Dear ally:

Your last word in your recent post is guilty. I have decades of guilt torture behind me. My guilt started early on and persisted. I know guilt too well. The guilt I know is based on incorrect thinking, thinking not congruent with reality,  but it was painful nonetheless, as if it was based on reality.

I believed that I was responsible for my mother’s pain and it was my job to undo the damage I believed I caused her, hence the fix-her compulsion. I didn’t understand that her pain was not caused by me, that she experienced her pain before I ever came into her life. I didn’t understand that in the context of she and I, it is she who damaged me.

anita