Dear Linarra:

“Wildfires and chickens make it sounds like you are living more in the countryside than in a big city. I wonder if you see beautiful things on your daily walks“- yes, I live in the countryside, in a forest, on hills facing a valley. There is plenty of vegetation from ferns, mosses.. anything and everything, wild mushroom, lots of trees, lots and lots of trees and flowers (lots of the vegetation dried out because of drought though) and wild animals, from brown bears to cougars, coyotes, chipmunks, squirrels, lots of rabbits and more. I was confronted by a coyote twice on my walks, he ran to my left, turned around and faced me, figuring out if he (and his friends lurking by) should attack me. Once when I opened the porch door- there was a bear right there, a big cinnamon- colored bear. I regularly see bear scat on my walks. The neighbors filmed a cougar on the front yard where I live, and I saw cougar tracks on the snow, during winter.

“It is 9:30 here, 00:30 where you live. Hopefully, you’ll be still asleep for more than 3 hours after I sent this message“- I woke up a bit later than the usual lately, felt less tired as I got up and thought to myself: I will tell Linarra that I slept better somewhat.

“I am skeptical about any kind of progress when it comes to her“- you doubt that she will make any permanent progress, meaning you think that maybe she will, that there is a chance that she will.

“so when she doesn’t make the worse of a situation, it comes as a relief… and yeah a bit of an accomplishment but truly, I know by now it isn’t likely to be permanent“-

– “it isn’t likely to be permanent” means that you think that maybe her progress will be permanent, you are still hoping that maybe..

– not the worse= a relief= an accomplishment=a job well done by you.

“It isn’t a success, but it is still a relief when things aren’t at the worse. I remember the worse, it felt like being on the verge of dying at every little action she does or could do, even while being an adult living with her and technically supposed to be able to leave“-

– it angers me that one person (your mother) has so much power over you, it enrages me inside (I don’t feel strong anger right now, but I feel it being inside me, a ball of contained rage). It enrages me that the life she offered you was to be “on the verge of dying at every little action she does or could do”.

“I will never know the amount of ‘better’ she could do if she chose to do so“-

– but you are waiting to find out if she does better, pessimistically waiting but still.. waiting.

“A lot of her beliefs/thinking patterns and priorities aren’t good for our well-being“-

– here is where I see the main problem in regard to your “Healing and becoming functional” (the title of your thread): the word our, in “our well being”, you see you, your brother, your sister and your mother as one unit, us/ our. You are not separating the victimizer from the victims in the context of your household.

“I have no idea what amount of therapy she would need to overcome that if she wanted to. But I don’t think she really wants to anyway“-

– substituting pronouns: I have no idea what amount of therapy we would need to overcome that if we wanted to. But we don’t think we really want to anyway.

The above sentence doesn’t make sense, does it? That’s my point: it doesn’t make sense for you to place your mother together with her victims as we, us, or our.

“I don’t really show her excitement at her progress“- you probably meant: I don’t really show my excitement at her progress, but .. pronouns get confused when you and her are we.

“We all know I am not ready to leave any time soon. This is why she allows herself to order me or insult me sometimes when she feels like it“- I wonder if this is how you show her love: receiving her insults, accommodating her need to insult you when she feels like it.

“The part of Kahlil Gibran’s poem you quoted is really nice. I like the idea of mothers not owning their children.  Ownership of a living being, in any situation, seems dangerous to me“- you felt “really nice” at the idea of not being owned by your mother. It will take feeling really excited at the idea to motivate you to want this for yourself, to want to not be owned by her.

* I just turned off the air purifier that I considered turning off yesterday, writing to you about it.

“In your post of 14th august posted at 7:56 am you said : ‘When I left my mother and country on my own, at 24, I didn’t have a plan, nor did I need a plan, or money (beyond the airline ticket and some extra). I didn’t care. The idea of being away from my mother was intoxicating“- see, I wrote it felt “intoxicating” which is different from “really nice”.

“When did you become the creator of your life? Was it after you stopped communication with your mother? Was it after therapy?“-

– (1) I am in the process of being the creator of my life, I am not a final product: The Creator (of my life), (2) The process of being the creator of my life started some time in 2011 during therapy.

“When do you think cutting the mother ownership starts and when the becoming daughter of life begins?“-

-cutting the mother ownership starts with realizing that you and your mother are not the same person, that there is no “we” or “us” or “our”. It starts when you realize that you loved her all along but she did not and does not love you back. It starts when you realize that you confused your love for her with her (non-existent) love for you.

When you finally realize that she doesn’t love you and never had, since the time you  can remember, because you can see that you would never have done to her what she did to you. When you thoroughly understand that she never loved you.. she becomes just like any other random person you pass by on the street, a person who also doesn’t love you.

“Is it necessary to become the creator of our own lives to be the daughters of life or is just taking freedom, even as a passive passenger, is still being the daughter of life?“-

– it is not necessary to have a job or be rich or be considered a productive member of society in order to be in the process of creating your own life (within the limitations of life). But it is necessary to not be living with and interacting with your mother.

When I wrote above (and I have been in this post as well, reading one part- responding, then reading the next- responding etc., never going back to edit) that the process of no longer being owned by one’s mother starts with seeing her as just another person, like a person you meet on the street, I didn’t mean that it’s possible to physically be with her and see her that way, or to communicate with her otherwise and perceive her to be just another person.

I meant that after a long time of no longer seeing her in real life, of not hearing her voice, of not communicating with her- then you can see the image of her in your mind as just another random person.

anita