Dear Helcat:

You are welcome and thank you for your empathy, you are very kind!

“It seems the journey recovering from trauma is never ending. There is always more work to be done!” – I agree and you did a lot of recovery work, it shows!

“Fortunately, I haven’t been in contact with my mother since I was a teenager… I’ve known that my mother didn’t love myself or my brother since I was a young child” -these are two things that are very different for me: (1) I wanted to not be in contact with my mother ever since I was a teenager, but unfortunately, I felt too guilty to make it happen until decades later, and (2) I didn’t really know that she … really didn’t love me.

“I would appreciate any advice you could give about processing my pain from the past regarding my mother seeing me as a mistake” – I would love to give you my best advice, but to do so, I need to understand the differences I pointed to above. If you want to, can you tell me how it happened that you’ve been in no contact with your mother ever since you were a teenager… was it her choice? And can you elaborate on the love topic: you never thought or hoped that she loves you, in moments when she was not cruel to you, moments when she was nice… there must have been such moments, no?

anita