I would like to change the way I think about my mother.

I had a very difficult childhood and the only memories that stick out are the negative ones. I feel like my mother mentally abused me by telling me on multiple occassions that I had a “black soul”, not believing me when I was ill which led to an ambulance being called one evening, she criticised my appearance, my weight, my being… I didn’t feel safe and felt extremely suicidal for many years. She also physically hit me and scared me many times doing so, she threw a bowl of cereal in my face once when she got angry and smacked me, punched me in the arms, cut up my clothes, locked me in the bathroom. We just had endless arguments that always resulted in some physical or emotional violence that I then started to participate in when I got older. I eventually moved out when I turned 16.

Now, almost 10 years later I am struggling to be open, kind and accepting of her for who she is. For the past 6 months I have been trying to maintain a regular and open communication with her but it recently broke down as a lot of thoughts and feelings I was having towards her came out in one big explosion.

My main thoughts when I think about her is that “she operates from a place of fear” – “she doesn’t acknowledge how her actions affected me growing up” – “she’s so dumb” – “I can’t believe she said that, that’s so typical” – “she’s so hateful” – “she’s so critical”. Through my thought download I can see that I am really judging her quite harshly. I find it difficult to strike a balance between accepting her but not feeling like I’m letting her get away with how she treated me.

I do not want to feel like a victim any longer and I am trying to process my feelings and allow them to come. I guess my question is, have I identified the next step? Should I be working on my thoughts around her or am I missing another issue here? I feel just quite confused as to how I should proceed. I love her but I also really still feel so much hate for everything that happened. I just don’t want to feel triggered by her anymore when she says things that make me think she’s “criticising me” or criticising others when I feel like she has no right to say or do anything hateful. Thank you for taking the time to read this.