Anita,

Thank you kindly for your thoughts and analysis on this.

AA has certainly been an option I’ve considered. There are several in my area, however my only issue with this idea at the moment is my work schedule as all the local sites have theirs on Thursdays when I am usually working a 12-hour shift. I can certainly turn my home into an alcohol-free zone. lest I do decide to moderately drink. This is a particularly strange topic for me to discuss simply because I work at a restaurant that turns itself into a nightclub/bar area, where heavy amounts of drinking takes place. In other words, alcohol is all around me when I’m working.

I’ve tried to analyze the behaviors of my mother since I started noticing my own, and while I did think for the longest time that I’m simply copying her behavior, I never considered that she instead verbally abused me. One thing I’d like to add into this subject is that I’m Vietnamese American/Asian American, where often times mothers are considered “tiger moms” where they enforce strict rules and are tough on their children to push them to succeed. In other words, it’s “expected” that Asian mothers are like this. But the past several years, I began noticing things my mother has done to me and my father that just, well, isn’t right. There’s countless times where she’ll go on and on and on about why I messed up, how angry/upset she was, etc. and yes, I did want to tell her to stop. My mother is notorious for holding grudges. She’ll still talk about certain things that my siblings or my family have done in the past and how bad she thought it was. I was angry with her for quite some time… nowadays I find my father and I are closer and frequently have conversations about her and discuss the same ideas and opinions.

I remember one day coming home from school when I was about 8 years old, my parents were in the dining room. That was unusual for me, as they usually didn’t come home from work before I did. It turned out that my father wanted a divorce at the time, and my mother tried to take my younger brother and me to find another place to live. Later that night, my father apologized to all of us for inflicting such pain on the family and promised to stay with us always. Fast forward to today–the reason he’d wanted a divorce was because of my mother’s ways. They had another bout a few years back, but are a little better now. I’m led to think that my father is just complacent more than anything else.

I’ve suggested therapy to my mother individually, as has my father. She refuses to go and thinks there’s nothing wrong with her.

Monique