Dear Starlight ✨🤍💫

It sounds like you have gained a lot of clarity these past weeks. You’ve been doing deep, difficult work, and it really shows. It makes sense that it felt overwhelming, and you don’t owe anyone a quicker reply. Taking time away is completely okay 🙂

I love that you found a simple art book that feels gentle and doable. That’s such a kind way to reconnect with your creativity — step by step, without pressure.

About what you shared in the “Psychic ‘attack’” thread — that sense of something unwelcome near you makes emotional sense given the enmeshment you’ve been untangling. It reflects how deeply and negatively that old bond affected you, not anything supernatural or dangerous.

Best I understand, what your mother did to you wasn’t a single, loud act of stopping you from going to art school — it was the long, quiet erosion of your confidence, your identity, and your right to have a life of your own.

She created an emotional atmosphere where you were guilt‑tripped for having needs (“guilt tripping”, your words), made uncomfortable when you succeeded (“no pictures were put up”), denied validation when you achieved something (“lack of validation”), and subtly pushed into supporting her dreams instead of developing your own (“help support her by doing housework” while she pursued art).

That kind of environment slowly wears down a young person’s sense of worth until the door to their future feels closed — not because they weren’t allowed to walk through it, but because they no longer believed they had the right or the strength to.

What you’re seeing now — the sabotage, the enmeshment, the way your mental health deteriorated — is the real damage. And it makes complete sense that it took time and distance for you to recognize it.

Stepping back from contact with your mother can help you in ways that go far beyond avoiding conflict — it gives you the space you’ve never had to develop a self that isn’t shaped by her needs, her guilt, or her emotional reactions.

Every time an enmeshed adult child reconnects, even briefly, the old pattern pulls them back into the role they were trained to play: the child who must manage the mother’s feelings, protect her from discomfort, and silence their own needs. That isn’t your fault — it’s the pattern she created.

As long as there is contact, that pattern gets reinforced, and your mind doesn’t get the quiet it needs to grow in its own direction. No contact isn’t about punishment; it’s protection. It’s the boundary that allows your identity, your creativity, and your inner clarity to finally take root without being overridden.

You deserve a life where your thoughts belong to you, where your achievements are celebrated, and where your emotional world is not shaped by someone else’s unmet needs. Distance is what makes that possible.

Your decision to step back from contact sounds grounded and protective of your well‑being.

🌿🌿🌿Anita

Dear Robi:

Thank you for writing back 🙂. I can hear how depleted you feel — emotionally worn out from carrying so many decisions and uncertainties at the same time.

It makes sense that Warsaw, staying where you are, and even the relationship- all feel confusing right now. When someone is this depleted, anything or everything can feel like a burden.

You don’t have to decide anything right now. You’re allowed to take this step by step, gently. If you feel up to it, I wonder what part of the relationship feels heaviest for you these days.

As for me, I’m sitting in a comfortable armchair with Bogart curled against me, listening to his even breathing. It brings a sense of calm, and I’m here with that calm as I read your words.

🌿🌿🌿Anita

Dear Thomas:

Reading your replies to Kris, I don’t see you attacking her, not at all.

You are a good man, Thomas and you don’t like conflicts and misunderstandings. Neither do I.

🙏 Anita

Dear Thomas:

You did nothing wrong in your reply to Kris on the other thread, and you didn’t say anything that wasn’t generally true.

Kris’s anger is not about you, really. You did nothing wrong 🙂

Thinking about you this Fri am your time, wondering how your GF is doing in the ongoing heat wave in Germany (I’m guessing it’s refreshingly cooler early in the morning)?

I read it’s cooler in Greece, but still hot?

How is Confused this Fri morning?

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Anita

Hey 🌿 Confused:

Your 1st message is on page 104 and the 2nd on page 105, and because I’m using my phone and can’t open a 2nd window, I’ll answer the first here, and the second next.

I am listening to the news about the heat wave in Europe. At least 40 people drowned trying to cool off in lakes, rivers and such. I understand your GF sufferring, but glad she was able to laugh nonetheless.

How’s the weather in Greece? Do you (or GF) have ACs? I don’t and during the only heat wave I experienced here since I moved here in 2013 (summer 2021) I filled in the bath with cold water and kept soaking in it every hour or so, plus using ice packs in- between.

You say you don’t remember if you were scared when your father threatened plenty of times that he’d leave. Considering how very attached you were to him (you shared that you were), it’d make sense that you were not indifferent to his threats, at least not in the first few times that he threatened.

Your 🧠 doesn’t remember but your body remembers: “Heart racing, body heat rising” (yesterday).

Two more weeks (SSRI) and report back to him makes sense.

Anita

Hey 👋 Confused:

You getting “scared shi*less” when you couldn’t reach your father, and making scenarios about him being hurt, fits with you being scared of losing your GF.

When you were a child and your parents fought and he left, were you afraid he’ll never come back?

As a child, I used to be terribly afraid of losing my mother, afraid she’d be gone (she threatened that she will). I couldn’t sleep at nights. Seems like for a child, losing a parent, remaining alone, is a terrible, terrible feeling.

Do you remember feeling scared of losing your father back then, when Confused was a kiddo- Confused?

Anita