Dear Javairia:

I returned from my walk in the rain. What you described is a powerful and devastating emotional experience in your young life. I shared with you how I felt when I read it because I wanted you to know that I know how devastating this experience must has been for the young child that you were. It would be powerful at any age, but at six or so, it is most powerful.

It wasn’t your fault, you know. She was angry at your father, at the other people in the bedroom. You were the only one who followed her, the only one who tried to save her life as she reached for the bottle of poison. You have no responsibility whatsoever to the fights between her and your father, nothing to do with her anger, his anger, none of it. You were a victim to their fights and to your mother terrible action of drinking poison in front of her little girl.

The “bad person complex” you mentioned before, it is based on something that is not at all true: what she  did was not your fault, and because you were a young child, much smaller than her, there was no way for you to physically prevent her from what she did.

Did she ever talk about that incident with you, ever apologized to you???

anita