Dear llyana:

I want to paraphrase my recent post to you and add to it: it is my understanding that when you were a child, your mother was consumed by anger, and therefore, she was not available to love you. Your father was physically absent from your life, and so, you were not loved by either parent. You needed to feel loved, so you imagined that your father loved you, and you missed that imagined love.

You experienced fear of your mother’s anger, and you feared how terribly it felt to be so alone and lonely day after day, night after night, months and years that felt like eternity. At times, I imagine, you probably felt anger at your mother as well. The fear and ongoing distress led to your body forming a neurological and chemical habit that is keeping your body currently highly stressed. This chronic stress caused your cognitive abilities to decline, and is keeping you from being available to love your son.

It so happens that I lived with a very angry mother myself, a mother who was not available to love me, and it so happens that my father too was out of the home before I was six. Living with my mother and her anger, feeling too alone and lonely for what felt like eternity, negatively affected my mental health and cognitive functions in significant to severe ways, causing my body chronic, damaging stress.

Your son is  now nine. I can tell you for sure, that if my mother did all she could to to heal when I was nine- that by ten years old, I would have been in a much better mental health than I was at ten and throughout most of my life. It is not too late for your son to benefit from having a healthier mother. Please do all that you can do to heal, one step at a time, a little every day. You can do it, you will see!

anita