Dear Lia,

You are not obligated to love your mother. She might have familial ties to you, but love is a choice and you can make the choice to not love her. The child you was dependent on her, thus seeking for her love. Parents are the first contact to the world and with evolutionary genetic wiring humans to be social animal, you were simply following your instinct of seeking out warmth and affection from your parental figures.

You have done nothing wrong. You had only seek to please your mother in the way you knew how, but she is the one who chose to reject your efforts. Your mother is the one who chose to reject you simply because she could. It was not your fault. None of it is your fault.

But if there is one thing many abusers have in common, it is that they are skilled manipulator. Like a predator to their prey, they have observed your strengths and weaknesses to know which buttons to push. And when the abuser is your mother whom you have spent many years with, it is little wonder if she doesn’t understand how to destroy your self-esteem while she has never encouraged you to have faith in yourself.

Your mother is skilled at painting/coloring your reality with her colors, your mother is skilled at making the world center around her. At a young age, that taught you to ignore your will, your want, your desires, your needs in favor of your mother’s needs. That taught you that you had no value as a person; that you don’t matter, only your mother matter. Your mother had also instilled the fear of her into you because it’s simply easier to break someone when they fear you. Fear makes it easier to control you.

Now that you are breathing the same space as your living nightmare, your anxiety is making itself known because you still fear your mother. Your body has already ingrained that fear into your heart so now your defense mechanism is going haywire in the presence of your childhood bogeyman. You do not feel safe with your parents thus your anxiety is screaming at you ‘no, No, NO!’. You are not safe. You need to get out.

Moving on from your nightmarish childhood does not have to happen in the presence of your family. You can heal while still living far, far away from your would-be oppressor. Being strong means being okay with not meeting or seeing those who had abused you. It’s not that you are weak not meeting them, but rather, you respect yourself so you look after your well-being. And if being okay means not meeting your family, then that is what you should encourage yourself to do.

You need a safe space to heal, not a space with your oppressor. Especially when staying with your family means constant vigilance against your mother to see if she is going to do something to you again. You don’t need that. Constantly ‘fighting’ does not make you strong, rather it just tires out your spirit. Find the courage to leave, do it for yourself. Do it because leaving is showing the strength to say no to what hurts you.

Good luck.