Dear Lori,
you are stressed. Breath. The best thing I have learned is to accept that you do not need the license of others to your experience. You are not crazy you have been disturbed by enormously stressful experiences for a developing child.

Your validation does not come from them but from yourself. You are completely and utterly worthy of the natural joys to be had in childhood and they have been stolen. If you limit your recovery through their denial you are denying yourself. Do not do this. When Frances died we agreed for the benefit of an autopsy. This was a difficult choice she was so perfect she didn't go cold till I stopped holding her the next day and we were to make invasive investigation. Oh the things we never imagine having to think about. Anyway when I went in to the funeral home to dress her, I blotted fluid which had wept from the top of a vertical incision down her chest. I admired what you might consider tidy work compared to the coroner. Six weeks later at my post partum, got no baby, check up he says the results aren't in. The next week he says the autopsy was never performed. It had been the last day before Christmas eve and the mortician had terminated that day apparently it was recorded as "cancelled". Well I sat on the phone with a pathology registrar trying to make the two versions of events reconcile. Neither party was compelled to loosen the exclusive nature of the individual episodes of the one event.

I realised I was not going to subordinate myself to their position. I DID NOT REQUIRE THEIR CONCESSION OR VALIDATION for license to my own experience. Like Rapunzle says, "NEVER" adjust your recall to fit with someone else's version of events. Definitely accept that their version is their version. As your mind transformed to cope with horrific circumstances, your mother transformed events to be palatable to her own taste, selective recall. My mother too does not remember breaking so many of her 3ft dressmaker rules on my brothers that she started using the rubber hose from the washing machine, at least it wouldn’t break first!!

The influence they seek to have over you is pathetic, “she said that my stepfather
wanted me to attend the family fourth of July get together since her
husband wouldn’t go unless I was there ?????????” Hello? You are now responsible for his pleasure. Proclaiming they suffer by your hand. Tell ‘em to get rooted from me!!

Lori dear, do not buy into this sort of emotional blackmail. Stay where you are safe. The child is not responsible to the parent, the parent is responsible to the child. You can hope as you might that they will acknowledge your truth but this is the same woman who was helpless at helping you in the first place. You won’t get what you seek from her so stop doubting your own experience by pandering to her. They don’t want to face the demons or look into the ugly mirror. Do not be disturbed by this.

Give yourself license to your own experience and do not hinge it or adjust it based on their consent.

Sorry Lori if I have been too slap slap. My words are given for you with love and respect, please forgive my blunt forthright manner.

With fond regard Frances.