Oh yeah, I totally forgot what it was like to be my mother's lackey or to be under her spell.  But last night I found an old journal of mine and found my second entry from August 26, 2009: 

The kids started school today, it was my oldest's first day of middle school and nobody called to wish him luck (this was my kid's second year of school, as they were homeschooled up until then).  Not my ex, his father, or even my own mother.  But then again, my mother hasn't called me in days.  And the last time I talked to her I was the one who called her and she acted like I was bothering her.  I know her husband has cancer and they have his two kids in the house, but why all of a sudden leave me by the wayside?  She used to call me constantly, more than once a day (and yes, it annoyed me sometimes).  I guess you don't know what have until it's gone.  Not that she's gone, just busy.  And she has lots of new friends.  You know, I just realized how selfish that sounds.  Why would I want my mom to be alone and dependent on me for company?  I don't know.  I guess it's just that I the one alone now.  And I don't how to deal with that.  But I am determined to this school year.  I won't be like I was last year.  I refuse to be like that again.  

Let's break this down, shall we?  

First of all, my mother was the only person I really talked to, other than people around my mother (like her friends and my uncle) outside of my house.  So when I say I was being "selfish" by wondering why she left me all alone, I meant I was actually alone.  Without my mother in my life, and the people around her, I had nobody when my husband was at work and my kids were at school.  And when I referred to "I won't be like last year", I meant that the previous year I was so bad with my anxiety that I had passive suicidal ideation (meaning I wanted to die, but I did not want to kill myself) and I maybe should have been committed to a facility.  And that was partially because of the way my mother had treated me that year, the kids first year at school, even knowing damn well how bad my anxiety was.  She was doing the same things, but even worse, because when I did go over to her house, she'd complain about me and make fun of me to her husband in front of me.  She'd shame me for being so bad with my anxiety, and her husband would join in.  One way was that back then I was obsessed with having low blood sugar (something I did have from time to time, but I was obsessed with thinking I always had it) and I would go over there and get a piece of bread, put peanut butter on half of it, and fold it over and eat it.  And one time her husband looked at me and said "Don't you ever eat at home?!"  Like taking a half sandwich of peanut butter was putting anyone out.  He also seemed to forget that before him, I was welcome to take whatever I wanted to eat at her house.  Even though I hardly ever did anyways.  

When my mother got with him, a man who I introduced her to (he was my old friend's boyfriend and father of her children--kids who were the same age as mine), she immediately dropped me.  Imagine The Gilmore Girls where if Lorelei got with a boyfriend and all of a sudden stopped talking to Rory.  That was my life (minus the cute fun times between us).  My mother took over every aspect of my life and inserted herself into everything we did, until she made a better friend or, like this time, got a boyfriend.  Then I was ignored, picked on, and she even went as far as to act disgusted when I or my children were around.  My presence was only needed in her life when she needed something from me.  

And there I was, in 2009, living alone across town for the first time in my life, left all alone in a scary three-story house in the ghetto all day long, and my mother could care less.  And I was the one who felt guilty for being upset that she was snubbing me.  

Boy, things sure have come a long way since then.  

So, here I am now, in 2024, on this new path to forgiveness and healing, and I come across this journal entry, reminding me of all the crap she's done to me in the worst possible ways.  

Sigh.  

So, what to do with this information?  How to process it?  

I am reminded of a book called "The Journey" by Brandon Bays which uses a type of hypnotherapy/meditation script to help you with this sort of thing.  As well as the book "The Toltec Path of Recapitulation" by Victor Sanchez which has you write down everyone and everything that's ever happened to you (including jobs, places in your life, etc.) and see which ones have negative feelings attached to them and then work through them also with meditation/hypnotherapy.  I think that using a combination of the two may help here.  And may help with all of this as a whole.  

Not only that, I am studying to be a hypnotherapist, and I think if I started my classes back up, I could not only help myself, but eventually help others in the same way.  But one thing at a time, right?  Let's start here, with my own mother and helping myself forgive her of her issues (with still having boundaries in place with her as she lives with us).  And by "forgive her", I mean "heal myself".  They are interchangeable, as that's the only true way to heal, to release their actions from your heart and soul.  

When I healed myself of my father's abuse in 2012, twelve years after his death, it was because I understood him and forgave him.  But with my mother, it's so different, because even though my dad was a horrible person, I never doubted he loved me, in his own way.  Whereas my mother loves no one.  Her love is control and manipulation.  She's incapable of real love.  And I have to learn to be okay with that.  And I already kind of am.  I just have a hard time dealing with the things she's done to me.  And still does to me.  Though the things she does today are not the same.  Or maybe I am not the same.  Or it's both.  I still have issues with my father, from time to time but I don't live with his words anymore.  I don't live with his past abuse.  Not on a day to day basis.  Though I do live with my mother's past abuse.  And I need to move past that now.  I am not the same person I was when she abused me.  I do not fear her (though I do fear her bothering me).  I am not her daughter anymore.  I call her my mother, but she's really not.  I don't see her as my mother, and realize she never really was.  She's a person who took on the mother role, but never actually figured out how to do it right.  

So, I going to see if I can find some audio for the meditation in "The Journey" so I can work with that.  And, as I am writing this, I am rereading "The Toltec Path of Recapitulation" (although I don't like the idea of doing the mediations in a box...which I have never done).  You can find both books on Everand (the former Scribd).  

I will be still be exploring my spirituality (as I wrote about last time), and last night I started with a list of affirmations from the book "The Lotus and the Lily".  I plan to read them aloud to myself each night  (I will share them here next time).  I also want to start with more meditations, which I have in my "Calm" app that I paid for for a year (a half price sale for New Year's!).  I also want to watch Thich Nhat Hanh's "Walk With Me" again.  I own it on DVD because I love it so much.  It's like mindfulness in motion.  And I want to spend more time in nature.  Like right now, we are enveloped in fog here, and there's snow on the ground and it's almost 40 degrees.  It's gorgeous out!  I want to go out there and sit, but I just saw a possum prowling around by my patio furniture, so I am not sure I want to go out there.  But my entire life has been about nature from as early as I can remember.  I need to spend as much time outside as possible.  

I also need to immerse myself in music again, too.  So much of my life has been misaligned (just like my oracle card told me to look into) and now I realize just far off from my soul's purpose I've become. 

All.  Due.  To.  My.  Mother.  

Well, not all, but literally like 98% of it.  

And I say no more.  Realigning myself back to who I was will help me so much mentally, which in turn will help me physically, too.  

Okay, off to reread my books and I will be sure to share what I learn here.  So maybe if what I say speaks to you, maybe it can help you, too?