Dear Cali Chica:

I read your most recent post and then went back to your November 2016 first posts about your childhood. I will combine shares from then and now.

– You wrote about your mother: “her own siblings.. shunned, ridiculed and harassed her”- and she did the same to you, shunned, ridiculed and harassed you and your sister, her daughters.

– You were significantly distressed as a child although you tend to think you had a happy childhood. Your father told you: “Just because you are achieving all of this in your career, if you don’t have common sense and continue to be messy or frenzied at home”- you were messy and frenzied at home, from an early age because you were significantly distressed. Your father, by the way, blamed you for the consequences (“messy or frenzied”) of being tortured by your mother and himself.

You were messy and frenzied at home because your home life was distressing, no wonder you focused on friendships aka the “outer circle”. The inner circle, home, was a distressing experience  (“friendship was such an important aspect of my life, it felt like it was my inner circle”).

“When I close my eyes I think of my mom as a damaged soul, a sad and abused.. fragile puppy… it simply just makes me feel soo soo bad for her”- feeling “soo soo bad” does not make a happy childhood.

“My mother- as you know was always quick to blame and point the finger… speaking with so much vindictiveness- Spewing out us, looking at us with this evil lie saying well I know the two of you are never going to do anything to help me, at least I have my God!”- this doesn’t make for a good childhood.

“I had an affinity to overanalyze, fixate, and create a lot of burden of guilt on myself”, you wrote about your teenage years. Overanalyzing, fixating and being burdened by guilt does not make a happy childhood.

“The thought of, oh goodness, my mother and father spent so much time and energy trying to build this pool for us. we better use it. Feeling very guilty all the time…. It’s Not like my sister and I said let’s go live in a huge house with a big pool and we won’t settle for less!… I recall countless times of walking in and hearing conversations like, ‘yes no matter what we do our children never appreciate us, look at how much work we put into things but they are always ungrateful”.

“I work so hard in career and personal life, stay fit, do yoga, have great friends- but funny thing is- my fiancé mentioned it too- it always feels like there is something wrong“- when you close your eyes you see your mother as “a damaged soul.. sad.. abused… isolated and mistreated”, and then she blames you for abusing her and mistreating her. A child cannot be calm or happy with these messages: my mother is suffering and I am adding to her suffering, guilty!

“they gave us their whole life- we had it easy. but it’s not true, it wasn’t and isn’t easy- if it was would I be here typing this?”- no, you wouldn’t be typing this here Nov 2016- July 2019, so far.

Here is your home experience in childhood, from the beginning: “it’s like sitting at a dinner table of 4 and focusing on the 6 that didn’t make it- with that mindset nothing or no one could be enough”- not your husband, not anyone or anything is enough. When your husband, before you married, surprised you at your birthday by taking you to a restaurant you’ve been in before, that wasn’t enough. When you were traveling with him in South Africa, that wasn’t enough, so you focused on a friend’s party in nyc. The examples are numerous.

It wasn’t pleasant in that dinner table with the four of you; these 4 people sitting at the dinner table, that was your inner circle. You didn’t want to be there. You wanted to be elsewhere (outer circle).

You imagine, retroactively, that you had a happy childhood, mostly in your first decade. It cannot be true, it is nostalgia, make believe, focusing on certain memories and forgetting the” messy or frenzied at home”, forgetting seeing your mother like a suffering child and you, guilty of adding to the suffering of that child.

Regarding you coming home following your mother’s extramarital affair, you wrote: “I was flustered but not surprised. I went to SCC mode, consoling my mother- but also flustered. Berating her for making foolish errors.. I was at that age (mid 20s) not afraid to talk back to her at all- playing the role of the mother scolding the silly child.. but then quickly my mother would ruffle her feathers and jump back up” –

– Your Super Cali Chica role is about being the Strong One in the daughter-mother unit. You imagined and needed to believe as a child and on, that you were the strong one  of the two. When you closed your eyes and saw her as a damaged soul, a sad and abused child, you saw her as Weak, and you saw yourself as Strong, Super, but she ruffled her feathers and jumped back up, attacking you, that enraged you, not only then, bt before. She wasn’t consistent, weak but then strong, attacking you.

You thought she needed you, look at what you wrote regarding cutting contact with her,  Jan 17, 2018: “the idea of losing her daughter is crippling to her.. she would likely get our whole extended family involved, maybe even end up hospitalized due to deep despair, hysteria, and psychosis related tot he idea of ‘losing me'”-

– Do you see how important, how Super you used to believe that you are to her? So important that she would be suffering deep despair, hysteria and psychosis if you cut contact with her.

That didn’t happen, the whole extended family involved.. why not? Why isn’t she psychotic, hospitalized, crying from her hospital bed: where are thou Cali Chica???

You wrote yesterday: “relinquishing that role of being the savior, in my own head was difficult.. To this day isn’t it?”- yes, I believe  so, because the savior role/ SCC role made it possible for you to survive your childhood and to function as well as you did, graduating medical school, and so forth. Giving up that role is threatening. But the role goes with that messy and frenzied, distress mindset, focusing on the outer circle and so on. You’ve been doing excellent work, and there is more work to be done on relinquishing that role, dealing with that guilt, and resting in calm.

anita