lw, i hope you can feel the strength of the supportive letters you've received and of cary's most excellent advice.

my own situation carries many similar details. and though i understood, eventually, exactly what events in her own childhood had shaped my mother into a cruel tyrant, this did not stop me from wanting or needing the love she withheld.

I moved 400 miles away. I found a good therapist, and gradually, i began to develop the ability to listen to my own voice rather than the critical one that had been "installed" in me in my childhood home. now my own voice is the default, as it were.

One particular experience stands out. I was taking a turn on the night shift, sleeping on the floor next to my mother's bed a week before she died. i had vowed never to spend another night under that roof, and yet, there i was. she lay so near, and i could hear her labored breathing. as i settled in, i felt the most incredible weight lifting from my body, and i realized that she would never ever hurt me again. never. but your mother does not have to die for you to achieve this freedom.

all the things i did before that moment helped to sustain me. i bought a doll who looks a little like me, and she sits in a chair in my bedroom. sometimes, as others have suggested here, i talk to her as if she is me at a younger age. i tell her she is safe now, that she made it; that she is strong and powerful and a good mother who broke the chain of love deprivation. i reread the book _toxic parents_. i have in the bathroom two magnets that i view every moring: I decided to accept as true my own thinking-- a quote from georgia o'keeffe; and another that says i bless my sacred self, author unknown.

and i have this posted in several places at work and at home where i see it frequently:

Raymond Carver - Late Fragment

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

*****

please pay no heed to the people who tell you to get over yourself and be grateful. you may eventually do that. but right now your instincts for self protection are a great gift. listen to THAT. you are already well on your road, it is just hard to see that from where you are now. you will get there. peace to you.

Just once I'd like to see/hear the guy say, "My wife is not here because I asked her not to be. She doesn't deserve to be publicly humiliated for my transgressions, and just about the only thing I can do for her now is spare her that. I stand here alone because I do not deserve her at my side in front of the world after the way I have betrayed my sacred vow to her as well as my oath of office."

but, it'll be a cold day in hades when that happens, eh?

what??? no neverending story? no princess bride? no the day the earth stood still??

no parent trap? no fly away home?

sigh.

she did a fantastic job tonight. spot on.

i think she's great but i didn't vote for her because i believe that she would never be given a fair chance to do the things she wants to do. it isn't her; it's the current culture and time, along with a boatload of perceived baggage from bill's terms as president in the minds of some people. she'd have to spend too much time fighting on two fronts: those perceptions, and the status quo.

there are a half dozen roles in the obama administration in which she would have the ability to make the changes she has fought so hard and so long for. we havent, thank goodness, seen the last of her.

about 24 years ago one of my unmarried fashionista sisters gave my six year old daughter a barbie. the horrors! i couldn't believe it! well, after about a week, barbie got "disappeared" and daughter went back to her interest in lincoln logs and books. she knows now that i was the culprit, and laughs about it. but then, i'm also the mom who made my then-husband stay up on xmas eve to cut all the guns off of the plastic toy soldiers so my boy could play army, without any guns.

why, yes, i did come of age in the 60s. did you doubt it?

i would still say no barbies and no guns. whatever rationalization is put forward, it still matters what things kids have in their everyday environment, and what things are sanctioned--or NOT--by their parents.

"everybody does it" is just as lame an excuse as it's always been.

i'm a single person with a small hardside popup which i tow with a small suv. i use mine at least once a month, and i'm not retired. i can't imagine what people are doing in those giant rvs, but when i'm camping, i rarely see them outside.

check out chaletrv or aliner. like the above poster mentions, they are easy to tow, easy to store, easy on the mileage.

that sure brought a smile of remembrance. when my daughter (who'll be 30 this month) was about 3, she walked into the bathroom as her dad was getting out of the shower. her face got this stricken look, and with a tone of sincere sympathy, she said, "daddy, what happened to your vagina?"