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Dear Care and Feeding,

I am so sad. My youngest daughter, E (29), is very much estranged from me but requires me to see her a few times during the year. This causes me much distress, but I want to remain present when she wants me to be there. The issue I am having is that she always throws me an offhand comment that has double meanings during these times. Her words hurt me very much. Up until yesterday, I have mostly not acknowledged them. But she stated, “I basically raised myself from 13 on.” I have recently realized that I had made some bad and uncharacteristic decisions from her thirteenth year up to about six months ago. I have had some great revelations in therapy and feel very grounded and future-focused. She’s in therapy too, and I know I am the reason for that.

But she does not want to forgive me. She wants to continue to punish me. I can learn to sit there and take it, allowing her to “get it off her chest,” but how do I deal with the dread that she will not come around and begin to let our relationship to heal? This makes me sadder than anything I ever felt before. I have her in my life in a primarily negative way. This last pushback by me (basically agreeing that I was not the mom she deserved) was not met well. What now?

—Any Chance Again

Dear Any Chance,

You say that you engaged in negative behavior that harmed your daughter over half of her life, up to as recently as six months ago. It’s unreasonable for you to expect her to be ready to forgive you this soon. She is still coming to terms with what your actions meant and how they’ve impacted her, and she’ll be doing that work for years. That doesn’t mean you can’t try and have a better relationship with her, but you have to be willing to understand if that’s not possible at this time. Let her know that you understand that she has many reasons to be upset with you, and that you want to be accountable for how you may have harmed her or fallen short as a parent. Ask her if you all can designate some time to discuss her issues with you. If she turns you down, keep making yourself available to have those conversations until hopefully, she’s ready to speak with you at length.

In the meantime, you’re going to have to accept the fact that until she has found it in her heart to try and forgive you, she is likely going to bring up things that went wrong in the past on a regular basis. I would imagine that when she was 13, she didn’t have the language to address her issues with you; today she does and she has the right to express what’s in her heart. You owe it to her to hear her out, even when it’s uncomfortable. Don’t become defensive or discount her experiences. Let her know that you hear her, you acknowledge what you’ve done, and that you’re sorry.

You can let your daughter know now that you’d like to build a better relationship with her in spite of what’s transpired, but you can’t make her ready for that if she isn’t. Tell her that you want to do all you can to be the parent she deserves now, and let her process her frustrations with you as she sees fit. Hopefully, you have cast aside the behaviors you once engaged in and can prove to her with your actions that you’re a better person today than you were in the past.

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So much to say!

1. The decisions you've made for more than a decade and a half are not "uncharacteristic". Please look that word up in a dictionary, LW, and accept that whatever you did, that's your character.

2. You've only made this realization that you suck six months ago and you expect to already be forgiven? LW, get more therapy.

3. If you have visits with your daughter more than once a year, you're not estranged. You're semi-estranged at best.

And the only thing I will say in defense of LW, who really, really sucks -

4. While you have no right to demand forgiveness on your wildly accelerated timeframe, you do have a right to say "Listen, E, I understand why you can't forgive me, but I can't keep visiting you if you're going to keep rehashing all the terrible things I've done. I know they were terrible, and I'm sorry, but if you only want to see me to dump that back on me maybe it's better for both of us if we stop doing this."

Because, honestly, maybe it is better for both of them. Whatever response E is hoping to get from those comments, she's not going to get them from LW, and poking around for it is not helping either one of them.

Nothing that a person did for sixteen years, ending six months ago, is "uncharacteristic" of them.

I will stipulate that it's not how LW wants to behave in the future, but six months isn't a long time, to let her be confident (rather than hopeful) that she won't slip back into the unspecified bad behavior. It certainly isn't much of a basis to expect someone else to be confident of that. The fact that LW phrases her worry as "dread that she will not come around and begin to let our relationship to heal" sounds like she wants to say that she's sorry, and have the relationship magically improve.

...Daughter is already taking steps to "come around and begin to let our relationship heal." Shes's meeting with mom twice a year. They're talking about their shared past. Mom is upset because they're uncomfortable conversations. As long as mom is convinced that daughter is "punishing her" by telling her what she thinks and feels, this situation is not likely to change.

LW should shut up and count her blessings. Most adult women who decide their mom messed up horribly for years, just cut off all contact.

Most adult women who decide their mom messed up horribly for years, just cut off all contact.

Eventually, many do. It takes a lot a long time to get to that point, even if what they did was really bad.

Yep. I haven't spoken with my mother for over 15 years and have no intention of changing that. (What she did was not so much "really bad" as "consistently bad for me." At some point I realized I couldn't remember a single conversation with her that didn't have the focus of "let me tell you how to fix your fucked-up life." And she hates my husband.)

It's clear that LW still isn't ready to accept that her awful decisions harmed her daughter, because she continues to call those decisions "uncharacteristic." What does that mean? That LW never "meant" them? Because LW certainly meant what she did/said at the time. LW has to own what she did before she can begin to ask forgiveness.

I have had some great revelations in therapy and feel very grounded and future-focused. She’s in therapy too, and I know I am the reason for that.

LW also needs to realize that she can't control how fast or how much (or if) her daughter will heal. Saying sorry is only the first step. LW must work to regain her daughter's trust--that will take time, and patience, and LW must be prepared to accept that it might never happen.

Why does "feel very grounded and future-focused" sound like "I'm over it so she should be too"?

Yeah, I think that's exactly what it means. "Ohhh, this is what daughter was talking about! Well, that wasn't really me. Solved!" (Makes Colbert grabby-hands.) "Forgiveness, please!"

I'm stuck on "requires me to see her a few times during the year." LW, do you want to see your daughter or not?? If not . . . don't go? Your daughter cannot "require" anything of you. You both have the agency to step away here.

I really like that the columnist called out the 16 years of "uncharacteristic" behavior and didn't coddle the LW.

I think LW needs some more big revelations in therapy. Maybe some things like, "no one owes you forgiveness" and "intention doesn't erase impact."

Or maybe even "it's not the victim's job to console and soothe the wrongdoer's injured sense of self. Do better because it's the right thing to do, not because you think it makes someone obligated to forgive you and invite you back into their heart."

Also, I find this part really infuriating:
She wants to continue to punish me. I can learn to sit there and take it, allowing her to “get it off her chest,”

It's so... disingenuous and self-absorbed. It's "Poor sad me, but I must Endure her painful attacks on my person as penance! For wrongs I will be very vague about and not quite admit to, but thinking about it makes me really sad, which is the important thing here!" It's a profound refusal to take LW's daughter seriously or LISTEN to her, characterizing telling the truth about her own childhood as petty cruelty meant to hurt LW.

Maybe what she wants isn't to "punish" you, LW - maybe what she wants is to COMMUNICATE AND BE HEARD. But you can't hear her over the sound of your own martyrdom.

I think LW needs some more big revelations in therapy. Maybe some things like, "no one owes you forgiveness" and "intention doesn't erase impact."

Or maybe even "it's not the victim's job to console and soothe the wrongdoer's injured sense of self. Do better because it's the right thing to do, not because you think it makes someone obligated to forgive you and invite you back into their heart."

Let’s add: “As a direct consequence of your ongoing past behavior, you are on probation. Perhaps permanently.”

As well as: “Your redemption is not hostage to someone else’s forgiveness.”

Not to mention: “‘Claiming a change of heart and promising that things will be ever so much better if only you’d forgive and forget’ is a stock Abuser Bingo Square”—-and therefore something LW’s daughter may regard as an additional red flag.

Look, LW, 16 years is more than half your daughter's life. You're looking at "uncharacteristic" from the perspective of your whole life. Your daughter, who was only present for 13 years of your "characteristic" life, and likely only remembers 7 or so of those years with particular clarity -- I am sorry to say that the past 16 years are what your daughter has learned to expect of you, based on nothing more than your actual behavior. And, also unfortunately, some people encounter circumstances in life that make a permanent change in their character. Give your daughter some time. Once your change of heart -- and behavior -- has been steady for 17 years, then you'd have more room for feeling that your daughter is being unfair.

and "basically agreeing that I was not the mom she deserved" -- who wants to bet that it was a "You're RIGHT, I'm actually THE WORST person in the world! I'm TERRIBLE!" and so on?

oh god I didn't even think about that interpretation of 'not being the mom she deserved,' I was just thinking about how vague it was and how she needs to own up to specifics. But that could easily be what happened. Yikes.

I wonder if LR apologized in the first place, or just sat there and agreed. If it's the latter, the daughter probably doesn't even know her mom's ready to look the shit she did in the eye and deal with it.

Anyway, she hasn't cut LW off. That's about as good as it gets. You can't make people be where you are about something involving trauma, or anything else really, especially something you inflicted. You could suggest family therapy, I guess? But like. Very sporadically.