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[quote=Anonymous]
[quote]I took care of her as she was dying from metastatic cancer. Over and over she would restate how she was a good mother, and how at least she and my father never hit or abused us. (What?!?) I tried agreeing, and I tried deflecting, but it never would really let up. And I was hurting myself by participating in it -- by denying my real experiences, it was retraumatizing. Not as bad as the first, but not healthy. Not at all.[/quote]

I am 100% sure that if I told my mom she was wrong to hit me, that this would immediately cause her to emit a giant cloud of defensive rationalizations, justifications, and explanations - "I was tired, I was so busy, you were a very disobedient child, that was the way things were done back then" etc etc etc. She would never say, without any caveats, "that was wrong and I'm sorry". Therefore I don't even want to have that conversation.

From time to time she says "[i]if [/i]I did anything wrong when I was raising you, I'm sorry". I find this frankly insulting. It's like she doesn't even want to think about what she did that was wrong - and there was quite a lot - but wants forgiveness anyway. It's all about her, and wanting to feel better, and not at all about how it affected me. Along similar lines, she is obsessed with the injuries her parents inflicted on her, and can recount specific things from 60 or 70 years ago, but can't remember, or even try to remember, any injuries she inflicted on me.[/quote]

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