Echoes:

Your description of those phases seems appropriate to me. However, she has done some counseling before, but I don’t believe she will again because she doesn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all a counselor. She tells me she doesn’t believe it will help and that it is the same thing over and over again.

Open Eyes:

My mother’s background? She graduated from a college here (which is different from a ‘college’ in the U.S.A.) and used to work as some accountant or whatnot for a large insurance company, but she quit her job to raise her children, and hasn’t worked too much since then, although she has had basic employment all over when we, her children, were old enough to not need a mother 24/7. So, in other words, she worked with a nice job 20+ years ago.

Honestly, it seems correct to think my mother has an imprinting of men to take care of her, because she talks about this a lot. She once had her tarot cards read and she hoped that a rich man would come into her life and take care of her, and she frequently talks about how it is a “man’s job” to do certain things, which leaves me puzzled all the time thinking, “Where does that come from?”

My mother is 53 years old. Yes, she is an adult child, and I feel significantly more mature than she is. Sometimes I wish that I had found my dad’s dead body - I could have handled it much better than she could. I suppose I feel like I have been hardened to such things after years of abuse.

Yes my mother has worked before. The difference is she never had to work - she always worked because she wanted to and could afford to job hop or not work at all. My dad was a manager for a large shipping corporation. As for their relationship, my dad was abusive to my mother.

George H.:

Thanks for the compliment about my post - I like writing and I do a lot of it . It’s talking that is harder for me . Spent most of my earlier years in a hospital undergoing speech therapy.

Switch:

My mother cannot receive government support because she receives money from Canadian Pension Plan since my dad is dead. I’ve been attempting to encourage her to do something like skills upbringing, a trade, or something that can provide better employment that she might like, but she brushes me off most of the time, again assuming she acknowledged me in the first place.

Yes, cheers from a fellow Canadian .

Anyhow…

I’m in a rough spot because I can’t really afford to live on my own because of the cost of rent, but then my mother is causing me so much stress. As harsh it might sound, I feel like my mother is this miserable old woman that won’t ever recover from my dad’s suicide and that she is a lost cause for me. It’s hard to remain caring, loving, and empathetic to someone over the same issues and whom isn’t like that to you.

I would love to sit down and talk to my mother, think of a solution and discuss our options, and do something productive. Nope. She won’t do it. She’s right and she will do it her way regardless and then expect me to solve it when it inevitably ends badly for her. This morning she said she is thinking of quitting her job now and that the next job will be the right one - EXCUSE ME?! I can tell you I’ve heard that before…about every 2 months for the last year, and I said that to her, but she ignored me and remains adamant the next job will be better, when I know for a fact that she will find something wrong about it, quit it, and say the next job is the right one for the 10th time.