Dear Cali Chica:

In my response, I will combine quotes from your first and second posts of today:

“trying to appease my parents… take away their hurt, take away their anxieties, take away their insecurities”-

-we, mistreated children, want to appease, or help our abusive parent, to take away her hurt- but she has already helped herself to us a long time ago, and time and time again.

As teenagers and adults, we want to give her our resources so to help  her, but she has already helped herself to  our resources long ago, when we were too young,  by “talking out loud to herself.. why did she come to this country! Why did she have children- to be treated like this! Sometimes she will even vent to my dad on the phone if he is at work.. ‘I have no one’… so  do you feel bad yet?! Speaking to your mother this way!!! How dare you! … And then she may go  on and on to tell me I have a ‘bad tongue’..”-

– the most precious resource she helped herself to all along was our love for her, the fact we cared so much for her.

We want to help her but she already helped herself to us, to the love in us,  she took that away from us and what she didn’t take…that bit of love we hardly ever feel, a … missing love, is all we have left so to help ourselves.

All the love we had for her, she took it away and didn’t give it back.

anita