Thanks for sharing all of that. I enjoyed reading it and learning more about you and your mom. It inspires me to dig deeper.

I resonated most strongly with, "I felt like an equal instead of her child." It is similar to what I would often think of my mom, but more so that I was the adult in many ways. I remember worrying about her a lot all through out my childhood. She would get physically sick (her bowels) whenever she was upset and have to rush to the toilet. It was a dark cloud constantly over our heads not to "rock the boat". She even told me that when I was a toddler I used to comfort her and cuddle her when she'd be sick on the toilet. As an adult, I can't imagine allowing my child comforting me like that.

I also remember trying to please her and be really loyal so she would not be hurt. She divorced my dad when I was very young and I felt I couldn't love my dad as much as her, or enjoy my time with him or it would hurt her. I felt that it would be disloyal to be happy at all if I was with anyone other than her.

So by the time I was able to truly start separating myself from her (when I was nearly 30), I developed an aversion. I could find no other way to break the many etheric cords that ran between us and kept me so unhappy and hampered. I remember when I learned the meditative technique of releasing the cords that bind us to each other. Many times I'd picture the cord from someone running to me and sticking into my flesh like a cork. I'd pluck it out and then pluck another. But when I envisioned the cords that ran from my mother to me, instead of corks they had big hooks on the end that were buried deep into my meat. Each session of meditation I would try to figure out the best ways to get the hooks out of me. I would envision sometimes just ripping them out. I envisioned cutting the cords, but it worried me that the hook was still in there. So I tried imagining the hooks to straighten like a nail so they could slide out. And I also tried seeing them disintegrate. Mostly in the end I just pulled them out and tried not to focus on the ripping.

I've done many hard things in my life (haven't we all), but the hardest has been the times, especially the final time, that I cut myself off from my mom so none of the old hooks would find their way back in.