I’ve been trying to understand my biological mother’s anger and nastiness since reading the things you have posted.  As I wrote that I realised that I’ve spent my whole life being understanding of her meanness and this is me finding another way to excuse her.  I’m not going to try to understand anymore!  I sometimes catch myself thinking of trying to reconcile with her, but I get stuck at the beginning of these thoughts, because I didn’t instigate it and I don’t know what to be sorry for.  I don’t know what to humble myself over.  I tried when she first cut me out of her life and got nothing in response.  I apologised for everything even though I hadn’t done anything, just because I was terrified of losing her.

I will tell you a little thing though, something really horrible that I did.  It was a year and a half after she cut me out of her life.  She did something really mean and underhanded and it got back to me.  So I sent her an email:  I wish I had never loved or trusted you.

I felt so evil after I sent it.  So mean and nasty and dreadful.  The worst human in the world.  I still do to some degree.  But I am aware that it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said to her.

She did me a huge service cutting me out though.  I don’t have her judgemental criticisms and meanness hounding me every day of my life.  I don’t have the woman who told me I didn’t deserve to have my children, and they should be taken off me, in my life any more.  I don’t know why she thought I didn’t deserve them, but I imagine a lot of the things she said to me were to make herself feel better about leaving her children when they were tots.  I have only just started being able to look at the things she said without thinking they were true and feeling like I was the worst human in the world.  She said so many things that were lies and manipulation.  Why would a mother do that to the daughter she professes to love more than anything?  Only in the last couple of years am I starting to see that maybe she was playing us all.  She used to have my sibling over for tea a lot which hurt because she never had me or my kids over to tea.  One day she said to me that sibling lied about that and she never had sibling over for dinner.  Only she had just finished whinging about sibling going there and drinking all stepfather’s beer, and eating all their food, which is definitely something someone can do when they never had dinner there?!  Plus sibling would brag about the lovely dinners she cooked when sibling got home.  Why would she play games like that with her own children?  That isn’t love.