I am sorry if I get off topic a bit - but for the entire length of this day so far my mind has been revolving about the motherhood/parenthood issue. I see how concerned we all seem to be about the effect we (or really our conditions)will have on our children and the adaptations we must make in order to not influence them in to negative a way. It is really, really striking me internally about my own relationiship with my mother for some reason today.

I thought I got over our lack of a relationship a decade ago. My mother is an emotional iceburg. It is so sad; she has isolated herself phyically (she lives somewhere in Mexico on a sailboat with her 2nd husband) and emotionally from myself and my family (she and her husband did not even want to be called grandma and grandma). She is very unapproachable, bitter and brittle. My husband comes from a fairly emotionally stable famioly (at least when comparing to mine) and he has worked his bottom off to help us meet in the middle; he has given up as well. She is just to emotionally blocked off and unstable. I have tried through so many methods to reach her, but there has been no way to be close her or communicate with her. So I have left it up to her and kept our relationship just on the surface; light-hearted, friendly, not really deep nor how I want. Intimacy scares her, discussions about the past are not allowed. That is really okay with me now - if she doesn't want to be close. So in the Autumn of the year I developed this condition she e-mailed me a farewell letter "because we were not close". Huh? I wrote back saying I am sorry that she felt that way and what could I do to help and she just wrote a long list back of my faults and critisizing me. It was horrid. my husband went beserk and theatened to have nothing to do with ever again - and this is the man who ignores all problems and never gets mad. I was very patient and wrote back saying that again I was sorry I hoped we could work out, blah, blah. Well it has been 2+ years now, and I really get mad sometimes (and sometimes more than others!) because I would really love to have a mother to talk to about all these parent/child inluence/relationship issues!

Today especially its getting to me. Hearing how everyone is considerate about thier kids - I turned 40 earlier this month and my mother doesn't acknowledge i'm alive. My kids don't have a full set of grandparents, and I would love to be able to talk a mom about my questions and feelings like I talk here.

I don't know why it is bothering me now, she has always been this way. Its just making me sad today.