Thank you. My sympathy in the loss of your mother. Since she was your best friend, I'm glad you had her.

It's been hard work to break that cycle. Things didn't go as they should have in my daughter's childhood. I didn't have the resources or the mental health to raise her better, and she spent a good chunk of her time in foster care. At some points, she was even in my mother's custody. As you can imagine, that was a disaster, but I wasn't mentally stable enough to provide a home for her myself. Things have dramatically improved for me in the 3 years (1 1/2 married) that I've been with my husband.

As part of her therapy, when she was 15 my daughter wrote me a letter describing in detail exactly how I had failed her and how angry she was with me. She treasures the fact that my reply started out, "Well, it's about time you said all those things. You have every right." I remember writing a similar letter to my own mother, and her only response was to tell me how hurt she was by it.

My daughter tells me, "The reason I have a relationship with you now is because you own up to your stuff. If you denied everything like Nina does (that's what she calls my mother) I wouldn't have anything to do with you, just like I don't have anything to do with her."

One of the most hurtful things my mother ever said to me was, "I may not have been a good mother, but at least you never went to foster care." I bit my tongue to keep from shooting back, "Well, I should have!" In truth, if the system were as active then as it is now, I would have been removed from my home. And as my *older* daughter (age 26) tells me, "If you had gone to foster care, maybe we wouldn't have had to."

I'm sorry, Mocha. Wasn't this your thread?