Reasons not to reconcile with your estranged mother

You feel pressured to reconcile.

If any of this is happening to you:

• Being criticized by society/family/mutuals
• Guilt-tripping and projection (e.g. “My mom made a lot of mistakes, too, but she raised us with LOVE. No parent is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.”)
• Reminiscing about the good days, missing them and wanting those back in your life

You’re being pressured.

Ending mother-daughter estrangement should be made when both parties are clear-headed. You can only ascertain your mind is clear, not tainted by guilt or nostalgia.

You miss the concept or ideal.

Waxing nostalgia is fine and dandy when you’re aware it’s nostalgic for a reason.

Your mother is not the concept or ideal, she’s the reality. And reality bites for a reason.

I miss the concept of a loving mother/the ideal mother — which, contrary to projected opinions, is not the concept of a “perfect” mother!

Accepting that my mother would never meet the concept for/to me (i.e. perhaps she could to my siblings) helped me separate concept/imagination from reality.

You hope she has changed.

My housemate has two cats. One is fine being held. The other is a tortoiseshell princess who hates being held. I can hope she will change if I pick her up/hold her enough.

But the only one capable of truly changing is her. And she hasn’t. She’s a senior cat — like 12-14, I don’t remember — and hasn’t liked being held probably since she was a kitten, after she had to be manually fed.

When picked up, she throws a literal hissy fit.

So, yeah — I can hope she has changed each time, but her behavior communicates otherwise. And if I don’t listen to it, I’m gonna wind up getting bit.

You can hope your mother has changed, too. Maybe she has. Maybe she’s putting on an act.

Who knows? Either way, this is not a good reason for reconciliation. It’s way too shallow.

You think you want her in your life again.

People are not playthings to pickup when you want them and put them into the toybox when you’re done.

Not knowing for certain could end up causing more damage than intended.

To you, letting your mother back in is a will-I-or-won’t-I. Your mother may get her hopes up and wind up heartbroken if she truly looked forward to that.

Ending estrangement must be handled with care.

You’re not comfortable with truly healthy boundaries.

Spend time with pushy, manipulative people — maybe work in retail — and see how confident and comfortable you feel about maintaining your boundaries.

I thought my boundaries were golden, but I wasn’t surrounded by people clawing at them constantly.

Turns out sharing my boundaries is harder than it sounds!

You’re doing it for your kids.

No, no.

This is definitely NOT the reason to end estrangement. It’s not even a reason to prevent/avoid estrangement.

She’s sick.

People used to ask me all the time, “But wouldn’t you be there for her if she was on her deathbed?”

My answer was always a resounding “no”.

My mom had a knack for making up stories, though not the kind where she would write books for those stories. I’m the writer, not her.

She has made stories up about me my entire life. Reentering her life would mean answering questions about the stories she has been telling about me.

I also don’t know what is true verses what is her perception of reality. Because her perception gets twisted.

I can’t trust anything she says. It’s usually an exaggeration or ridiculing someone else’s character while holding herself up high, maybe even attending church to play the role of a sinner wanting to do better — without genuinely changing oneself.

Going back to my mother — letting her back into my life — because she is sick makes everything pointless. It gives her behavior a pass and downplays my choices.

I don’t owe my mother my sanity or energy or time or LIFE because she’s sick.

You’re sick.

Why did you estrange from your mother in the first place?

Would you trust her with your life?

What is the absolute worst thing she could do with your life, to you, in the event SHE had to make all the decisions for you/had control over you because you were incapacitated?

I realized what my family was capable of. And because it was her side of the family, I realized it was her, too. She married a man that embodied that capability.

I’m not telling you not to reconcile because you’re sick. Remember: You need to be clear-headed. Look at the situation objectively, rather than emotionally.

Maybe even go to a therapist or talk to a friend who truly cares about you and is NOT going to enable you to make life-shattering choices like reuniting with a woman who cares more about what people think of her than she does whether her daughter feels loved.

A decade ago I told my mom I was in the hospital for a serious medical condition. I wanted her to care. She came off as cold and uncaring, much like the version of her I’d experienced in my youth.

These days, I have nothing to gain out of it. I don’t trust her/them.

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If you choose not to reconnect with your no-contact mother, why?