Dear joanna:

You apologized to me but you did nothing wrong. I invited you to talk about your mother, asked you a question. There is absolutely nothing you did wrong to me, nothing to apologize for. And I do want to talk more about this, absolutely. It is helping me and I do hope it helps you. Let me know when it doesn’t.

You wrote: “I think she would ‘like’ me.. if I worn smart clothes and was married, and had a lot of money. I’m almost sure she would treat me better and respect me.”-

if during childbirth you were born to her not a baby but a grown woman, not naked but dressed in smart clothes, not single but married, and with  a computer chip carrying the details of a brand new and huge bank account, then she would have liked you. Of course, extra thick hair too. And make up.

When you were born a baby, naked, hair messy and uneven, in need to be cleaned (and you didn’t clean after yourself!), no computer chip with the information of a big bank account etc., .. you were unsatisfactory to your mother. A thing with lots of flaws.

You wrote:”She used to tell me everyday I have thin hair, I’ll never grow long and thick hair, I don’t stand straight and I will have a hump, (she made me stay in a hospital for this which was the worst nightmare of my life), that I’m skinny… that I lisp…. She used to make appointments to doctor who taught me to speak… She .. just told me this to point this out that I have thin hair. Just wanted me to be aware of my flaw. She made sure I KNOW this. ..She often says she doesn’t understand how someone can be fat, and not want to lose weight, or that someone looks bad, or old”

Your mother had and has a lifetime, strong and persistent motivation to let people know of their flaws, they have to know!

She knew that you didn’t remember her shaving your head at two. She had to let you know later that your hair was so very flawed that she .. had to shave it.

You asked:   “How sick is this? I can’t understand it. Can you understand it? Can you really. Why would anyone do this?.. So what does that mean here?”

I will give you my best understanding: in her childhood, her flaws were pointed out to repeatedly, she got very hurt, very angry, but did not express her anger, pushed it down.

Her father was probably not that “decent man”, at least not with her. “no one would say a bad word about him”, but your mother had lots of bad words to say about how he treated her. But she didn’t say those words to him or to her own mother who worshipped this man. No one said a bad word about this humble man who survived the war. (Her mother might have been the one pointing to her faults, I am guessing as to who of her parents did what).

As a teenager she dreamed about leaving that home, leaving her parents, and was very excited about the prospect of getting married. That excitement is what you had a peak at when you went to a party with a boy.

She had no  one to talk to as a child, her anger repressed. Becoming your mother was her opportunity to talk plenty, to express her anger plenty. She took on her father’s (or mother’s)  role and has been pointing your faults to you at every opportunity, fueled by her rage.

She also points flaws to others whenever her safety is not threatened by doing so, and if it does, she will tell a third person about their flaws.

Obsessed and consumed by real and imagined flaws, she keeps expressing bits and pieces of that early unresolved rage. This is a classical tale of abuse- the abused becoming an abuser, expressing the anger of the abused by taking on the role of her abuser.

Let me know what you think.

anita