It seems to me, franki, that SeaBreeze is right and that T is not necessarily "attacking" your mom, but rather trying to get you to think about your own feelings when these interactions occurred. I felt protective about my own mom, and still do, but I had to acknowledge that T was right when she pointed out the various things (very serious things) that mom had done wrong, with terrible consequences for her children.

T and I both agreed that mom had no choice in the matter. That she was operating unconsciously and didn't have the insight to understand and correct her own actions or inactions. So, together, T and I worked out a realistic portrait of mom from all the old memories I had that included mom doing wrong things but at the same time being sympathetic to her as a flawed human being who tried very hard to be a good mother but just didn't have the right tools to do it with.

I guess we all need to be able to try to see our parents as real people, with good points and bad points at the same time. Admitting to their bad points is by no means entirely condemning them. We all have good points and bad points. It's still possible to love and be sympathetic to a parent who really wasn't the world's greatest parent.

So when it comes to therapy, it sounds to me very much like your T is trying to get you to acknowledge that your mom did or said some things that probably weren't very helpful for you. And that by no stretch of the imagination means your mom was a "bad person." It means she was a regular, normal human being with faults and not perfect. That's all.

T and I are pretty much finished with my mom now. We're on to other things (my dad and my brother). But we left mom with the final judgment that she was a hard-working, intelligent, educated person with many friends and admirers (whom she deserved), who, because of bad things that happened when she herself was an infant, was not able to give her own children what they really needed. Did she know this? No. Could she have known this? Well, the way her personality was built, probably not. Did she try hard to be good? Absolutely. Was acknowledging these faults a condemnation of her? Not at all.

I'd suggest to you, franki, that you keep in mind the following: if you go through with T, in detail, the "truth" about your mom, you will be able to wind up in the end with a truly human picture of your mom showing her as an essentially good person with faults like everybody else. Just acknowledging that your mom wasn't perfect, that she did some things wrong, is not condemning her in toto, but accepting her humanity. Take care!