Looking back it seems so obvious. Right now I’m feeling glad my mom sent my daughter a picture of her ex-boyfriend on her wedding day. I am angry, upset, confused, and sickened by it too. But what I am glad about is that this has been a wake up call for me. Anything else I could accept or take, but not this.

My whole life my mom has been manipulative and controlling. She had a way of making me feel guilty for not wanting to be the person she wanted me to be. She didn’t like my friends, my hobbies, the music I liked or the clothes I picked out to wear. She didn’t even like my husband when she met him and tried to set me up with my ex-boyfriend. Nothing was wrong with my choices, she just didn’t like them and made me feel bad for wanting something different.

She wanted to be the favorite grandma to my kids and often bought them expensive gifts the other grandma couldn’t afford. She used her money to control. She used guilt. She always tried to push back on boundaries. Her favorite cards to play are victim, martyr, and heroine.

I was thinking a lot the last couple days and I have a lot more thinking to do. The main reason why I was angry at my siblings in the past and more recently with my Aunt Jan was because of things my mom said they said about me or my family. There is a hint of truth in what she says, but she exaggerates it causing drama. I can’t believe anything she says.

My mom always wants to be the center of attention. She was angry she didn’t get to sit facing the head table. She was probably upset my dad couldn’t be there. She was probably upset my brother Matt couldn’t go to the ceremony. But what I think really upset her was the fact that I stood up in my daughter’s wedding. Lately she has been making passive aggressive comments towards me in jealousy. She is never happy for me. It must be nice that you get to do things I never got to do…

I am trying to turn something negative into a positive. Don’t get me wrong, I am still pretty upset by what she did. In some ways it has been freeing.

Here are the ways I am going to deal with it in the future:

1. I am going to talk to safe people as a sounding board. I am going to talk to my therapist about how to deal with this.
2. I am going to be writing about it and processing it.
3. I am letting go of my anger towards my aunt and other people my mom told me said bad things about me. Part of this is on me. I took my mom’s word to be true. Instead I should have called my aunt and worked any potential conflict and hurt feelings out with her directly.
4. I am going to communicate better with my brothers instead of having my mom relay messages. Last night I talked to my brother Luke for an hour and cleared some things up.
5. My mom is a toxic person and I want to limit my contact with her to twice a month. This is going to be really hard because she walks all over my boundaries.
6. I want to be more genuine to myself around her.

These are all thoughts off the top of my head. I’m sure I will be thinking about it a lot more over the next several weeks. This has been a very eye opening experience for me and I’m just starting to process another layer of garbage in my life.