Dear Phil:

Looking back at your original post, you wrote: “I asked a question that I wondered about for decades. I asked her if she ever loved my dad. She told me it was none of my business.” There is something very cold about her response, something very cold. Something here is speaking to me and I don’t know yet what it is. I want to come back to it later.

Also in your original post, you wrote: “The logical side of me knows that you can’t lose something you never had.” You are born with the need to be loved by your primary care taker, usually the mother. You have this need. You can’t lose something you always had, this very need. All these years, decades later, even after she is dead, you still have the same need, to be loved by her.

You wrote: “Another part of me still wants what never was.” The need is still there.

“How do you get past this?” Accept that need of a lifetime, unsatisfied, unfulfilled. It is the most intense need there is, the need of a new life to LIVE, as the love of the mother is felt as absolutely necessary for life. As children, we are encoded with this need for our mother, just like other mammals. We don’t know, genetically, that there is such a thing as social services and maybe we will be better off in a foster home (maybe)- we don’t know. Genetically it is the mother or death.

This is how strong that need is. So it is not that you lost something you never had; it is that you never lost that crucial need you had at such an early age.

anita