Should I tell my 80 year old mother how bad she hurt me?
Hi, new to this forum , but looking for some healing. My mother was a "joan crawford--mommie Dearest type of women.---looking back , I know now she was borderline personality disorder mother. we were 4 kids growing up in the 50's and 60's --living in fear of upseting "mother". my father worked 6 days a week to put all of us threw college --he was such a sweet nice man--who did not know how to handle my mother. If I could be mad at my father--which I was--that he did not know what was going on at home. the mental abuse our mother was giving us. Every day she told us how worthless we were--we did not have alot of money--but we were good catholics--prayed to god--loved our neighbors--I am the 3rd child born--my father named me after my mother insisted on naming my brother and sister--i think my mother hated that. 2 years before my father died at 75 years old--he got me alone and asked me "what happened here that everyone is mad and mixed up?" . I could not tell him---I just said you dont want to know Dad. I knew he would not divorce mother and it would just come back to me somehow. Being very shy --didn't talk the first 2 years of schooling--by some shock of life I got elected to homecoming queen my junior year of high school. I--at 48 years old---go over that scene when I came home and my mother was washing dishes--I say "mom. I got homecoming queen! Can you believe that?" she turned slowly at me and said--"how could you get that?--no one at our church likes you karen! I burst out crying went to my room and never talked about it again. I feel I always hold that resentment what she said--even though I am not 17 years old anymore. Should I just let it go or get it off my chest?