While plowing forwards, I came across the concept of “living backwards” (C.A. Lawson, 2000). Pausing to think this through, I am reminded of an analogy I often share with my clients, “Emotional healing is just like physical healing from a deep wound. Scabs form, fall off, smaller scabs form and fall off, the process continuing as the deep wounding heals.”

Throughout this series, I have been bringing up painful memories, grieving and healing, and now I find some residual memories popup to the surface for me to explore, bringing further healing.

I share some insights, with the hope and belief you will be helped on your healing journey:
– Before understanding myself, I must first understand my Mother and see her darkness. Stop idealizing abusiveness, and acknowledge the absurdity of trusting someone, never knowing what she was going to do or say.

– Ignore comments from others that encourage repression of your legitimate anger and pain. Although well meaning, the following are simply not true: “Your mother loves you.” “That’s just the way she is.” “She didn’t mean it.” “She can’t help it. “

– She was a pretend mother, seeing the world differently, driven by need to control, creating drama, driven by her continual need for fuel, driven by her narcissism, never taking responsibility for problems she created.

– I am reminded of something my therapist said to me during the first few minutes of my first session, “You would never act like that to your own children, so why do you tolerate deception, cruelty and mistreatment from your Mother?”

– Stop being preoccupied, ruminating the meaning of interactions. This only stimulates visceral reactions which can be unbearable as the brain struggles to process two conflicting experience. Be assertive and believe in your goodness to reroute neural pathways.

– I have learned to express emotions, mourning with genuine sadness the losses experienced in my own childhood, no longer repressing pain and rage, grieving, but not drowning in grief, untangling the complex web of our relationship.

“Borderline Mother’s are not evil; evil lies in the darkness of unawareness. They cannot see what they are doing. Those of us who can see must shine the light of our understanding like a beacon guiding a ship to harbor, or share in the responsibility of allowing mothers to drown their own children in a sea of despair.” (C.A. Lawson, 2000, pg. 307)

Just as therapy is talking about things you prefer not to dredge up and think about, for those with a Borderline Personality Mother (BPD), you must face the secret truth about your family, your feelings and the impact on yourself.

These insights would have been most helpful for me while caring for Mother during her last five years of life. Driven by her fear of abandonment, she needed me more than I needed her, giving me the power to structure our relationship around my needs, which becomes “living life backwards.”