My mother has led a hard life. She was diagnosed with clinical depression many years ago and has made multiple ‘suicide attempts’ ranging from when I was older nine until the last 12 years ago when I was 31. I am an only child, unmarried, and my mother did not marry after my father left her. She found love when I was 11, but her parents forbade her to pursue it, so she focused on her career.
My mother’s suicide attempts were often related to control issues: a response to date me or notthe line. When I graduated and moved to another city, my mother asked me to return home one day work-byhome arrangement, and the battle continued, with my aunt (who hasn’t worked since her early 30s) being equally controlling. Fed up with the endless drama, I took a job in another country and worked here for ten years, once unwillingly returning “home.”
Since I started earning in 2009, I have sent 25% of my salary to my mother and 20% to my aunt, no questions asked. I have tried to be as responsible as possible, do my utmost, pay and organize medical expenses holiday.
My mother was visiting my city in 2020 when the lockdown happened, and four Covid seizures and two cancer diagnoses later, she is now almost living with me five years. While we had a difficult start during the pandemic, long conversations during lockdowns followed by her illnesses and cancer treatments brought us closer together, and I believed that by 2023 we had truly grown to love and respect each other.
Recently traveling to help my aunt she was in hospital, I had to check her emails to reset her internet banking. I couldn’t resist poking around and discovered a cache of emails from 2012 until 2020 in which my mother had written about me in the most derogatory terms.
This broke my heart and I want to send my mother back to our homeland for good live alone or go back to live with my aunt. Yet I am encouraged to forgive her because of her age, her depression and her failing health (she is in remission, but the cancer has taken its toll). Please advise!
This may be an example of the most controlling mother-daughter (and aunt) relationship I have ever seen.
I submitted your letter to UKCP registered psychotherapist Sharon Bond, who was struck by how ‘courageous and compassionate’ you are. “You can think of your mother’s feelings and circumstances even as you took on the role of parent, trying to be the daughter you thought your mother needed and that you could be proud of, and a good niece for your aunt.”
Even when you were no longer living, you still cared for your mother and aunt – and you continue to care for them.
There seem to be many layers of control in this scenario. Bond found it interesting that when it was just you and your mother, when she came to stay with you during lockdown, things happened seemed change.
“I’m sorry that all that good work has been undone by you seeing the email exchange between your mother and aunt,” Bond said. I noticed that the emails date from 2012-2020. Was there an overlap between the end of this exchange and the changing mother-daughter relationship?
I was wondering what you were looking for by “snooping” – evidence that things had changed or not? The question is: if you hadn’t read those emails, how would you feel now?
You have every valid reason to send your mother back home and resume your own life as much as possible. And you are not obliged to send money home. But in situations like these that I’ve observed, it’s easy to suggest those things, but you’re so caught up in this situation that it’s often about finding the line between being overwhelmed by guilt and obligation, and feeling like you can live your own life. to live. Only you know where that line is. Who else do you have around you to strengthen you? Would you consider getting therapy to find out what it is? You really want? “What are the obstacles,” Bond asked, “that keep you from moving on with your life? What are you not giving yourself permission for?’
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Can you trust this new relationship with your mother? Will it hold you up? Who encourages you to forgive her?
Whatever you do, “It has to be a decision you can live with,” Bond said, and that’s really the key here. If you need someone to tell you that you’ve done more than enough and now it’s time for your life – you can still help your mother remotely if you need to – then I’m here and I’ll give it to you.
In Great Britain and Ireland it is Samaritans You can contact the freephone number 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US you can call or text National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.orgor text HOME to 741741 to contact a crisis advisor. In Australia the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at friendsers.org
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