Today’s prompt comes from 100 Inspirational Journal Prompts by Melissa Bolton @ The Mogul Mom
Who do you need to forgive? Why?
The one person I truly need to forgive is my mother. The fact that she is deceased makes it harder to do. I cannot get the answers to questions that have plagued me the majority of my life. Questions like, why did you ignore me? why wasn’t I as important as my sister and brother? and why did you never tell me you were proud of me?
My mother was a very difficult person. She was physically and mentally abused as a child – as was her entire family – by a drunken, cruel father. As a result of her childhood, mother was distant and sometimes cold. I rarely saw her smile or heard her laughing. She was a serious woman and often volatile. She was also a perfectionist and hard to please. She never praised us for the things we did well, but was hyper-critical of things we did wrong. She stayed home most of the time by choice, but would argue with my dad if he went somewhere. She was extremely passive-aggressive, codependent and probably had PTSD.
I’ve tried many times to forgive my mother when she was alive and since her passing. I still harbor a lot of animosity toward her for how she treated me. I could never tell her what bothered me about her behavior because if I attempted it, she would say things like “If you think I am such a bad mother, you should have lived the kind of childhood I did.” That was always her answer to everything… her bad childhood. I did inherit some of her traits – aloofness, seriousness, and perfectionism. I do try to praise people, but I can also be a bit overly critical as well.
I know that in order for me to heal, I have to stop blaming her, let it go and move on. It’s just one of the most difficult things for me to do. Sometimes, I think I hold onto the bitterness because it is all I have left of her. Still, I wish I had good memories of her, but sadly, most of my memories of the past are negative ones.
As the Fates Would Have It 