Dear Cali Chica:

We’ve been communicating some on email and currently you are busy in your private life, but.. I am not as busy and so, I want to continue to develop the theme of Love which I mentioned last in my post above, and which is relevant to a thread that’s titled: “loving but toxic parents” .

Let’s look for Love in your original post of this thread posted on Nov 9, 2016: five years and three days ago, when you were 31. It starts with:  “I have a difficult time speaking bad about my parents“, and you proceeded to talk about your mother very empathetically:  “My mom has had a tough life..  she REALLY did try.. As a housewife she faced a lot of loneliness her whole life.. I always recall feeling, wow how sad my mom’s life was.. why did people do this to her?.. always feeling worried that she was lonely, or is she happy?“.

Because Empathy=Love, in the above you expressed lots of Love for your mother, love you felt for her since you were a child (“always recall feeling..”)

Continued: “it was engrained in my whole childhood to ‘feel bad’… we are fortunate enough for tons of travel, and for my mom to have the liberty to plan very wonderful vacations.. so many comments throughout about “oh no one else’s parents takes them on trips like this, you guys have no appreciation, etc.” but then the next morning say oh you know moms say that when they get angry, you can’t take it all personal.. ‘all mother’s act like this’“-

– Based on the above quote alone, I will state the obvious (as children of any age.. we ignore the obvious when it comes to our mothers): (1) When FEELING BAD is engrained in a child, the person doing the ingraining (to ingrain: to firmly fix or establish a habit, belief, or attitude in a person) is not being loving. To love is to lead the loved-one to feel good, not bad (except cautiously and limitedly when a child’s behavior needs to be corrected). By ingraining you with FEELING BAD, your mother was/ is toxic (“loving but toxic parents”, toxic: poisonous, very harmful), (2) That she repeatedly and at length expressed to her  children that she was lonely and sad and how much people have hurt her, etc.-  this is not loving, but toxic,  because a child is not equipped to handle that much sadness and sorrow. A child figuratively drowns in excess empathy for the suffering mother, and is riddled with overwhelming anxiety and deep sorrow, (3) By accusing her daughters (the two people who as children appreciated her the most in the whole wide world!) of being unappreciative of her , she created in you an I-am-a-bad-person core belief, aka guilt, a recipe for a miserable life.. toxic, not Loving, (4) That she normalized her toxic ways  by saying that all mothers say (toxic) things to their children when angry, and never correcting her toxic ways.. that too was toxic, not loving, (5) When she instructed you, her child,  the impossible: to not take your mother’s words and sentiments personally, she just… messed with you, not loving.

Back to the title of your thread: “loving but toxic parents”- it can’t be both: when you ingest a toxin/ a poison.. the poison is  not loving you and killing you… it does one thing: killing you!

Continued, Nov 9-10, 2016: “I lived with severe dread and guilt about making the wrong decisions for YEARS to the point that it took over my life…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..  I struggle from the part that its not black and white – my mom in many ways is loving, supportive, and the ‘coolest mom’ growing up”– (1) Severe dread and guilt and the feeling of there-is-always-something-wrong: these are not what love leaves behind in the loved-one, these are not the products of love, (2) There are such things that are black and white, for example, a toxic mushroom and a poisonous snake are always things to 100% avoid when you hike, (3) If some of your mother’s behaviors were truly loving at any one time, I would have read about it in our over 183 pages of communication, plus emails.. plus my massive communication with your sister here and on email.

I figure that like all children, you NEEDED to believe that your mother loved you, and so, you interpreted a smile of her, let’s say, to mean that she loved you..  interpreting her serving you with a favorite food to mean that she loved you, interpreting that her cleaning and decorating your room meant that she loved you (“my mom spent a lot of time making my room really nice for me“, June 13, 2019) etc., while her smile meant a superficial and short-lived affection, an affection not different from her affection for a stranger’s puppy she just met, and her cooking, cleaning and decorating your room.. were not things she did with your well-being in mind,  but to impress strangers and whatnot. You just happened to be there.

A child always loves her mother.. she may be cold-blooded later on in life.. but as a child, she loves her mother deeply. She needs her mother to love her back so much that she will interpret everything to mean that her mother loves her. It’s inconceivable that it is not so.  I think that part of you (that child within) still believes that she loves you, a false belief that keeps that always-something-wrong feeling ongoing, and blocks you from moving farther on, emotionally.

January 15, 2017: “She has no insight into her flaws or issues, like many ‘mothers with narcissistic personality disorder“- features of narcissistic personality disorder (DSM-5, official diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, narcopath. info): “Unwilling to empathize with the feelings, wishes, and needs of other people” – > NO EMPATHY=NO LOVE (a black and white, simple issue). Another feature: “Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain”-> EXPLOIT= NOT LOVE.

“Narcissistic personality disorder usually develops in adolescence or during early adulthood”->it happened before she became your mother, so I don’t think that she was ever truly loving to you or to your sister.. or to anyone. She only appeared loving to a child who is very, very needy to be loved.

“They tend to devalue, derogate, insult and blame others.. they may react with outbursts of rage, defiance, or by seeking revenge“-> Not Loving behaviors, making loving relationships impossible.

“Since the fragile ego of individuals with NPD is hypersensitive to perceived criticism or defeat, they are prone to feelings of shame, humiliation and worthlessness over minor or even imagined incidents”-> this means that a lot  of what she expressed to you, which led you to think “wow how sad my mom’s life was.. why did people do this to her?”– was over minor and imagined incidents.

In June 6-7, 2019, you wrote: “I get to redefine :.. What is love To ME?.. (I was)  too focused on the hate, that mother taught“, June 11, 2019: “I thought about young Cali Chica, She brought her mother a flower. mother said: oh I used to have these in India all the time – these flowers.  oh, they aren’t common in America are they. She grew up: She brought her mother her new shiny engagement ring, thinking oh yay, my mother will be so happy and proud! finally I got to the goal she wanted me to, a nice boy, and a nice engagement… mother replies: oh I too am going to get a new diamond ring…she doesn’t even look at Cali Chicas… Cali Chica then tries to say, oh you know my fiance designed this and did this – shows the small details…her mother: not a glance, not a care…Cali Chica has been showing her mother things to make her happy from a young age.  Look mother, look what I did for you, I got you a flower.  Look mother, I brought you this friend.  Look mother, I brought you this amazing family that you can be involved in (as you’ve always wanted a family of your own).  Look mother.  She didn’t look.  She spit at it, she berated it – she stomped all over it. It was all in vain“-

-clearly, you desperately loved her and.. she did not love you in return. She was your Everything, you were her Nothing.. a non-person. She was  her Center, you were… nowhere to be seen, not by her.

June 13 & 27, 2019, as part of our inner-child exercise, you wrote:  “my mom and dad always tell me I am so forgetful and absent minded.  they always say where is your mind? because I forget things a lot… my mom always has stress about cleaning and no one helps her do anything so she gets mad at us..  she doesn’t let me help her bc she says I am messy and absent minded. and then I think – ya I am – I don’t know why I am.. sometimes I’m not even that messy like just some toys – but more they get mad that I am ‘absent minded’ they always say ‘oh where is her brain!!!’“- I imagine that you tried to forget a lot of the no-love-for-Cali-Chica reality, and being berated and stomped all over. Anxious, unloved and berated, stomped all over (abused)- no wonder your mind was absent, no wonder you were not attentive and present. She blamed you for .. not being more attentive to her un-love and abuse.

On June 19, 2019, I wrote to you what you later referred to as a “masterpiece, a thesis paper”, let’s look at parts of what I wrote to you back then:  “Your mother has been extremely pathological (the word you used) way before she became a mother.. In addition to not feeling empathy for you, to attacking you for having any emotion or problem, she also gave you a lot of senseless nonsense, illogically inconsistent and contradictory information about herself, other people, the concept of luck and friendship and so much more… In your quest to please her you were doomed to relentless cognitive dissonance, a barrage of senseless nonsense, a mental torture for any human who naturally needs logical consistency.  One reason why you didn’t listen to her much as a child.. is because of that ongoing outpouring of nonsense…. Your mother was about appearances, she valued the appearances of success, from the prestige of being married to a doctor, to her home, her clothes, her jewelry, going on expensive vacations and touring the world, and maybe her favorite: having friends. Showing off her young daughters as dancers  who wear expensive clothes and who have friends/ a busy social life was part of her quest for the appearances of success. Her extreme emphasis on you and your sister having  friends was not motivated by her valuing friendship or valuing people. In all of the posts I read, I did not detect her valuing her husband, her daughters, anyone in her extended family, anyone in India or in the USA… she valued you and your sister temporarily when you made her look good, such as when you danced well at weddings or when you befriended a girl and she got to meet the girl’s parents. If a person served her purpose.. she valued that person temporarily as a means to an end… Before you cut contact with your mother, you imagined it will be a great loss to her, “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 to the idea of ‘losing me’” (1/17/2018)- – none of that happened after you cut contact with her…. You wrote about your sister: “she saw much earlier on that my mom is a bad person…  I was a blinded saint/devotee to my mother.. because my mother ‘favored’ me.. I was in the dark… That to this day I remain loyal in many ways, ways I do not even see”-

-fast forward 2 years and 5 months, Nov 2021, you wrote to me on email: ” “I say ‘yes mother see, I told you I wouldn’t leave you – that I wouldn’t be like those others and leave my mom and be HAPPY!! See I am still loyal.. I’m still loyal.. I’m loyal to the misery – I will never leave ‘you’“-

My closing thoughts: leave her, Cali Chica, so that you can be a girl again (a Chica), loving and lively. Leave her because she never loved you. No matter how comforting the idea that she loved you.. if only just a little bit, this stubborn belief is keeping you away from Love and Life.

There really are such people who do not love their children, they really do exist.. accept that your mother is one of these people. So is my mother, and my life will be better if I thoroughly understand it because it is true. My mother, like yours, wasn’t capable of loving me.. seeing me as an object that makes her look good or bad, to others.. not a person. Better understand it fully and thoroughly, no make-believe, no convenient, wishful thinking.. just the Truth.

And the Truth shall set you free, to Live, to Love.

anita