My mother has this thing where she gets upset because she hasn’t made much difference, hasn’t had many successes in her life.
Often it is being upset because she hasn’t been a good mother.
That’s challenging for me. I do want her to focus on what she has done well, what she can do now, but on the other hand, I don’t want to comfort her by just stroking her. I want to remain in my truth.
Truth, to me anyway, is that she wasn’t a very good mother. Too passive-agressive and too narccissitic for that. I have been taking care of her since I was very young, and she never reached into my world and affirmed my possibilities beyond her own fears.
She never had the social skills to make friends and build networks. The lack of those skills is still something that my siblings and I still are impaired by.
I want to affirm her, but I want to be honest. And for a woman who has already lived 90% of her life, it’s not easy to say that she still can make new and better choices.
It’s hard.
