(((Hanginon)))

I understand how badly you feel about your mom and how much it hurts that she was never able to give you what you needed. I feel the exact same way about my mother. She's still alive. She will die still blaming me, finding fault with me and just never being capable of loving me the way I needed to be loved.

Long ago the thought bubbled up that even though my mother was not perfect and was doing the best she could and that I should forgive her her faults and just love her as she is - the light blub went off that her "love" for me was not love. She may have felt and thought it was love, but if try as I might, forgive as much and often as I could, all I ended up feeling was used, abused, manipulated and disliked, then whatever she was giving me was NOT love. BTW, my mother always gave me the feeling that the sexual abuse that happened to me as a child was something I should "just get over" and was probably something that I had exaggerated like I "always" exaggerated everything. I very much understand your hurt there.

It was a horrible moment when I realized my mother did not love me, but at the same time it was a turning point for me. My mother did not and never would be able to love me. Once I accepted that, I stopped trying to get love from her. Unfortuantely I kept trying to forgive her and have some kind of cordial relationship with her. I suffered for it. And I said things I wish I hadn't to her. It would have been better for both of us had I cut ties with her altogether long ago. But hindsight is always 20 - 20 vision.

I've let my daughter know I love her, that I'm sorry for anything I've done wrong and that I'm open to as little a relationship as a starting point as she feels she needs, as long as it is mutually respectful.

Since she was brainwashed by her father, his mother and my mother about me and who I am, I think her feeling is that I don't deserve respect. I'm not willing to have a relationship with ANYONE on that level.

I realised it would not be doing my daughter any favors to let her treat me disrespectfully, thoughtlessly, treat me with a lack of love and concern. All that would do is reinforce the wrong things she's learned from her father, my mother, and his mother. We teach others how to treat us. Teaching my daughter to treat me without love, concern and respect is not something I want her to learn any more about and don't think that will serve her well in life.

I'm only too aware of how short life is and how fast it goes by. It's why my heart breaks and will always hurt from the loss of my daughter. But I only have control over so much. I certainly don't have any control over her, her feelings or her actions. I've done all I know how to do to let her know I want a loving, supportive relationship with her. Now, just like you and I cry over our mother's lack of love and support for us, I also cry about the same thing coming from my daughter. It's tough. Thank you for sharing your experience with me, with all of us.