Dear dreaming715:

Good to read from you again. Congratulations for leaving home at nineteen, for ending contact with your abusive mother,  for successfully living on your own, for attending and graduating from college, for financially supporting yourself, and for having a good relationship with your boyfriend.

You wrote: “How can you have a child and feel okay just never contacting them?…” My answer: it happens a whole lot. It is the child who needs the parent, not the other way around. The child looks up to the parent as the parent, too often, looks down at the child. For the child, the parent is Everything. Too  often, for the parent, the child (including the adult child) is .. not much, of not much significance.

It is a tough reality to accept. I cut contact with my mother a few years ago. I expected her to reach out to me, to try and contact me desperately. But she didn’t. I think that we as children (of any age) imagine our parents need us or care so much about us because we need (or needed) them and care (or cared) so much. We inaccurately project our need into them.

anita