Dear Seaturtle:

Glad to be your 2nd Mid-July Friend.

“My dad was so critical… acting shocked at how ‘selfish’ and ungrateful I could be…  my dad said ‘you can’t see it but you are.’“- he probably (inaccurately) projected his mother, or a female caretaker in his early life => into you. Parents often do that. My mother projected people who abused her (before I was born) into me and proceeded to punish me.

Your father’s mother or caretaker, a woman he was very attached to as a boy, was really selfish and really ungrateful for his many efforts to please her, and gain her recognition. Fast forward, he projects that woman into a little, innocent sea turtle who did not deserve criticism for .. what someone else is guilty for.

anita