Dear NB:

We have a similar experience. I struggled for years with love for her and anger and guilt and that intense distress often in her presence and shame and cringing at her touch…it was a nightmare, really, for me. And all along I was focused on her, feeling empathy for her and none for me, feeling and believing I was worthless and undeserving. My mother is still alive but I ended all contact with her seven years ago.

This is the biggest piece of clarity that made it possible for me to exit that nightmare (a nightmare that wasn’t over when I ended contact with her): I finally understood that I loved her from the beginning and all along, but she didn’t love me back.

Those “glimpses of maternal love” on the part of my mother were moment of genuine affection, but in many abusive situations, within families, in prisons, in past concentration camps, people who were terribly cruel to other people, were also, from time to time, affectionate with those same other people.

When I thoroughly understood that I did love her intensely all along (no matter how angry I was at her for so long), and that she didn’t love me back not because I wasn’t lovable, (or because I didn’t love her), I was finally able to exit that decades long nightmare.

anita

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