It's just so sad

I can't imagine that your mother did anything to deserve THAT kind of treatment. Surely you would have seen it yourself if your mom was the problem. My own mother really was the problem (severe issues, which I outlined in a post above) and yet I was ready to forgive her throughout my life but she was the one who wanted to hold onto the anger. Of course, she was mentally ill and alcoholic so I really should not characterize anything as a "grudge" since it was nothing of the sort, just her illness talking. I don't talk much about my father but he was even worse in my opinion; not worth going into though. My point being, most children do grow up into adults who are capable of realizing their parents shortcomings and to love them anyway and forgive them. Unless a parent continues to be toxic, I think it's important to try to see things from their point of view when you are no longer a child. Was mom going through menopause when she got strident? Was dad dealing with the loss of his job when he became indifferent? Were they overwhelmed with XYZ when they developed a habit of speaking harshly or punishing too much? Etc.

I have a normal sister and a crazy sister. My older sisters were best of friends all through high school and college. I was close to them both as the baby sister. Well around age 30, my crazy sister just went off the deep end. No one knows why. Suddenly she was wacko AND malevolent. Suddenly she hated both of us. Nothing happened to precipitate this. Suddenly she was doing bizarre things like attacking us in writing and by phone and then started looking up the contact info of our friends and calling THEM and writing to THEM, which caused confusion and embarrassment all around. Clearly she had lost her mind and would not seek help. We anguished over this situation for a decade, reaching out to her repeatedly even though she was a snake. Suddenly she rewrote history and said my normal sister had been evil to her all her life (so untrue!!). . . bla bla bla. We finally had to write her off and it was very sad because we had been close as children/teens but it was the right thing to do. I tend to think that mental illness is pervasive in our society and not always recognized for what it is, and even when it is recognized, what can you do if the person will not seek or accept professional help? Clearly we could not allow her in our lives.

One time a while back, I stumbled accidentally onto a forum of parents of adult children who hated them. I can't remember what I was googling for to end up there - it had nothing to do with the boys as they weren't even born yet. Maybe I was researching something relating to my own feelings toward my parents. Anyway it was so incredibly heartbreaking as these parents, mostly mothers, told their stories of how their children hated them and sometimes there was a trumped up reason and other times it was a total mystery. Of course, I realize that I only heard one side of the story but many of the things that were being described simply sounded to me like mental illness or extreme spoiled-bratness. In other words, I was willing to take a lot of what I read at face value and unless these mothers were bald faced liars, even if they did something not-so-perfect, they didn't deserve the treatment they were getting. It was just heartbreaking, like I said, because I think it is hardwired into mothers to love their offspring deeply and to be rejected like that and HATED is just terrible.