FORGIVENESS

God forgive me, it has taken me years to forgive my mother. Perhaps it took a couple bouts of situational depression and post-menopausal anxiety to lead me to forgiveness. I have forgiven her. I don't deny she could have done better. I don't agree with NC that she did the best she could. But, mental illness was such a conundrum in the 50s and 60s. Electro-shock treatment and talk therapy. It's such a blessing to live in this age of SSRIs and Ativan and stronger stuff I never want to know about.

And, now we accept mental illness as an illness--treatable, and we seem to be able to give grace to those who suffer. Everyone in this culture is over-stimulated, over-worked, under-loved, under-appreciated. Medication helps, it doesn't cure.

"Why can't she forgive her? Maybe in part, she thinks, because her mother's way of getting old, this retreat into ... senility, is only the exaggeration of that earlier retreat into depression or despair or whatever it was that denied responsibility or the importance of her connection to Lottie and Cameron."
For Love
by Sue Miller

"Yes my childhood may have been somewhat bad, but my parents did the best they could..." (detachment)
Whitfield, again