Dear lostcatlady:

“I believe I do love my mother as she loves me. I wish I could hug her and tell her I love her… I don’t know how to initiate it. She’s never hugged me or told me she loves me in person”…”her mother (my grandmother) didn’t show her love too”-

– children are born soft, loving. They don’t.. think about initiating a hug, they simply hug.

When your mother was born she was soft too and loving. Her mother was hard and rejected her own daughter’s loving nature, and so, your mother became hard.

Then you were born soft and loving, and your mother rejected you. As a young child you hugged your mother, held on to her tightly, but she felt uncomfortable with your hug, so she moved you away from her body.

“I don’t know how to initiate it”, more likely, you don’t know how to hug her without her moving away from you, like she already did repeatedly before, when you were very young.

From what you shared, reads to me that your mother loves you, doing things for you, trying to cheer you up, encouraging you to seek professional help and suggesting that you can use her savings. Thing is, your love for her is soft and limitless and her love for you is hard and limited.

Because her love for you is limited, the relationship with her is limited.

The vicious cycle you mentioned is about a soft loving child being rejected by a hardened mother, and then that child proceeding to be hard with her own child.  Our mothers are our first loves. When that love is not returned, we grow up with a broken heart, always having a soft spot for our mothers.

You want more than anything to make your mother happy, and you were always willing to do all that it takes. But like a plant in a pot with too  little water and nutrients that doesn’t grow tall and strong, you too, with too little love, you can’t grow into the confident, successful outgoing woman you wish you were, the kind that would be able to provide a more comfortable life for your mother-

– not because you don’t want to, not because you don’t love her enough, but because… she doesn’t love you enough, not enough to ask you what you think, what you feel, what you need.. if she asked you, you would  have told her you want to hug her but are afraid she will reject you again. Maybe then, if she asked and if she listened to you, she would have opened her arms for that hug.

Regarding your father, he is limited too, hard as well. Reads to me that within your family, your empathy has been with your mother, siding with her against the unloving-element in the family, your father, while in reality, both your parents are significantly limited that way (maybe your father even more limited than your mother).

Notice what you wrote to me in the beginning of your recent post: “I started crying when I read it because it really hit home (not trying to make you feel bad for it though!)”- your crying doesn’t make me feel bad, but your concern indicates to me that you don’t want to burden others with your pain, and I suppose you didn’t and don’t want to burden your mother with your pain, this is an indication of how alone you are in the context of your relationship with your mother and with your father.

It will help you to express your pain to someone who will not be inconvenienced by it, but instead, will be motivated to listen to you, to really hear your words and your emotions, in the words you say or type away. I am willing to do that, and so, if you want, please post again and again and express to me what you need to express, I want to read from you.

I hope that you will learn what I learned in my own life, the concept of soft love vs hard love, the difference between the two.

You feel guilty for not doing better career wise and therefore not being able to provide a better life for your mother, materially- once you understand the difference I mentioned above, that guilt will lessen and lessen and then be gone. Without that guilt, you will have more of that energy that you are now lacking.

anita