Dear joanna:

As to your question in the first part of your most recent post: knowing all this is helping me more and more as I type these very words to you.

A thought that comes to mind, something I thought about yesterday after turning off the computer, in regard to my communication with you: did you see those nature movies about an animal getting angry at another animal for invading its territory, chasing it out?

This is what is helpful to me: chasing out my mother, chasing her out of that mental territory that belongs to me, not to her.

Your mother invaded your mental territory in many ways, did she not: taking away from you the opportunity to develop your own relationship with your father, to make your own choices based on your values (not on hers), make informed decisions, based on reality and not on her reality imposed on you… well, this is how this is helping me: having my own mental space, my own mental territory where I decide.

Regarding your questions in the last part of your recent post, regarding confronting your mother: if you have to live with her, have to be in contact with her (let’s say the two of you are the only two people in an isolated island and you have to cooperate so to feed yourselves and shelter yourselves from cold and such)- then yes, confront. In such a confrontation you assert yourself.

Outside of the isolated island scenario, I don’t see a point to confronting. Reason is, the need of a child (an adult child included) for her mother’s approval is so intense, that it will be in your way. She is not a brand new person with whom you can establish rules of engagement. You are naturally invested in the old rules.

If having contact with your mother is in your way of having that mental territory that you need, a territory you need to heal and to make thoughtful choices for your own well being, then cut contact.

anita