Yes.


This had started happening gradually in tiny little bits for me just since this past summer, but it hit me full-on when I told her I wanted to stop I think it was in November when I told her? We had a few sessions to talk through the process of ending and I said goodbye to her on 12/17 after 10+ years. I did a lot of writing, and posted all kinds of temper tantrum stuff on this forum in a couple different threads I hang out on to get through it. It was painful, confusing, etc. To know in my mind that she was 'just' t and not my mom, or my grandma, or my anything else but yet at the same time in my heart, to feel and see her as all of the above. Letting go of 'fantasy her' was very, very hard. As I told her, I loved fantasy her, and I felt like that her loved me too, and I didn't want to let go of that but knew that I had to. (I didn't stop seeing her because of that, there were other things going on causing us to stop.) But I really wonder - if the other things hadn't happened that caused us to stop - if I had gone through the process of letting go of fantasy her and worked through it in therapy, what more we could have done. Part of me wishes it had worked out that way for us but it did not.


I wish you all the best. It's hard.