Dear Javier,

thank you for responding. I am sorry you’re still feeling bad, but glad that you keep keeping on, that you are attending therapy and trying to help yourself. Are you also getting physical therapy for your left arm?

For now you may feel like you are in survival mode, but with time, I hope you’ll be able to silence those negative thoughts and feelings, and feel just a smidgen of love and appreciation for yourself… and that this will be a breakthrough for you, gray clouds parting and a patch of blue sky appearing…

I am sorry I can’t help you with concrete suggestions about how to feel better, but I am keeping you in my thoughts and prayers and rooting for you. I wish you a better and brighter New Year, and a slow but definite progress!

Dear Javier,

I hope you get at least a partial functionality in your left arm. God speed to you!

I imagine it’s hard being alone, without your family’s support, but what matters the most now is that you find yourself, slowly but surely, putting one foot before the other, living day by day… Things will get better, just keep at it!

Dear Javier:

“Is it normal to feel…“- it’s natural to feel whatever you feel.

“I… feel it’s unfair and she’s undeserving of this disdain” – what you feel is your own, personal business: you don’t have a responsibility to feel this way or that way about anyone or anything. Also, you don’t know what your mother feels or ever felt about you through the years. Maybe she felt disdain for you too, and maybe you didn’t deserve her disdain. But like anyone else, what she feels is her personal business.

You are responsible for your actions: for what you say and what you do, not for how you feel, just as your mother is responsible for her actions, not for her feelings.

Lots of people, when they are angry, are not honest about their anger. Instead, they act in passive-aggressive ways, trying to hurt the other person without appearing aggressive. For example, histrionic people exaggerate their misery, making stuff up, going on and on about their pain so to make the person they are angry with feel pain as well, as in saying: see how much you hurt me? See how much I am hurting; you should hurt for what was done to me!!!

anita

Dear Javier,

yes, it’s normal to feel anger, and I would say it’s a good sign because till now you’ve been blaming yourself for everything, and saw your mother as a victim of yours. If there is now anger coming up, it might mean you’re realizing that some of the things she did were hurtful, that she wasn’t a perfectly loving mother at all times, and that there are reasons for your anger.

A child’s anger shows that his/her needs weren’t met. Your needs as a child were most certainly not met (e.g. the need for security as one of the most important ones). As part of your healing, you’ll need to get in touch with those healthy needs, and also process the anger and resentment towards your parents for not meeting those needs – your father for severely abusing you, and your mother for not protecting you from his abuse. So again, I’d say your anger is a good sign, and a necessary part of your healing journey.

Life is short, and I regret every moment I spend hating and dwelling on things from the past. I usually “run” away from these feelings, but now I’m stuck and have nowhere to hide.

We can’t heal before we feel and process all our feelings. So it’s good that you are feeling your anger and not suppressing it like before… If you work with it in therapy, it will transform into something more constructive, e.g. power and determination to take some positive action in your life.

Dear Javier:

Before reading your most recent post, addressed to me, I did not know how much we have in common. I did not read anyone voice this part of my experience more accurately than you did, not in over 6.5 years of communicating here with thousands of members.

Like you, I too “always felt responsible for my mother’s happiness” (until recently). I too felt “responsible for her being alone, sad and unhappy“. I too got “sad and depressed when I think about her and her life“. Just like you, “when I see her and think about her life, I just see a vulnerable kid that has been through so much hurt and pain“, and I too “wish I could take away the pain and sorrow“. Like you, I too thought about “ending it all“, but didn’t for the same reason as yours: I didn’t want to add to her hurt and pain, to “crush her to thousand pieces“.

I can’t remember a time when I thought of my mother as a woman, an adult who I can depend on. To me, she was always a vulnerable kid, a hurt child who’s about to cry and wail at any time and threaten (once again) to kill herself because her misery, she said, was too great. She used to describe her misery at great length, for hours at a time, retelling her life story and how unfortunate she was, and how fortunate everyone else was, and how they took advantage of her. Her accounts were heart breaking, and my little heart broke for her, over and over again. I was overwhelmed by her misery. There was no end to her misery and to how much my heart ached for her. I felt so very sorry for her, and I hated all those other fortunate people who hurt her. I would have done anything for her, and I tried, throughout life, whatever I could, I did, but I never succeeded in turning her frown into a smile. I never succeeded in making her pleased that I was in her life.

About five years ago, or so, I realized that the child that my mother was, that child was gone long before I was born. I never met that child. I met a woman with a mental entity of a child, aka the inner child, but the child herself was gone long before I existed. No matter how good of a “mother” I could have been for my mother (a reversed role), I couldn’t have helped a child who did not exist. One day, while walking through the woods, I chose a tree and buried something under a tree, something that represented the child that my mother was.

I then reversed the distortedly reversed role and saw my mother-myself in the correct way: she was the mother; I was the child. Not the other way around!

Oh, how much misery it was for me, to be her “mother”! Unlike how a real child would be, at 3, 4, 5, etc., my mother was much bigger and stronger than me, and she was not at all open to my parenting: she did not listen to me, she did not follow my suggestions, she argued, she threatened, she threw very scary temper tantrums in which she insulted me and blamed me and sometimes hit me. What chances did I (a child/ teenager) have to parent that kind of a “child”???

Fast forward, throughout my later teens, if not earlier, and throughout my adulthood, I really did not want her in my life because of how miserable it was having her in my life. But I felt too guilty to cut contact with her because I was afraid that she will be miserable without me, that she might even kill herself if I refused to have contact with her. I thought that she couldn’t live without me. Fast forward, what a surprise: I discovered that it was me all along who felt that I couldn’t live without her, and when I did cut contact with her, to my surprise: she did not at all complain, not to me, neither did she chase me for contact.

I then realized: oh, if I was important to her all these years when I was a child and in her presence every day, she would have been happy to have me in her life. She was miserable all along because I didn’t mean much to her. Every time since, whenever I felt guilty for not having contact with her, I reminded myself: in all those years that I did have contact with her, she wasn’t happy. If I contact her now, nothing will change, she’d still be unhappy.

Back to you, Javier: I know that our stories are not identical, stories never are, but we can benefit from understanding each other’s stories.

anita

Dear Javier:

“I have felt this ‘something’ missing my whole life. It’s like a huge hole missing in my chest… Due to this ‘feeling’…  I have carried her sorrows, pain and felt (still feel) responsible for her… even for the sad and painful things she experienced as a child” –

– when a boy (or a girl) feels this way all the way to his 5th decade of life, it means that his mother did not love him. That something missing is his mother’s love, that huge hole in the chest, is the boy’s huge desire for his mother’s love.

The boy, so desperate for his mother’s love, goes all the way back to her past, to the time when she was a girl, so to save her from the sad and painful things she experienced as a child, which made her incapable of loving her boy many years later. Save her so that she will finally be able to love him. When she will, the child-thinking goes, that something missing will be found, and that hole in the chest will be filled.

“I have tried to run away, escape, hide and distance myself from her, but the further away I go the stronger the pain” – that huge hole in your chest, is your ongoing desire for her love. You will have peace of mind if and when you fully accept that no love is coming to you from your mother, and you stop wanting it, stop desiring it.

It so happens that the Second Noble truth in Buddhism, as I understand it, is that desire is the cause of (unnecessary) suffering.

anita

Dear Javier

I only joined this tiny buddha today, so I hope it is alright to post to you.

As an only child I knew it would be up to me to look after my parents in their old age and if I did not want it to be a living hell for all of us including my children then something had to change to break the age old cycle

I had an uneasy relationship (that is putting it politely) with my mother. Back in 2009 when on retreat I realised  that I could only change my attitude and ideas about my mother but not her and that the buddhist path was going to be the biggest help.

In 2011 mum had a melanomia on her hand removed and then in  2016 a cancerous lump under her arm removed and several years of follow up treatment. My dad also has dementia. So the last 5 years have mostly been dedicated to their welfare in 2020 a lump on her leg was mis diagnosed and by the time we got the right diagnosis she only had less than 6 weeks to live.

You may well be asking yourself what this has to do with your situation, possibly not alot, but the one  or two practices that helped me be with my mum as she was dying was foremostly the loving kindness practice May you be filled with loving kindness, may you be held with loving kindness, may you be peaceful & at ease and may you be happy. I also did a lot of Vajrasattva practice in our last week together to purify any residue of negativity between us . Her passing was very peaceful and I am glad that I made the effort to not only study but practice the dharma. I am at peace with myself and my mother.

I hope that you find things to help you and your mother grow closer.

Kind regars

Dharma granny