Dear Anita,

My mother was a complicated woman. She died when she was 47 of breast cancer, about 25 years ago now. On the one hand, it was important to her to be a good mother. On the other, she was emotionally not very supportive, particularly when it came to my feelings about my dad. She also intercepted letters and gifts that he sent over the years, because she said she thought it would confuse me and that I was better off without him. Her anger towards him was incredibly profound. When she had cancer and was going through chemo, she would puke in a bucket with his picture super-imposed on a cancer cell in the bottom of it. I believe that the anger at him was sometimes acted out on me, both because I have some similar features to him, and because I loved and missed him so much.

When I was a teenager, she went back to school to do an MA, and at that point she all but stopped parenting me, except to discipline me when I did something wrong (and I did do wrong stuff worthy of discipline). She tried to get me into therapy a few times, the last time it helped.

I think that in general I can say that you are right, I did not have a loving, attentive mother. I find this all the harder to grapple with, because I know I am neither loving nor attentive with my son. I want to be, I just don’t know how. I am taking steps to repair our bond, but it feels so forced. My greatest fear is that he grows up to be just as anxious, depressed, and traumatized as I am.

Thank you so much for talking to me. I am finding this really helpful.

Ilyana