Love and thanks

Love and thanks
Tuesday July 11, 2006

I am living in Korea, far from family and close, long-standing friends, without access to therapists with a sufficient command of my first language. I have, for the last two years, stopped speaking to my mother: in one fell swoop, I realised that we’ve been living a lie my whole adult life, being ‘best friends’, and have both been pretending to forget what terrible parenting she gave me.

The realisation may have seemed to come all at once, but dealing with the aftermath of it: with her attacks, recriminations, and resurrection of nasty tactics from the past, when I said I wanted time away from her to clear my head; with trying to come to a deeper understanding about the past so I can make a better fist of my future; have been far slower, more difficult, more painful processes.

Without your knowing it, you have held my hand and whispered in my ear these past few years. You have been my friend, my counselllor, my pillar, my parent – the one I’ve wished I’d had. You have been my enlightened witness. Through your wisdom and work, this has become the best, most valuable work I’ve ever undertaken. I cannot begin to think how to thank you. So I will just say – thank you. Thank you.

Dr R. M.

AM: Thank you so much for your warm words. I am glad that my books gave you the support you needed when you realized that you were “living a lie”. Such a realization is very painful and you need a witness in the process, of course. But it is also very much liberating. You are coming out of the prison that was invisible to you until then. Congratulations, Alice Miller