Dear marthams:

“I’ve been living in a feeling of guilt…it’s like.. someone punched you and yelled at you and then said it’s you who have hurt him and you’re to blame forever… I felt bad because it’s family. When it’s a stranger you can move on and get over. When it’s family.. you feel guilty because she is offended… being a bad person.. sneaky, evil, shady person who committed such a disgusting ‘crime’ of knowing she was dead and pretending I didn’t know”, in your dream.

My input this morning: as a child you look up to adult family members, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, there is a connection formed in childhood and the interactions with those family members in the child’s life are very meaningful to the child. When an adult family member blames the child, the child automatically feels guilty. Because a child is not able to evaluate people and situations and understand she is not blameworthy, that it is the adult with the problem.

A child automatically views the adults in her life as all-knowing, the ones who are perfect. So when a perfect person, a god of sorts, blames the child, why… the adult must be correct, and I (the child) must be wrong.

Later  in life you are able to evaluate people and situations, and at this point you are able to see that your grandmother is a cruel person who “doesn’t value us in her  life”, but the belief that you are guilty was formed before this evaluation, so it persists.

Regarding “she (grandmother) doesn’t value us in her life”- I think she does value you and your mother and the others as places to dump her distress into. That is your value to  her. So when you do her hair, and have done so for years, buying the material yourself, buying food for her pets and on and on, she doesn’t value these things. When you forgot her birthday once, she took that occurrence as an opportunity to dump her distress into you.

Because that is your value for her, and your mother’s and the others (including those who are currently on her .. good list, soon to be on the bad list, I am thinking), places to dump her distress into.

I do hope you and your other family members reject being those dumpsters for her.

anita