Dear DC:

You are welcome and thank you for your kindness and grace.

“As you rightly said, injustice is everywhere“- in my first reply to you I said: “There is so much injustice in our world”, not that there is nothing but injustice everywhere. There is some justice here and there. All your life, your mother created what I referred to as Core Injustice in your life, but not all mothers do. In some household there is justice.

“to heal and move forward, would the way be to accept that all of us are flawed (including my mother), and then let go?“-

– True: all of us are flawed.. but some people go out of their way to be repeatedly abusive, month after month, year after year, no regrets, no efforts to correct. There needs to be a distinction between being flawed and being abusive.

To heal and move forward, do let go after you no longer avail yourself to your mother’s abuse. You must not be present with her (talking on the phone, visiting in-person, etc.) In other words, no direct contact with your mother= no abuse.

In my first reply to you, I wrote about injustice: “Much of it can not (be) fixed and made right”- your Core Injustice can be fixed: no direct contact => no abuse=>injustice fixed.

In your most recent post to me, you wrote: “my own mother is a narc or is toxic“- Toxins are harmful substances, and to heal, we need to remove toxins from our lives. It doesn’t make sense to refer to a person as toxic and keep direct contact with said toxin.

“I think she found it difficult to accept that I have become very independent of her”- do you need the acceptance of a “narcissistic and toxic person”, a “self centred, controlling, critical” woman with “little capacity for empathy”, a woman who availed her children to many years of physical and emotional abuse, torture, as you referred to it,  by a man she brought into your lives?

“And it is perhaps her perverse way of drawing me back to her. What she did plunged me into depression“-your depression was a result of the ongoing Core Injustice. To allow “her perverse way” to win is injustice.

“Perhaps within me is an anger – a burning flame – that has never been extinguished“- your anger is a result of the ongoing Core Injustice in your life. Anger is a natural response to abuse and injustice and it burns until justice is restored, if it does.

Many adult children of abusive parents, wanting to heal, insist (because of Guilt) on keeping contact with the abusive parents, figuring they can find a way to not be affected by the ongoing abuse.. it doesn’t work that way. To heal- you must not make yourself available to abuse. For many, many years I tried to heal while keeping contact with my abusive mother. In spite of heavy-duty guilt I finally ended all contact with her. After ending contact I still felt guilty.. until I didn’t anymore. And guess what: justice is restored for me. It feels as if I am born anew every day, feeling alive in a way I did not experience before.. alive without the inner turmoil, the inner torture. It’s a different kind of living.

anita