Dear Peace,

happy belated birthday! I hope you did manage to celebrate it properly, in spite of being really busy at work.

Thank you for inquiring about me. And sorry for being so slow to reply. My mental health is better at the moment, since I’ve found some really good youtube videos on health anxiety, which helped me a lot. I can now manage my health anxiety better and don’t have such a gloomy outlook on life. So things have been better, thankfully 🙂

i want to write more and reply you later

Great! I’d love to hear how you feel about what I said in my last post, and in general, where you stand now, both emotionally and practically (related to the wedding plans and money issues).

I’ve been in shock and denial, but I’m gradually moving towards acceptance.

This is good to hear. Yeah, it’s hard to accept that those we love might not love us the same, or might not be capable of loving us the way we would want to.

I am also sorry that your mother is suffering from dementia and cannot really connect on a deeper level, even if she would want to.

I think it’s actually good that you’ve started reflecting more on the relationship between you and your mother, and want to explore it further. You say she is a sweet person, but emotionally distant. Was she emotionally distant also before the onset of her dementia?

From what I’ve understood about your childhood, you haven’t received much personal attention from your mother, because she was very busy, having many children to take care of. She also was busy helping her relatives, if I remember well? Perhaps all those were factors that contributed to her feeling emotionally distant.

You say she is introverted. Perhaps that means she wasn’t really talking too much about her own feelings either, perhaps stuffing them down, and so this contributed to her not being attuned to your (and your siblings’) feelings either?

These are all speculations, and I am not claiming any of this is true. But I think it would be worth exploring the dynamic between you and your mother, and how she might have hurt you unintentionally with her behavior.

I also trust that you love her deeply, and that’s wonderful. But perhaps it would help you to know if there was something she failed to provide – unintentionally – and how to give it to yourself now.