I echo the admiration here for your emotional maturity, LW, in being able to recognize and state your feelings with such clarity. Cary is on target about how often these feelings are misdirected into a miasmic haze of self-destructive behavior.

Our culture comes weighted with a kind of shame associated with not “worshipping” our relatives – be it Uncle Tim who is constantly drunk and verbally abusive at every family gathering, or a selfish, myopic parent who can’t help but to undermine our self-worth – we’re “supposed” to include them in our lives by virtue of the accident of shared DNA. F*ck that.

The beauty of being a separate self is that you get to decide who to include in your life. Please go ahead and give yourself permission to choose people whose company you find at minimum tolerable, preferably pleasant, better yet supportive, and jackpot – caring and loving.

Ask yourself these questions: “If I were not related to this woman, would I bother with her? If I met her in a social setting, is she someone I would like or find interesting?” I suspect the answer now is “no.” Maybe the answer could change in the future, maybe not.

She abandoned you before you had the ability not to need her. Now you have the power and wherewithal to decide to include her in your life or not. I suspect she’s in for a shock when it dawns on her that you have a set of legs too, and can use them to walk away.

Try, however, to make sure you’re not simply settling a score, though that’s what she may deserve. Ultimately, punishing her won’t really make you feel better. Base your choices on what is good for you, not bad for her. There isn’t anything in the tone of your letter that worries me that your intention is to inflict reciprocal pain, but try to be the better person – which is a lot to ask, I know.

You’re going to be setting yourself up to take some heat from those who disapprove of your choices as you distance yourself further. Be able to be firm in your own heart and mind that those people’s opinions don’t matter because you will know that you are above reproach: You had specific reasons for your actions, and they weren’t petty or meant to continue the cycle of pain, but rather rescue yourself from it.

Our feelings are fluid throughout our lives. You have no need to assume that time and perspective will or will not change how you feel. You also have no obligation to force yourself to summon into existence any kind of facsimile of “daughterly devotion.”

When you find people in your life who don’t consistently let you down, you will do what many of us do in this culture nowadays – you will form your own loose family group. Chances are few or none of those people will be related by DNA, but you will love them as if they are (or sometimes a lot more), and they will love you too.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the first question of the stunned citizenry of this country was a collective “Why did this horrible thing happen?” We were immediately told to stop asking. Considering any reason beyond “they hate us for our freedom” turned into a question asked only by those who “Blame America First!”

Mr. Ellsberg mentions Imperial Hubris by ex-CIA employee and former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer. Books such as his have been available and the information they contain is not exactly secret. Did we have military bases on the Arabian Peninsula? Yes. Was this making the average Saudi citizen happy with the U.S. government? No. It’s not that there are no puzzle pieces out there or people putting them together and trying to make others aware of them.

As Scheuer points out in Imperial Hubris, not a single fact he elucidates is classified or unavailable to the public. The difficulty is not that whistles aren’t being blown, it’s that most of the public and the politicians we elect (assuming…) have been deafened to the point of apathy.

This administration blatantly admits to what they do. “Yes. We wiretap without warrants. You busted us. So what?” And therein lies the problem. It’s not that whistles aren’t blown, it’s that when they are, the administration responds with “neener-neener-neener.” Life goes on, and everyone goes out for a burger and fries or throws in a load of laundry. We’re not being lied to. We’re being told the truth, and that we’ll eat it and like it. And for some reason, most folks just shrug.