Maybe your self-confidence is low or you never followed your dreams or you spent a childhood being the adult and now feel robbed of a care free start.

It might be difficult for you to read, however, she did the best she could, with the skills she had at the time. And despite you not being able to understand her limitations, her challenges or her decision process, this is just how it was, and is.

You don’t know her demons, her issues and her full story.

We actually don’t really know our parents at all!

In the same way as we protect our children from the not so nice things about us, our parents did the same towards us when we were children.

In the same way as we have our shortfalls, issues and challenges, our children will look back and blame us for things that they wish we had done differently.

And there is no point in setting up yard sticks and comparing what awful things they did and we ONLY did this… that comparison is pointless!

You cannot measure stuff like that, it’s all perceptions.

Plenty of people have had ridiculously shitty things happen to them and have risen above it all, and others have had, what may seem as smaller issues happen to them and they simply cannot cope and move past it.

Who is right and wrong here?

Do we have some kind of a pass to say if ‘this’ happens you are allowed to cope like this or that?

Sure that’s ridiculous!

I’m sorry to be blunt, but it’s all your perception. And trust me when I say this, I have the T-shirt, my mother dealt out some shit to me in my life and it still causes me pain. But it’s all my perception.

And I have chosen to take responsibility for my perception, my pain. It’s mine to sort out, like she had hers to sort out.

I’m not saying it’s easy or that some of the stuff that happened was ok, far from it, but there is no point in arguing with the past, you’ll lose every time!!

And keep in mind; our brain is a survival organ, it will always look for, focus on, remember and emphasise the bad things – so that it can protect us from them in the future. What I’m saying is that the good bits that were there, can easily be overlooked.

So now that we have established that we all, our mothers and now us, do things to a greater or lesser extent, in a way that leaves questions and doubts in the air, let’s look it all from a different perspective.

What shitty things that she did, resulted in a positive aspect of you?

I’ll go first;

•I was super independent from a very young age.

•I had and have an attitude of ‘get on with it’.

•I have an in-depth understanding of alcoholism and other heavy topics, which means I can relate to other people going through similar experience.

•I have more compassion and understanding than I would have had, had I not experienced what I did.

•My pain and anger, and being tired of it, opened up a whole new world of holistic ways and healing to me that I never knew existed.

•As a result of this, I have been able to empower my children with tools to help them in their journey of dealing with their stuff.

I understand that depending on where you are at on your journey of healing, that you may find all this hard to read.

You may be full of anger and all you want to do is give out about what happened to you.

That’s ok. It’s ok to be at that place right now. I was for decades!

I’m just writing this to show you that there are other stages you can move through if you so wish. When you are ready.

You just need to be open to it.

Once you are open, you can practice awareness and then life will put people and things in your path for you to grow with.

At every stage you will have a choice. No one will force you.

I’m just inviting you to consider that, she must have carried you at some stage, she must have done something good.