Re-posting:

Dear Joanna:

You are welcome and thank you. I had my walk early today, took the mostly non-icy route from town back home, walking on paved roads.

“I was always told I was too sensitive“- all children are sensitive. For parents who regularly abuse their children, yet are inconvenienced by the long-term consequences of the long-term abuse they inflict on their children (ex., tics) blame their victims. Imagine someone stabbing another person and when the victim bleeds, the one stabbing says: you are too sensitive; if you weren’t too sensitive, you wouldn’t be bleeding!

“Yes, a breech baby and yes I was also and still am skinny“- growing up, I witnessed my mother forcing herself to throw up; being bulimic on one hand, and binge eating on the other. When she was pregnant with me, she was underweight and her pregnancy- at 9 months- did not show. For a baby to be born normally (head first, a cephalic position, or presentation), there needs to be adequate physical space within the uterus to make it possible for the baby to turn around before birth for a normal, cephalic presentation at birth. Seems to me that I was born breech and low-weight (and remained lower weight than my peers at least through elementary and middle school) because she was underweight during her pregnancy with me.

* Wikipedia/ breech birth: “breech presentation at delivery occurs when the fetus does not turn to a cephalic presentation. This failure to change presentation can result from..  insufficient intrauterine space available for fetal movements”, gutt matcher. org: “Underweight women are more likely than those of normal weight to have a preterm delivery or a low-birth-weight infant“.

“I hummed too, but only in my mother’s presence. Weirdly it did not start until 2017/18, around the time she moved back to the place I lived then. One time when she gave me the usual silent treatment I was sitting in the kitchen alone, (she was in her room but door open) and I just started humming“- I am thinking that the silent treatment she gave you must have been very loud, so you hummed to cover the loudness of her silence. My mother was silent toward me for days after each rage attack, deathly, loudly silent.

“I always thought of it as a kind of protection, shield from her“- yes, it makes sense to me, a shield from her loudness.

“My mother brags how she liked buying pretty clothes for me, how she enjoyed it, how cute they were. She would spend last money on pretty dress for me to look pretty, that’s how she cared for me!“- my mother bragged too. She worked hard to buy me expensive clothes, toys, school supplies, etc., I would have been very grateful if it wasn’t for the fact that… she hated me so much. What a shame, what a waste… there could have been love instead of hate. There could have been a loving relationship between me and her, a loving mother-daughter relationship, something I will never know. I wonder how it’d feel.

I got a glimpse of how it’d feel during my last teeth cleaning at the dentist. The dental technician, a large, friendly woman, politely said “please” and “thank you” when instructing me to move my head this way or that way, rinse, etc.. My head was a bit against her chest much of the time. I felt her warmth and listened to her gentle humming (she hummed to the pleasant, relaxing music playing in the background) and I thought to myself: this is probably how it feels.

anita