Anonymous wrote:There are a few very bitter women who spends 24/7 here. Bitter about their marriage, their parents, their kids..etc. Basically blame anyone but themselves for their misfortune.

Interesting. How do you know how many different women post on here?

I started coming to this forum years ago to process my difficulties with my mom, who had undiagnosed mental illness and was controlling to the extreme. When she died I was deeply saddened and also had the same thought as OP: that the person who loved me the most in this world is gone. This forum helped me during the grieving process.

I'm now in a stage where I still miss her, but can also recognize some of her parenting failures and try to avoid those in my own parenting. Once again, DCUM has been mostly helpful in my journey.

Mothers are complicated. They shape so much of our identity and they leave their legacies, good and bad. I'm envious of those who have/had mostly loving and positive relationship with their mothers, and empathetic to those who were abused or neglected. For me, I can honestly say, I will miss my mom until my dying day, despite the baggages I carry from our fraught relationship.

Anonymous wrote:Of course there are people who love their mothers on here, OP. But people tend to talk about their problems, and one problem they might have is a mother who was not loving or kind.

I will gently suggest you frame this as "I miss my mother since she died, can anyone relate?" Instead of making this some kind of challenge to people who were not fortunate enough to have a loving mother. Many people are grieving for parents they have lost, you will find. But it's not some kind of competition between that group and people who are grieving for the fact that they never had a loving parent to begin with.

Exactly. I'm always baffled by the people who don't understand that their life experience isn't shared by everyone and spend their time criticizing or trying to school others who have had a different experience. It's very odd.

Me, and I miss her every day, but I also understand that not everyone is fortunate enough to have had a decent, functional childhood.

Anonymous wrote:Of course there are people who love their mothers on here, OP. But people tend to talk about their problems, and one problem they might have is a mother who was not loving or kind.

I will gently suggest you frame this as "I miss my mother since she died, can anyone relate?" Instead of making this some kind of challenge to people who were not fortunate enough to have a loving mother. Many people are grieving for parents they have lost, you will find. But it's not some kind of competition between that group and people who are grieving for the fact that they never had a loving parent to begin with.

+1000. What in the world is up with this reflexively negative and oppositional attitude? You sound just like my mom, always convinced that everyone in the world is out to get her personally.

It's complicated, OP.

My mother adores me and yes, there will never be anyone else who loves me that much.

However that love has been expressed, for most of my life, in irrational bouts of anxiety, nagging and downright harassment. She purposefully isolated me socially and tried her best to separate me from friends and relatives, because she herself was a recluse and wanted my company. I had to distance myself for my own sanity and I've tried very hard not to replicate that parenting with my children.

"Love" isn't always expressed in a constructive way. That's the lesson I've learned. It's not enough to love. We must work on loving well.

Anonymous wrote:I love my mom so much. We talk on the phone every single day. But there’s nothing about that to say on DCUM.

Same. My mom and I are really close. We had a very difficult relationship growing up - I was a hard kid, she had a hard time with a hard kid - and it took quite a few years after I left home for us to settle into what we have now. We always loved each other - but now we like each other, too. She's turning 80 next year, with a lot of health problems, and I can't even bear to think of this world without her.

But that's not very interesting to talk about here! I like my in laws, too. I also just eat a regular amount of food at regular times of day, and don't do any extreme diets. What is there to say about any of these things?

It’s weird because I think I feel mostly the same way about my mother but she was also, objectively speaking, a bad mom.

She did her absolute best. I know she loved me (although I do think my husband loves me more). I know a lot of moms who are worse. The fact that she was verbally abusive, a hoarder, severely mentally ill, etc doesn’t cancel out any of the good things.

My mom isn’t nice but not mean either. She doesn’t care too much about me or my kids. I don’t think I’ll miss her.

I do. I live with my mom and take care of her. I don't have it in me to let her grow old alone.

Anonymous wrote:I love my mom so much. We talk on the phone every single day. But there’s nothing about that to say on DCUM.

Same. Mom is my best friend who I text and call daily. She moved to DC to be closer to me even. I had a wonderful childhood and have become closer as an adult. I wouldn't post about it on DCUM either, what's the point? To rub it in everyone's face who isn't super close with their moms?

There are a few very bitter women who spends 24/7 here. Bitter about their marriage, their parents, their kids..etc. Basically blame anyone but themselves for their misfortune.

Of course there are people who love their mothers on here, OP. But people tend to talk about their problems, and one problem they might have is a mother who was not loving or kind.

I will gently suggest you frame this as "I miss my mother since she died, can anyone relate?" Instead of making this some kind of challenge to people who were not fortunate enough to have a loving mother. Many people are grieving for parents they have lost, you will find. But it's not some kind of competition between that group and people who are grieving for the fact that they never had a loving parent to begin with.

I love my mom so much. We talk on the phone every single day. But there’s nothing about that to say on DCUM.

have a nice mother? Who you will miss when she is gone?
Did you all have dysfunctional families as a child?

My mom was far from perfect, and her old age was very difficult for us all (she was bed ridden for years)...but I was always clear on how hard she had worked to raise us. And that she did the best she could. When she died, I had the insight, "no one else on this planet will ever love me as much as my mother did."

Don't start staying I am not sympathetic to those who were abused, or their right to set boundaries for their own mental health.

I am just asking if there are people on DCUM who miss their mothers every day and feel very blessed to have had her in their lives.