Dear Mother,

Another American Mother’s Day is approaching and I am still unraveling the web of contracts you spent my entire life trying to weave.  I can’t even imagine how much energy and time you spent attempting to limit my life.  Seriously, people have used that same energy and time to create amazing things in the world.  People have worked that hard to break records, win Olympic gold medals or become nominated for Nobel peace prizes.  But you can say you have used your skills to manipulate others on a grand scale.  Congratulations on your momentous feat!  You have wasted your life trying to keep others small.  You have wasted your life swimming in your own fear and attempting to make everyone else do it too.  What a HUGE waste of a life!

But I have some very important information for you here.  You aren’t going to succeed in my case.  It might be taking me years of hard work to undo the unconscious traps you set up in my system.  But I am going to do it.  I am going to release all these contracts and live the life I was supposed to live.  It will be a bigger life than yours.  It won’t be mired in darkness anymore.  There will be beauty and love and compassion.  I will have all the things you tried to steal from me with your brainwashing and programming.  I won’t let my inner parts stay in this way of thinking.  You don’t get to tell me how to live anymore.  You don’t get to be in charge of my life now.  My life belongs to me.

With each step I take into my unconscious, I discover another layer of your evil.  I started this journey believing you were somewhat innocent.  I had myself convinced you didn’t know what was happening to me.  I wanted to believe that was true.  As time went on, I realized I had to give up that story.  I knew you knew.  There were memories of you facilitating my abuse.  And then, I discovered how you had trafficked me.  But I still made excuses for you.  I convinced myself you were a victim who was scared of these men and needing money to survive.  I still somehow made you a victim.  You weren’t in my life anymore, but I still wanted to give you space to be that victim.  But this past month, I have been uncovering another layer of your hateful practices.  And I am realizing you spent my childhood trying to set me up for an awful life, a life just like yours.  While I may have already remembered some of these things, I now see it was all a plan from the start.  So now I am calling you out and writing you off on a deeper level.  While I didn’t think it was possible, the ties are severed even more.  What have I discovered?

You tried to tell me that I would never be able to have a home of my own.  Every time I did a household chore, you were there to tell me I did it wrong.  You insulted my efforts and told me I would never succeed at anything in adulthood.  You gave me impossible tasks so you could tell me I was a failure at anything I did.  If I did them right, you would find a way to sabotage it.  You teased me for being bad at things you never taught me to do.  You said I could not cook or clean or take care of kids.  Of course not.  I was 10.  And nobody taught me any of these things.  But now it was stuck in my unconscious.  Now I was filled with hopelessness that I would never be able to have my own household.

You sabotaged my friendships and intimate relationships so that I would know I had no other choice but to stay with you.  You involved yourself in all my relationships and drove a wedge between me and every person I thought I could become close to.  You ended relationships by suggesting I was a whore.  My own mother called me a whore.  I guess that made sense since you were selling me.  But seriously.  Do you realize how horrible that makes you look?  They probably left my life more because they didn’t want to get involved in my ridiculous family.  In some cases, you convinced some of my “friends” to spy on me and give you information.  There were even some situations where you paid people to do this for you.  That is seriously sick.  And you created a hopelessness in me saying there was no point in relating to others anymore.  Honestly, I started to believe it was safer for others if I stayed away from them.

And you were desperate to convince me I would never have or raise kids.  You used to tease me about my body and the problems I had with it (all due to my horrific sexual abuse of course).  You told me it would never work right.  You let me know I would never be a real woman.  And you signed me up for impossible child care jobs at young ages so you could show me how bad I was at it.  Not surprisingly, I needed some fertility assistance to get pregnant which felt like a stab in the heart.  When my twins were born small, you let me know that was all my fault too. I was desperate for them to grow and you knew it.  How did you help?  You started watering down their formula when I was sleeping (until I caught you).  You are a disgusting human being who endangered the health of your grandchildren to further “prove your point” and control your daughter.  I was left with the futility of not having the capacity to bring children into this world.  And I have had to fight through it every day to be a good mother.

So I’ll see you never.  I am done living a life where I am constantly trying to get past your contracts.  I am removing myself from your control and your limits.  I am going to live the life I want to live.  I am going to have beautiful relationships.  I am going to raise my kids and their most basic needs.  They will feel safe.  I am going to have a beautiful household with plenty of imperfections but nobody yelling at me about them.  And you are going to sit and stew in your darkness.  And that’s okay with me.  See you never.

Beth