Dear Alessa:

Thank you so much for your kind message. It really touched me. ❤️

You’re right—some people don’t mean harm, they just don’t understand the depth of what we’ve been through. That suggestion about reconnecting wasn’t cruel, but it did stir something in me. I think I needed to let those feelings out, even if they came out raw.

What you said about her being stuck in the prison of her own mind—that really hit me. It’s painful, but it helps me remember that her inability to love me wasn’t because of who I was. It was about her.

Thank you for reminding me that it’s okay to dream, even if the dream can’t come true. And thank you—truly—for saying I’m appreciated. That means more than I can say.

With warmth and gratitude, Anita 🤍

Dear Gerald:

Thank you for your kind message. I really appreciated what you shared about your journaling—it’s clear how much thought and care you put into it. I especially liked the part about remembering people who’ve passed and being able to say something kind to their loved ones. That’s such a thoughtful way to stay connected.

Like you, I’ve been journaling for a long time. I started writing in notebooks as a teenager—pages and pages of thoughts, feelings, and questions. Later, I moved to typing into Word documents and printing them out. I still have thick folders filled with those pages. And now, I journal here, in this public space on tiny buddha. There’s something meaningful for me about having others read what I write—it helps me feel less alone with it.

Thank you again for sharing your practice with me. It’s clear that your journaling isn’t just a habit—it’s a way of living with presence and care. I admire that.

Warmly, Anita 🤍

Continued journaling (motivated by my post to Alessa, a short while ago): I have more empathy for my mother than I have for any other person in the whole wide world. I understand her why-s and her how-s.

She has been so terribly wounded, so very terribly traumatized. No judgment. I’d do anything to go back- back- back- in time and SAVE her.

.. Thing is- there’s nothing I can do for her.

And if I try once again-again-again-again to help, to connect- the only thing I will achieve is.. my own destruction.

It’s like a deer trying to help a mountain lion.. the deer is likely to get eaten.

Not that my 84-year-old mother is a predator. It’s just that, if you try to get close, she becomes a predator. She can’t help it.

She was so deeply-in-shame that any and every effort on my part to connect with her means more shame for her.

She was not/ is not a bad person (in regard to her intents), she’s just.. Sick with Shame.

And so, she imagined- when I was a child- that I was trying to shame her. She then lashed out, attacking, shaming the person she believed was shaming her (the child-me.. NOT)

She was too deeply entrenched in her own devastating shame.

Looking back, it’s about her severe mental illness. There was nothing I could have done to help her.. while she was- in effect- if not by intent- destroying me.

Fast forward, what can I possibly do with this 84-year-old woman who may be suffering from dementia (sounds like it, from the little I was told), stooped over, rheumatoid arthritis. What could I possibly say/ do that can make a difference?

Nothing.

It’s amazing how the mother I knew my whole life (I never lived in a world where she was not a part of)- the mother I had for so long, will be no more.

And when she’s gone.. I will truly be alone.

Tears in my eyes.

Strange, what I typed right above-

“I will truly be alone”- But I was so very alone while she was alive, all those years..!

“I will truly be alone”- this means that her image, in my mind, still carries a “togetherness” sense..?

It must be that little girl’s sense (me, in the first few months or years of life) of her as the SOURCE OF LIFE.

So, at 64, thinking of my 84-year-old mother- continents and oceans apart- still feels like she’s my source of life.

Amazing, isn’t it..? Mother is Everything.?

It’s an instinctual thing, not a rational thing.

(Loud fireworks, July-4-7:35 pm, Western U.S.)

So.. processing all this.. I am not demonizing my mother.. nothing but empathy for her, and yet, at the same time, there’s this knowing that there never was a way for me to bridge the distance.

Still.. I have this image of her in my mind: she is 40-years-old (40 years ago), looking at me (20-years-old), and..

The disconnect is COMPLETE back then, unbridgeable. An unbridgeable disconnect.

If there is anything I am sure about, it is this one thing: there has been no way for me to connect with my mother. Not a failure on my part, but a failure she has brought with her.

Something to grieve: this Impossibility of Connection (IoC).

Anita

I don’t disagree, Alessa, and I very much appreciate your thoughts and sentiment.. You do understand, and I appreciate you ❤️. I will write more tomorrow, or on Monday.

Anita

Journaling because I want to.

I was going to start with journaling because I can. But I shifted to.. because I want to.

The because-I-can comes from a place of rebellion, as in: I am not allowed to take space, but I am going to anyway! So, there!

The I-want-to comes from a place that is more relaxed.

Living with my mother for so very, so very, very long, way too long (it felt like being trapped in a forever), I couldn’t. Couldn’t express because.. well, expression was subject to prolonged hostile attacks.

To provide the psychological background to it: she was full of shame and she interpreted what she believed I was feeling as intentional efforts, on my part, to shame her. Completely not true to the reality that was, but that’s how she interpreted people’s expressed emotions, and she felt safe to express her dissatisfaction to me, her minor-age daughter, than to other people she did not .. “own”.

I believe it’s her oldest sister who cruelly shamed my mother, when my mother was a child, severely abusing her physically and emotionally. Fast forward, she “sees” that shaming in the emotions of a child (me) who desperately loved her and would have done ANYTHING to help her.

A projection thing, completely inaccurate, but.. that’s what she saw: rejection and hate in the eyes of little-girl-anita, a perceived rejection and hate that she responded to with.. intense rejection and hate.

Now, I can’t blame her for reciprocating my (non-existent) rejection of her because she really.. sincerely believed that I rejected her.

I remember her going on and on about how I intended to hurt her and implemented mt alleged plan to do just that. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen and argued that I did plan to hurt her.

It wasn’t me that she saw, it was her oldest sister who was indeed terribly cruel and abusive to her.

It Wasn’t Me.

I see it more clearly this late Sunday night that I ever did in my whole life!

The way I see it now, evil (the intentional harming of others), may be about.. retroactively protecting themselves, or rebelling against intentional harm done to them by people who retroactively protected themselves.

I appreciate my own insight, that which I expressed right above, but if I somehow talked to my mother- following 12 years of no contact- she wouldn’t understand. Not capable.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Nothing I can do to undo or redo anything that involves her.

I wonder, what is it that makes a person bad, as in a bad person..?

I think that the answer is in the harm the person causes another intentionally, with the intent to harm.

But as I think of my mother small smile when she recognized the hurt in my face, following something very shameful that she has just said…

I don’t hate her back. I understand that in her mind- she was enjoying her revenge in regard to her oldest sister, seeing her oldest sister face where mine was.

Can you blame a person for hurting the one who had hurt them for so long and taking a little pleasure in it?

That it was a mistaken identity case.. well, she didn’t know.

I am quite proud of myself right now, for having reached this nuanced understanding of my mother.. and of myself. And of life.

For me, my mother was EVERYTHING. For her.. I was her oldest sister, someone to defeat.

If I wrote an autobiography, I might title it MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

To me, my mother is like a little child who needs heavy-duty reparenting, a little girl that needs to be taught, or shown what love is, a little girl that should be given the opportunity to trust.

You know.. how oversimplifying can make a person feel better for the short term (as in, if I said: my mother was a bad person! I am a good person, so three!)? But it’s only short term. Seeing shades of grey, nuance, complexity, zooming out and seeing the bigger picture- that involves pain. But after doing this long enough, it brings calm simply because of seeing things as they are.

So, my mother is a person I can never reach.

My mother is a person who can never see me.

An unbridgeable gap.

To be so close to a person and yet so very, very far.

Okay, enough for now. Thank you for reading (assuming anyone is reading 🙂).

Anita