<cite> @dharma granny said:</cite>
Dear Starlight

You are quite right to not keep harping back to your mother & the past in a way that does not allow you to heal & move forward.
I saw my friends latest art work yesterday I can see how far she has come in her own healing of her traumatic past. I hope you too find a medium in which you can explore your pain healthily, so the past can become a tool with which you can find a brighter happier present.
Roberta

Thank you, i hope so too. Take care, and thanks for responding to my posts.

Hi Roberta,

Thank you for writing – hopefully my recent responses will help clear up any confusion. I just couldnt be creative for many years without it triggering difficult emotions.

I guess art can be about self expression, it can be about exploration and adventure, but really although sometimes i show some competence, i am just a beginner.

I dont want to focus on my mothers needs anymore. It feels draining and i dont think i should sacrifice my needs for hers anymore by revisiting her story, when the effect of that has been to make me feel guilty for living and it in effect hindered me greatly from feeling free to create, achieve and enjoy relationships.
She did say i chose to be born into the family. Im aware she may find and read this.

I feel its more my responsibility to try and make amends to others where i am able to.

Im glad you felt you experienced some healing and wish you well.

Hi Anita, sorry its been so long. I felt overwhelmed trying to figure things out, but more positively theres been some progress to share.

Firstly, i think enmeshment with my mother was really a big problem for me. and i can absolutely relate to a lack of my own identity. Ive decided i cant continue with contact, because i also experienced some abuse. But so often ive had a knee jerk reaction to get back in contact.

As for having psychic attacks, i still have a sense of something i dislike from time to time near me, but im not sure where it has comefrom. I feel like i have had a connection with someone which has not been good for me.

Strangely, someone said they could sense something near me and were trying to push it away from me.

Hi, sorry i havent been online, and i realise i may not have explained clearly enough the situation, and i apologise for that but it was a complicated situation and its taken some time to tease apart the different issues. My mother did apologise generally for neglect many years later (about 25/30 years after), and she didnt actually stop me going to art school at the time but my mental health had got so poor due to the situation at home, and what seems clear to me now was the effective sabotage of my education and art making through guilt tripping and discomfort and lack of validation (ie no pictures were put up) when i achieved, and her own need for validation.

Thank you so much to each one of you that has kindly and thoughtfully responded – Anita, Alessa, Roberta, which has helped me a great deal to process some of whats happened! Im really grateful to you, and only had not responded before because it was a bit overwhelming posting on a public forum.

The situation had been ongoing because i still had some contact, but i realise now it may be best for each of us, my mother and I, not to have contact.

Also, there were a couple of other significant issues in the relationship which had been detrimental to my health. Essentially i dont think its a safe relationship for me.

A major realisation of this happened when i asked myself the question, what do i need her to say to me etc? Asking this helped me come to terms with things a bit better.

Anita, i just want to say that your response where you explained how trying to see things from your mums perspective can sometimes get you stuck (i think thats what was said?), was hugely helpful. I think it can get you stuck, because a person needs to acknowledge and develop understanding of their own needs, way to communicate and likes and dislikes; and putting someone else first emotionally or even physically when that conflicts with your own needs can be detrimental to that.

With respect to art making, i bought myself a really simple artbook with basic ideas to see how another person works, and i find it inspiring when i feel blocked because of its simplicity (its aimed at people who dont think they can do art). It takes the pressure off from having any potentially unrealistic expectations over artmaking when i look at it, helps me see things step by step, and relax more.

Just an update – the thoughts i shared were just part of an ongoing situation and they are not a conclusion.

<cite> @a1b2c3d4 said:</cite>
Hi Starlight1 🌟

I am glad you did some spontaneous art and that it helped you!

I reread all your posts in this thread, so this reply is about everything you shared here.

In your most recent post, you wrote: “these issues have become confused or conflated… sometimes forgiveness becomes confused with reconciliation with the other person(s).”-

Please let me know if my thinking in what follows is true to you, or not exactly (I’ll use upper case for the different issues that became conflated)

* FORGIVING OTHERS has become tangled with FORGIVING YOURSELF — as in, you have to forgive others if you ever did anything wrong yourself.

* RECONCILIATION got tangled with FORGIVING OTHERS- as in, forgiving others means you must reconnect and interact with them.

Your CREATIVE BLOCK got tangled with EMOTIONAL HARM (by your mother and the woman in church). Both experiences made you feel that you and your creativity existed only to serve other people, not yourself. Because of that, when you think about art, you may also be thinking about guilt, pressure, and being used.

And underneath all of this sit RELIGIOUS MESSAGES that taught you that you must forgive others in order for God to forgive you. Those teachings got mixed with your personal experiences of being used, pressured, and guilt‑tripped (emotional harm)

This may create a loop where you want to protect yourself by not forgiving, but you also fear you are doing something spiritually wrong.

About emotional harm: when a parent expects a child to support their needs, dreams, or emotional stability, the child learns that their own desires are secondary.

Instead of being supported in exploring art, you were told to give up your path so that your mother could pursue hers. That kind of role‑reversal teaches a child to silence their own feelings, to feel guilty for wanting things, and to associate creativity with obligation rather than freedom.

Over time, this can create a deep internal block — because every time the child reaches toward their own creativity, the old message returns: “Your needs don’t matter. Someone else comes first.”

Your mother’s voice (as well as the church’s) sounds like guilt, pressure, duty, and the idea that you must sacrifice your own needs.

Your own voice is quieter — it shows up in your spontaneous art, your curiosity, your desire to understand yourself, and the longing for creative freedom. One helpful way to connect with your quieter voice is through small acts of creativity that have no purpose except expression, just like the spontaneous art you shared about in your recent post. Over time, you can learn to treat the others’ voices as an old echo, and hear your own, authentic voice clearly.

Anita

Hi Anita,

Thank you for writing. I do broadly agree with what youve shared. Im in a predicament though.

I think that sharing my response further might not be best for me.

Im not sure i can respond or when i’ll be able to respond.

I focused a lot on my mother. However, there were other people. There were some positives coming from my mother, its more complicated. Even as im writing i feel a narrative that might seek to override my own self expression is the inference that i hadnt been fair to other people. That claim might be used sometimes by people who dont want honest reflection.

Sometimes, when looking at complicated past issues, people try to claim a role of hero or heroine, or a role they want, as they recall parts of the narrative. But perhaps each person involved can contribute in a positive way?

I note that in religion there is the message that you must honour your parents. However, some parents deny their child(ren) their human rights. I think that more understanding and explanation needs to be given with that message. Also, children need guidance from healthy role models, and that means those role models are required to educate children in life skills and social skills, but how can they do that if they lack them themselves?

In the country i live in there have been barriers to formal education, which mean that a cycle of abuse and neglect gets perpetuated by people, and some people who have been educated then judge those who arent achieving or havent achieved in the same way, but as individuals i think we often have different learning styles.

Hi Anita,

I want to think this through a bit more before i reply. Thank you for posting!