Dear Jay:

Document everything, the conversation with your sister, any and every interaction and communication with her and go the legal route, I see no reasonable hope for cooperation here.

Regarding your first two sentences- thank you for the hugs, I will take the hugs and empathy but regarding my mother, I am no longer in contact with her, my choice, since 2013. I struggled emotionally about that choice for years but now I am okay with it and I will never again see her in my life. It used to be unthinkable, not seeing her while she is alive. But it is thinkable now.

You wrote: “it is an unconditional love, something I was born with. You can’t just turn it on and off like a tap (faucet?) when you feel like it, can you?”- no, it is always there, even during the eternity of anger that I felt toward her, and no matter how hard I tried to not love her, I still did. Not long ago I smiled, without planning to, of course, I smiled as I thought of her, felt affection. And not  too long ago, I found myself crying and calling for her. And yet, none of that love motivates me to contact her.

I know that my love for her was never about who she is, but about her role in my life, the mother, the one that feeds and shelters the baby and young child that I was. Like those ducklings that follow their mother in a row, or the fawn following her doe mother. The fawn doesn’t evaluate the mother doe to figure if it will be a good idea to follow her. The doe follows because she has to, it is imprinted in her genes to follow, the love/ attachment feeling is imprinted and motivates the following.

anita

t is an unconditional love, something I was born with. You can’t just turn it on and off like a tap (faucet?) when you feel like it, can you?

I’m so sorry that you are walking along a similar path to me. (((hugs))) It’s one of the hardest paths to walk along, and progress through.