Dear Cali Chica:

Less dichotomy and distress if you thoroughly understand this reality, which took me a long time to understand, and it is true regarding my mother and yours-

The world of a child is pretty much Mother-and-me. This is it.

The world of the mother is many people, Maria the cleaning lady/ friend, the neighbors, husband’s colleagues’ wives, the hairdresser, extended family members, and so on and on and somewhere in that world there is the child, not very significant.

So when she asked you for advice (“give me the answer to my problem”)- she was just rambling to you, not seeing you as the other member of a two-person team.

“Act how  I want you to”- same sentiment she had with everyone, not just with you; “don’t have your own personality”- same thing, her attitude with everyone. Look what happened to your father- if he had a personality, it is gone long ago, she squashed it.

“Make your mother happy, but why aren’t you happy you ungrateful child?!”- again, nothing personal. Didn’t she repeatedly say that Maria was ungrateful, and the hairdresser she went on a vacation with?-

– nothing personal.

For the child, everything regarding the mother is personal. For the mother- not at all.

“working our whole lives (in vain) to make our mothers ‘happy'”- because the mother means so much for the child and the child inaccurately projects this, thinking  incorrectly that she, the child, means so much to the mother.

All in vain- because we were never important to her, so she didn’t even notice our efforts, we were in the margins of her world, not worthy of her paying attention to who we are or what we are about.

anita