Dear Ed:

“I didn’t want to give you overly used word or cliche words… I sincerely hope that my emotionally charged words do not hurt you or make light of your (probably still) complicated feelings… If anything I said went too far in any way or made you feel uncomfortable, please tell me“- sincerely, you used no cliches, did not make light of my feelings/ experience, and you didn’t go too far. As a matter of fact (and it is most interesting to me): never, in these forums,  did I get a response from a member in regard to my experience with my mother (I shared my experience with you more than with any other member) that was okay with me until your recent post. Every response I received in the past alarmed and disturbed me to one extent or another. But not yours.  I think that the reasons for this is that (1) you and I had similar childhood experiences, (2) you are a decent, conscientious, sensitive person, (3) my feelings in regard to my mother are way less complicated than in the past, and made even less complicated by our recent communication.

“I thank you for sharing about your experiences“- you are welcome and thank you for being the right person for me to share about my experiences!

“As I know myself, this takes a lot of courage, so that makes you very brave“- you are very brave too, for the same reason!

“Reading about how your mother abused you made me feel angry“- I can’t tell you how many times anger was not at all in responses I received. No anger meant that nothing bad was done to me… and that invalidated my true experience of course.

“I can’t imagine for the life of me how this woman could call you ‘an absolute zero’, as how I see things you couldn’t be farther from this description“- this sentence means a whole lot to me. Calling me a big zero (same meaning as absolute zero) felt like a dagger to the soul: the body keeps living but the soul dies. It is like… no one, no human wants to live if she/ he has ZERO value. I am trying to remember right now, at this moment as I am typing… trying to think why she said this (and so convincingly, loudly and repeatedly), why she hated me SO MUCH. And the only answer I have (not an intellectual answer, as in going over her childhood and how her anger came about, something that I have done plenty of for so many years), is that she ENJOYED saying it. There was joy in her eyes, in her voice, a joy that a powerful creature gets when exercising its power.

“Your mother was not the unlucky one to have you, you were the unlucky one to have her as your mother“- she used to tell me that she was “the best mother in the world”.

“I also hope that you are proud of yourself for standing up for yourself by cutting her out of your life“- no one has ever said this to me. When I ended contact with her in May 2013, I received no encouragement or support from my therapist at the time, a great disappointment to me. There is still a strong taboo about ending contact with a parent.. it takes no less than a parent causing severe physical damage to the child (such as landing the child in a hospital with broken bones, starvation etc.) to… justify ending contact with the parent, in many people’s minds.

“I also hope that you are proud of yourself for…  being here to help others and also having the courage to talk about your past and feelings, because you earned every last bit of it“- this is the nicest thing I can possibly read. Thank you!

What your father said about you, the negative things he said about you and about his intents, etc.. … that wasn’t true either.

anita