Dear Cali Chica:

Excellent, absolutely excellent.

You wrote: “When it came to my mother explaining an issue about her life, it wasn’t her sharing it was her giving me the burden. Saying here take it and fix it. I am a victim I must be saved”.

Here is what I learned only recently, months ago, maybe: I believed my whole life that my mother wanted me to fix her, that she presented her troubles to me so that I would fix those, that I would make her life for her okay.

I was wrong. I learned that it is the child’s natural reaction to want to fix the parent’s troubles so to create, for the child, a safe parent, a safe home.

But it was not my mother’s intent that I fix her. This realization was a shocker for me. What I realized is that my mother did not value me as someone capable of fixing her, capable of helping her. She turned to other people, adults whom she viewed as capable as people valuable to her. She turned to me, a child, not as a person she valued, not as a person she viewed as capable, but simply as a thing-that-was-there and she needed to vent, to unload her burden, to release her distress, to punish when angry.

anita