Hello Anita,

Hope you are well. 🙂 Thanks once again for your messages, which are always thought-provoking.

I mean sure – I can meditate on all the things my mother does, and did, that made me angry. I’m sure that would be useful. I will admit that I have been slack this last week on the whole self-reflection thing. It is easy to forget the underlying pain sometimes.

(My mother was very rude to my father at dinner tonight and I drew her attention to it. I said it was rude and asked if she was angry, she tried to frame it as a joke. I could tell otherwise from her tone of voice. She tried to turn it on me and ask if I was angry. Shortly after she made a snide comment about me and my recent health scare, chewing on her food like a petulant child. It was muttered beneath her breath.)

So sure, I’ll get making that list or letter about my mother, and see where that takes me.
I might as well do one about my father (although I already talked of him in therapy for a long time…) one for my sister (!!) one for my first ever boyfriend (massive trauma there) and one for my most recent boyfriend. (who as far as I am can tell, was cheating on me with his ex. Again: massive trauma.)

Not sure about the holding people account bit though – I think we are probably in agreement that my mother in particular is unlikely to change if I tried to talk to her about these things. Do you think that simply the letter writing itself is an act of holding people account?

And while this activity might take the sting out of the hurt that Mr has basically rejected my bid to connect emotionally with him, now I am not sure how to proceed on that issue.

He does this from time to time: my messages go unopened until I send another. I don’t know why. It isn’t the same as that time he gave me silent treatment- when he did get back to me after that he explained he felt the urge to distance himself because he thought I was being passive-aggressive. (Indeed the same remark that led him to claim my ‘friendship was not very friendly’)

It is his birthday in a few days and I would like to get him something. I considered a yoga course earlier today, but I saw a musical event that he and I would both enjoy, maybe that would be better as we can go together?
It is a month away from now so I would have time to ‘get my head together’ a bit more.

-Feathering