YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I've been feeling adrift for the past few days, unsure how to feel. Here's what happening.

My mother physically (and to a lesser extent emotionally) abused me as a child. She also did a lot of things right that most mother's don't. Now in my 30s, I have depression and PTSD as a direct result of her abuse*. The strange part is we still have a relationship, she lives very close, and I'm generally nice to her. But I also cling very stubbornly to the idea of her confessing how wrong she was to do those things to me if I pushed for it.

3 years ago my mother was diagnosed with Parkinson's. She retired early to deal with it. Parkinson's is pretty rough, but her type is not life-threatening, and I had a hard time feeling sympathy. The doosy came 3 days ago when she got a biopsy for suspected breast cancer. It really hit her hard emotionally. My brutally honest-to-a-fault wife, on hearing this, said something rather shocking "So what if she does, she deserves it for all the shit she put you through." Turns out the biopsy was positive, and while it is a non-aggressive and easily curable form, she will need a mastectomy.

Now I'm not really sure what I should be feeling. She did so much right as a mother, yet I still bear small scars on my skin from what she did. I know she deserves to be punished for what she did, but I feel like an asshole being ok with her having these illnesses.

*My therapist rendered this diagnosis and attributed it to her abuse. I should mention he is considered one of the best psychologists in the US right now, a director of a major mental health institute and highly-sought after by other psychologists as a teacher. Sorry I know a lot of people probably believe me when I say I was abused, but part of my abuse was having my own point of view constantly invalidated along with the views of any professional who sided with me.

I think your feelings are natural and it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

You're definitely not an asshole for that. I think I'd feel the same way if I were in your position.

I think the shock you felt when your wife said what she did is proof that you're not a malicious person. You still have a relationship with your mother, even if it's not always positive, and you made sure to mention that your mother still did some things right when raising you. You just can't help feeling "avenged" because you never had any sort of closure and this seems like it's the only thing acknowledging what you were put through.

I do not believe in right and wrong feelings. I believe there are feelings that help move us toward our potential, feelings that hold us back, and feelings that are felt too strongly (aka beyond what the situation entails). Yet, ALL these feelings are valid.

Also it is not weird that you still have a relationship. If we completely avoid our parents, even though damaged, we neglect the better parts of them and do not honor the things they did right. It doesn't mean we cannot be angry at them for the negatives, or put up boundaries to protect ourselves.

I, too, had an abusive mother - but a very strong, protective, capable, and affectionate one. She was prone to rages and hitting, almost randomly...you never knew what would set her off. I lived for so long wishing for that apology, but is incapable of admitting guilt. I, too, wished horrible things about her. As a child I would walk to school, purposefully stepping on cracks to break my mother's back. Later, I learned a lot about my family history, talked to my aunts (her sisters) and my dad. It took a long time, but I eventually gained some understanding and lost the need for an apology. I started to include her a lot in my own family get togethers, and she and my wife became close (at first my mom would not even acknowledge she existed). She got to watch my wife and I parent our children (one with special needs). Finally, she tearfully said to my wife, "I see your family. I did so many things wrong as a mother." Of course, she would not tell this to me, but hearing it from my wife was nice.

So the irony was that when I lost the need for the apology, I got it, albeit a bit half assed.

I think the need for an apology is due to wanting to reclaim that lost childhood...like if they apologize, it will magically erase the shit they deposited into our souls. We have this unconscious wish that our parents will become the parents we want and need them to be. But that is impossible, because childhood is over, our parents are who they are, and an apology cannot change that. So I think we have to mourn the loss of a more ideal childhood and take our parents on face value.

What's fucking me up now, is the realization that my Dad, who was mostly a compassionate, brilliant, loving, and supportive person completely ignored the abuse because he could not deal with the reality of it. I brought this up to him, and he stonewalled. 4 months later he was diagnosed with cancer, and 4 months after that he was dead. I am SO pissed at him, and have no way to get that back.....the journey continues.