I agree arfie, so I try not to compare. Mine has been gone now since 1999 and I still feel the effects and gasps if I catch myself sounding like her. But that is me.
Hugs of support.

Not entirely sure I grasp, Arfie, but I'm tired, it's late, and I just had my relationship with my mom amputated for no reason I can really grasp beyond "shi*!" I feel like I've got not a wound but phantom pain. I keep expecting what was there, and now it's not there and I get emotional vertigo. But if it's distance or dysfunction.... No good options.

I know I irk (have irked) many b/c I had a good relationship with mom, so how dare I complain and now I know how it feels what with her hostility and so forth. So if that's been an issue, I apologize, Arfie.

To me?

A wound is a wound. Triage is for experts. I'm just here to bleed in company.

At my Dr's suggestion I tried to heal that wound by having a conversation with mine. It did not go well. So I avoid her as much as possible. I try not to compare my issues with anyone else's. I try to just use them as a frame of reference to show I understand a little of what members are going through. Not only with the mother thing, but for most issues. If I don't have a reference point I keep my thoughts to myself.

I often feel blessed that I didn't have a mother for most of my life and curse my stupidity for becoming one.

So why does it still hurt? Maybe the being stupid enough to become one part?

Guess it's just one of those nod and smile moments.

Yup.

I typed out a long reply, but I really don't even want it in print.

I have a great relationship with my kids. My mother doesn't understand why she doesn't have that with either of hers.

Okay, where's that Calypso thread?

ALl I could think as I re-read this thread was... Everyone needs a hug. Or a day off. Or something. And that's *my* maternal instincts kicking in, tho' they're generally exerted on cats, stray tortoises, and miscellaneous critters wandering my way.

The Mother Wound has been especially painful in the tit-for-tat skirmishes between hubs and I. His mother had Huntington's Disease and has been aggressively present in his life until she died a bit over a year ago. My mother is still alive but was already emotionally absent from my life when I ran to the comparative safety of the throw-away kid camps in various U.S. cities. My middle-aged sons have only laid eyes on her once.

My own mother wound has had time to grow some pretty thick scabs, but they still fester on occasion. When they do? ? ? How does my absentee mother become his Huntington's stricken mother with such verbal ease? Are we comparing droughts and floods?

Or, maybe, famine to poisoned feast? Dunno. That's a tough one. Support to you.

I was very blessed... I just wanted to give everyone hurting a huge hug.. and especially the OP.... xoxo

I am a little confused but want to offer my support. i guess my mother may as well not have been there either. i am sorry you didnt have someone who acted like a real mother... motherly and stuff. (((hugs)))

Thank you, Ashley. It is good to know I am not alone. It is, indeed, a different flavor of wound.

Ah. . . For the love of balance. For sure, not all mothers are created equal. Not even the sick ones.

Healing hopes for all, no exceptions.

I once read mothers have a ninety percent influence on their kids, when they are great kids flourish but when they are self centred and sociopaths it is awful.

I made a point not to be like my mother, I am sure there are aspects of her in me...that is why I go to counselling. I have a great relationship with my kids, she or course doesn't.

This sounds terrible but no mother is better than a bad mother

You might be right, musk, that no mother is better than a bad mother. Sure are allot of folks who try to comfort me with that. I wouldn't know. Not sure how they know what it is like to have no mother, at all, but. . . I'll take their word for the validity of their comparison.

Maybe I really do have the healthier poison. Maybe I just need to take it on Faith that my particular Mother Wound really is the blessing people keep telling it is.

Maybe I am just a Faithless ingrate?

Leaving it to the priests. . . Can I at least call it, "An Ouchy Blessing?"

Not too sure I did as well as you at being the mother. My sons and their families are all speaking to me, but. . . Congratulations on a job well done. Maybe the how-not-to example was your blessing? My middle-aged children as well?

Hi Arfie, I'm sorry you are being invalidated like that. I'm sorry for the deep pain you must feel for your absent mother. it seems destructive to me for people to compare wounds and traumas and say one is worse than the other.
My mother was OK, but was emotionally not there especially in my teens. Just when I was wanting to push her away, she died of cancer when I was 18.
Recently an aquaintance lost her mother to cancer. She is 46 years old and had a close, loving relationship with her mother and lots of communication when her mother was dying.
I felt deep pain from this, couldn't be near this person for a while. I rang a friend who also lost her mother young. I was just hoping she'd say 'yeh, I know what you feel'. Instead she made a point of saying her pain is worse than mine because she lost her mother as a 9 year old.
This caused me even more pain.
In my better moments, I am grateful I had my mother for 18 years, but to be invalidated like that just plain hurt!
Take good care Arfie, and never apologise for the depth of your pain or experience of loss.

Thank you, Nellie. I feel like a cancer patient who is being consoled with the simple fact that I don't have AIDS while dodging the envy of people who do have AIDS. Explain it to me, please. I really don't get it.

I bring this up here with the support of other members of my peer support network. Group invalidation is a common quirk in the network. Birds of a feather learning to cope with similar illness and all that. . . It hurts me like a Father Fuck and my PTSD reflex is hysterical flight. Herstorically, I disappear before anyone knows there is a problem. Understandable, but not okay. Hysterical flight is never okay. At best, it is the healthiest poison available.

People are gonna do what they gotta do. Nobody appointed me to any Official Office (OO). That is not mine to sort.

Mine is to sort and defuse my own, strictly personal flight trigger, et al. My supporters in this step are assuring me that they will still love me, even if it really does cost me my welcome here, as my PTSD voices keep assuring me it will.

Healing prayers in progress.