Here is a personality/history background post, which is also really long... lol!:
http://www.amitymama.com/vb/expectin...you-mamas.html
I talked with my mom today. I mean REALLY talked. We haven't really talked in over two years. She started asking me questions and I told her strait up she wouldn't like the answers and my goal was not to upset her, and then she asked again. So I told her. With no fear, no hesitation. I told her how she made me feel when we went down there, I told her how I felt that she doesn't take responcibility for her own feelings and reactions and how she tends to blame others for not being able to read her mind, I told her how I have a hard time with the way she deals with my kids becuase it seems like she always wants to control them and that is not the way I work as a parent... I let it fly. And in a gentle way too... I wasn't making it all out to be her fault. I also told her that I was sorry that I couldn't handle the heavy way she deals with emotions, and that I was sorry for my part in our argument and that made our split so hard....
you guys, she ended up crying (my mom is a yeller, not a cryer) and saying she was so sorry that it ended up like this, and can't we just start over and be friends instead of 'relitives' (she hates words like MotherInLaw because she believes they are all in negitive context)...
It was strange, but I think we broke through whatever was making her feel so broken. She and my step dad (the only parent I see anymore) split up that same summer she and I stopped talking. And since then it has been nothing but hate and frusteration for her life and for everything we have ever done... so this is a big thing.
One of the main points I kept making was the responcibility. That is such a huge thing for me. She kept blaming my step dad, and saying that it won't happen again because he isn't in the picture. And I kept saying that if it did, who would she blame then? How can she make such absolute statements and expect to have any room to breathe? We are HUMAN, we all make mistakes and it needs to be OK that she has made mistakes so she can move past them. Just because someone was there to emotionally cripple you, doesn't make you LESS CRIPPLED. You still have to take responcibility for the things you say, the things you do, the way you are to others... it is still YOU that is saying/doing all of these things. You know? Does that make sense?
I told her something that I had been dying to tell her but didn't feel that she would hear me. As a person, my mom is VERY dramatic. Her emotions run hot and deep and LONG. She can hold a grudge for years and not flinch (I can't do that... I end up sick. I don't know how she can stand it.). She was dramatic as a child too, and when we were down there and got into that fight, it was about my daughter. Cyan, at the time, was 3 years old and my mother called her all sorts of names because she was being dramatic and having her hot little Cyan issues. Well on the way home, in which I cried for the entire drive (which takes three days) I realised that the reason mom has such a hard time with Cyan is because it is like looking in a mirror of what she could have been if she had been allowed to HAVE emotions. She was raised by an abusive father, told she wasn't allowed to have opinions, watched her younger brothers get beat when her dad was drunk, was controlled and then entered into three abusive relationships with men whom she had children... Her life has been a sad story in being second guessed at every turn... and so her emotions, instead of being a passionate asset, became a crutch. Something to blow when things went wrong... and finally they were so stuffed down, that the woman stopped making sense every time she got angry.
Finally she is out of that. After 62 years of feeling damaged and like her emotions don't matter (which they ARE hard to deal with... she has never found or been allowed to find an easy way to vent them) she is feeling everything the way she should have when SHE was 3.
I don't know what will become of this. And if you read this far, thank you. It is mostly for my proccessing that I wrote it out... it is 4am and I couldn't stop thinking about it. I feel at peace with my place in our arguement... but I am me. I am extremely logical, and can become detached from just about anything to have a good conversation. She can't do that... her emotions are like a thread of carmel goo through a brownie... you can't pick them out to have a conversation to get anywhere. So I had to tread softly and gently, but without backing down... and I think it worked. I honestly don't know HOW I feel about all this because the converstaion was on such tinderhooks... you know?
Anyway...
Jody
![](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_bj7ekqHHcWs/SSWq84O_r2I/AAAAAAAAB94/Ch046JRhcx0/s288/Clare%20Xmas%202008_2.jpg")
Oh Val. You did the right thing. I'm so proud of you, that you were able to stand up to her and say what needed to be said. Now, whether she talks to you again or not, that is her business. You cannot control that - and I know you know this, but sometimes it helps to hear it from someone else. It sounds like what you said got through, somehow, and she is probably just intensely processing it. However, again, it's not even anything you or anybody else can know, what her thoughts are like. You've done exactly what you needed to do - the next step is hers.
Thanks for sharing all of this with us.
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