</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
jacq10 said:
And I know, if i ever hope to have some resemblance of a normal relationship with her, I need to talk with her ... but i just can't.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">jacq, I think you are very mature and healthy to even want to move beyond the hurt and have a good relationship with your mother. You are 19 and so far ahead of your years! I think that someday you will find the courage to forge a better relationship with mom. Maybe you aren't able to right now. It's OK. I know from personal experience with my own mom that she was never going to be the one to make a move to better the relationship. That had to come from me, many years after I left home. And I'm still working on it! The one who wants the relationship to improve usually has to go more than half way to meet the other person, that's just how it is, and it sounds like you are not ready to go even halfway at this point in your life, which is just fine. The wounds are still raw. But your desire to mend is there, and someday you will change things.

For now, maybe you can just do the best you can this week in your mom's new home, try to connect in indirect ways instead of through direct talk about the issues, like by baking cookies together, taking the 8 year olds ice skating, going for lunch with just you two, any number of things. And keep the talk light, if that's all the two of you can handle. Try not to think of it as "sweeping things under the rug" but perhaps just as the two of you getting by the best you can right now.

Best of luck this week. Someday you will be there.