Dear Cali Chica:

“the true mother-daughter talk… it was not important to her to speak to me, her daughter in a certain way- ..for my development to be appropriate or positive… all of the ..talk .. is her talking AT me, about life, and tragedy, and woe is me… her voice to the public about me was not congruent with her voice to me”-

– I don’t think that in her mind there was a mother-daughter, a wife- husband, a __- ___. Everyone, in her mind was people, and people inconvenienced her. In her mind there was chatter, some of it was her imagining that others were criticizing her. For example, when she was speaking to a man in the closet, not wanting your sister to hear what she was saying, and then get so angry at your sister, exclaiming she doesn’t have privacy in her own home, the chatter in her brain was something like: this people (your sister) is thinking I shouldn’t be talking to  a man, she is thinking that, or about to think that, so I will hide… oh, she caught it, god d*&**, I have no privacy in my own home!

She got so angry at not being able to hide from the criticism she imagined on the part of your sister that she kicked her out of the house. She kicked her own critical voice out of the house.

Whenever she felt challenged, that is her self critical voice being activated (ex., you telling her that other mothers don’t over-react like her and when in Peru, you told her something to the effect of her overreacting regarding there being less oxygen in high elevation) she called your father to.. protect her from her daughters, that is, she called him to kick out that critical voice in her brain.

And then, often enough, she voiced her mind chatter, her rationalizing, making believe things that made it easier to go through the day, like she being strong for being a housewife, not working outside the home, or your sister being “hot” and you, not so.. or whatever BS crossed her brain at this moment or the next.

There was no mother/ daughter, there was she and people, one batch of people, a sticky substance, aka people who happened to be there, usually an inconvenience.

anita