our parents are our mirrors. We don’t see ourselves except through them. So when your parents tell you that you are a failure and treat you as such, then you see yourself as a failure.

You are not a failure, caroline. You are not insignificant. The mirrors you look at are faulty, distorting what is true.

anita