This sums it up

I found this on Ravellry.com . It sums up a lot of my attitudes about life & family. I'm sharing it because I have made that cut with members of my family. It wasn't easy, but it was worth the pain I felt in doing it.

Dear Auntie BubboPants,

I am seeking some of your honest help. I have been married for two years now. I will admit that I got married young, but I know I got married to a great guy at a time that was good for the two of us. However, I have not spoken to my mother since before the wedding. She caused my husband and me a lot of drama while we were engaged and preparing for our wedding. She had always been an emotional burden to me, the type that always brought me down when I was feeling good, but some of the things she said and did during my engagement have deeply hurt me and some have truly frightened me. (I am not going into any details because I already attempted to send you a letter about some of the drama and it was over 4 pages single spaced in Word.) The first year I was married I did try to talk to her through letters but that never really worked out, but neither did the phone conversations when I was engaged.

My situation now is this. Last May I graduated from college and did not invite her to my graduation (mixture of her physical pains and a bit of my emotional pain of her not coming to my wedding), she sent me a letter of 12 questions she wanted me to answer and once I answered them she said she would leave me alone. I honestly answered all of her questions. I had expected some sort of hurt response back; she usually acted out of hurt and anger and did so quickly. But I never heard back from her. Six months later Christmas rolls around and my husband and I receive a box of Christmas gifts and a card from her. The card said “I miss you. Hopefully next year will be the one we get to be together.”

Problem is, I enjoyed not having her in my life for those six months. I was happy with where my life was going and I was gaining a lot of confidence in myself. Trying to respond to that was terribly hard and I ended up just sending a simple Thank You note to her. Now my birthday is coming up and I am afraid that she is going to send me gifts again. I just don’t want anything to do with her anymore. I feel terrible because in response to her 12 question letter I told her that it was up to her if she was “good enough” to be in my life, but now I just don’t want her in it and don’t want to give her that chance. How do I tell my mom that though? I have written several mock letters to try and find the right things to say to her without hurting her too much, but is that even possible? I always feel like such a cold bitch when I write those letters because often while I write them I get so angry with her for how she made me feel in the past. AuntieBubboPants, do you have any advice on how to make this easier on both of us?

Signed,
Trying too hard to make her happy

Dear Tthtmhh,

I have 3 families. Really. I lived with my biological family until I was about 12 years old. Then I had a foster family. Later in my teens I was adopted by a new family. I have 3 families. I keep in contact with my foster family and of course with my adoptive family. I do not maintain any contact with my biological family anymore.

It’s not easy, I know. Culture and genetics work to make these everlasting bonds with the people we call family. When I finally eschewed all contact with my biological family some of my friends were incredulous. They could not imagine that I could so casually break what they saw as a completely solid and immutable bond. They thought of their own situations and could not conceive of a situation where they would cut off all contact with their families.

They wanted to know why, they wanted me to explain myself, they wanted to understand.

My life is finite, as is every life. We have these few years to live and breathe and love and move. When I consider the absolute vastness of this universe and the absolute tininess of this life of mine I am liberated. My obligations become clearer. My resolve to live the best life possible becomes stronger.

Your mother is a person like any other and she deserves compassion and understanding. This is true. Also, your mother is a person like any other and her actions have consequences. You are a person like any other and you deserve compassion and understanding, your actions have consequences.

But what is this word “consequence”? We often use it as a euphemism for “punishment”, we see it as a retribution for a misbehavior. Consequence is only loosely related to punishment in that it can describe a sequence of actions that include misbehavior and punishment. But that is too narrow a view. We are all of us just people. We act and react in the best ways we know how. We work to make things better and we work to protect ourselves.

She is your mother, this is your life. You have some finite number of years to experience what this life has to offer and then you are done. She has the same exact opportunities to experience her life in the best way possible and it would seem that part of her life includes making you crazy and unhappy. Sometimes we have to take a step back and examine our burdens. When we do that we often find that some of those burdens are not ours at all, they are not intended for us and we are not obligated to them. Sometimes we have to send the burden back to its rightful owner.

Sometimes we have to walk away from a situation that can only bring pain because that pain is not ours to experience. This is your life now. You are responsible for how you move forward from here.

There will be times in your life when you will experience the burden of great emotional pain. You will feel the width and breadth of emotional hardship and you will not be able to escape it because it will be yours to carry. You will recognize it as yours and you will carry it, you will not walk away. What I am trying to say is that I am NOT saying, “oh, just walk away from everything that makes you sad or uncomfortable!” Life is all about pain and laughter and burdens and love and as you trip along this path of yours you will find all of these things and more. Just make sure you are not carrying a load that is not yours.

This situation of yours is a great knotted ball of pain and there is no way for it to be resolved easily or painlessly. If you want to resolve things with your mother, if you want to improve your relationship you have to go into it knowing that for all your efforts she might not change. This is a risk you have to take and the stakes are time and emotion, you could lose that time and experience that emotion. If you look at this situation and decide that you no longer want the burden of her emotions then the best you can do is a clean cut. To take a deep breath, take hold of your husband’s hand and sally forth down this path of yours.