[Chattygirl]

I'm pretty new here, I've done a lot of ready but not posting. I've started seeing a therapist -have seen her for 3 weeks now. We've been talking a lot about my child hood and it appears that my mother was narsassistic, and I'm coming to terms with that. However, she is elderly now and is having physical problems and needs my help. I am always there for her, but a lot of these emotions are coming to the surface. If it were all in the past I'd certainly will willing to leave it there, but the manipulations and verbal attempts at control are still there, still coming at me daily. I'm an only child and I can't simply walk away, I know I have to learn to deal with this, she's not likely to change at 83 years old. Does anyone else have this issue, and if so how do you deal with it? Thank you!

[Wants2Fly]

Hi ChattyGirl --

Oh, goodness, she sounds so much like my mother, who I laid to rest this month at age 87.

How did I manage it? I remembered all the times that mom was there for me when I needed her to be. My father died when I was quite young, and mother worked very hard to make sure my brother and I never wanted for anything.

When we were teenagers, she forgave an awful lot. She tried hard during those years to update herself and "get with the times."

At the end, she had dementia and was very repetitive. I tried not be impatient. We talked every Sunday. I would think to myself, "Just listen. You will not have a mother to talk with much longer." And I didn't.

I also try to remember that her generation had a lot of doors closed to them simply because they were women. Mother was brilliant and creative, and society did not do much to nurture that.

So to sum up: Yes, it is hard to deal with a manipulative and self-centered, even narcissistic mother. I did my best to remember the good, be grateful for her genuine love and support, to take into account everything she had to cope with in her own life, and to remember how seriously flawed I am.

And now I am working to forgive myself for the ways in which I was impatient with her and unkind.