My mother and I have never been close – I think I annoyed her right out of the birth canal! My very earliest memories are of her hitting and yelling at me, she was a bully and said awful things to us (she still does) I was always scared of her, she was like a wild horse (you never knew when it is going to kick and bite) I didn’t trust her (I still don’t) she was very volatile and would blow up at the slightest thing. There were 5 children in our family (4 kids 10 months apart in age) then my only sister who was born 10 years later. One of my brothers died in a car accident when he was 18 years old. My mother’s style of parenting was control and to divide and conquer. She would and still does play one off against the other, as kids we fought a lot, for food, for attention and for love. We are all in our 50’s now except for our sister who is 10 years younger. We are not close with each other and none of us have fond memories of our childhood and keep our mother at arms length as she’s a bully and we don’t want to be around her, she hits our kids, complains about our parenting or choices our partners, the whole 9 yards, but she is now a widow and we adored our Dad so we do feel compelled to communicate with her and allow her into our lives. My mother and our sister are very close and once my mother said to me that my sister was her favourite, they would always have coffee together, see movies, shop and laugh and I was insanely jealous and felt so rejected. My mother always backed my sister in every argument and I felt that she was always on my sisters side. I think the crux of it is, I feel rejected and unwanted, the ‘ugly’ duckling, the daughter my mother doesn’t love or even like, the waste of space, the one nobody wants. You are 100% correct, I am focusing too much on my sisters life when my focus needs to be on mine. I am busy with my own business and my children and I have a husband who is very kind and supportive. How do I stop these awful feelings, I thought I had laid them all to rest but with the latest incidence of the book I realise that I obviously haven’t dealt with them at all! I feel like I don’t want to have my mother or my sister in my life at all, I just feel like I hate them, but I know its really unhealthy and so debilitating and it really only hurts me. I really don’t know what to do or how to stop focusing on the past. I would so appreciate any feedback on where to from here, I am suffering and I am the cause and I want desperately to move forward. Many thanks Bridget