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I love your book and am eagerly awaiting your next one! Until then, I am hoping you can help me with my relationship with my mother
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Quick background on me is that I was adopted when I was four after several foster homes and developed a need to achieve and be a people pleaser because of my fear of abandonment. Quick background on my mother is that she felt very rejected by her alcoholic mother and was raised by her father after they divorced when she was 10 and I believe she developed a narcissistic personality as a means of self-protection.

I tried hard to be perfect growing up, but our relationship got more difficult as I got older as it seemed as if each step towards independence was felt by her as a personal attack and she started trying to hurt me on purpose. When I went to college she pretended I was dead for a year because I hadn’t called enough and Once arranged to meet me so she could tell me “the worst thing she spent months thinking of to make me hurt as much as possible. ”
I spent time after college getting distance from her and seeing her only a couple times a year, but once my daughter was born (I have 3 small children), I felt compelled to heal any issues I had lest they carry down. I have now begun a very spiritual journey.

I’ve been working on forgiving my mother, realizing that holding onto my story is causing me pain. I have always had compassion for her and realized that she was reacting from her own pain, but I was not able to let go of the hurt until I realized that her true essence is love, everything that wasn’t love wasn’t really real, and she may have been reflecting back to me things I believed about myself that needed healing.

Now I’m in a better place but I still struggle with how to both be loving to myself and loving to her. When we talk I try to empathize with her, surrender to her blaming me, let her negative opinions about me not affect me because I know they’re not true. But I know that it does still bother me although not as much as it has in the past. Deep down I really want to help her but I don’t know how. I also want to know how to stay connected with her and not allow myself to feel hurt by things she says. I used to feel so sick to my stomach after I got off the phone with her. Now I try to stay detached and focus on the present and not let my thoughts reprocess our conversation. I’m stronger than I was but I am not all the way there yet. She has now even decided that she’s willing to sacrifice seeing her grandchildren because she doesn’t feel accepted by me and because I’m too “selfish and controlling” (which I am not).

Please help!
Love to you for your beautiful work and healing words!
Crystal