Thanks Yoga and others. To give you more background, my mum left of her own free will. My father got custody of myself and my sibling. We didn't see much of her after. Clearly the marriage had broken down badly enough for her to need to get away. I was somewhere in my mid/late 30s when I cut her off and already knew the story of why she left. But as I said previously I never held that against her. What I did judge her for was her behaviour throughout the years since. Long before I actually cut her off I had already 'made peace' with my decision, that if I cut her off I would never hear from her again and that yes, she would die and I would probably not even be told about it. I had completely accepted this would be the outcome. Cutting her off was something I only did after a couple of decades of serious thought. I have no questions regarding what went before, she behaved how she behaved because that's how she was. I never judged her for leaving us as kids, what I judged her for were the numerous occasions throughout my adult life when she had opportunity to make amends but only hurt me. Things that give an insight into her character are my wedding. Myself and my fiance paid for the wedding but my mum wanted to dictate that we had the wedding in a tiny chapel near her house (an area with no other family she'd only recently moved to & we had no links to - in the middle of nowhere. We live in a city where 90% of the wedding guests were coming from. It just didn't make sense carting everyone miles to a place no-one else had a link to except her. Despite us opening a bank account & paying in 10k that she could spend doing 'the mother thing' with flowers etc, she refused to get involved. On my wedding day she was very sour. It was acutely painful for her. When I was away on honeymoon in the Caribbean, I phoned her all excited to tell her I'd just had a ride around the coral reef in a submarine & she sounded happy & excited for me. Yet when I got home & my husband carried me over the threshold, there was a letter from her on the mat saying my wedding day had been 'the worst day of her life & that I had my nan to thank she bothered to turn up at all!' - an horrendous welcome home letter! I was devasted. She was angry I had 'ridden roughshod over her wishes'. In my book, whose wedding was it? Then there was the time I was in early labour with my 2nd child, she was up for the weekend. I begged her not to go home but to stay with me for the birth. She left. She was halfway down the motorway when I phoned her to say I was leaving for hospital. She didn't turn around and come back. I was gutted. There was nothing special she had to get home for and even if there was, I think your daughter giving birth trumps anything else! Her house has a cold ambience & it took me years to realise, it wasn't just the furnishings I didn't fancy much, it was the lack of loving atmosphere that killed it for me. I suffered a lot of neglect as a child. I often had to starve for 2-3 days as it wasn't safe to eat, something that left me with lifelong food issues (that I've done very well to manage). On the odd occasions she did take me & my sibling out she should have seen we looked malnourished. I look back on photographs of that time now as a mother myself and am horrified at the pathetic skeleton in dresses that I was. Where was the love? The nurture? It is the job of every mother to unconditionally nurture her child. Through my young adult years my mum was often pissed off with my happiness. When I first worked I used to come home on a high because I'd had such a great time. She would snap at me 'It's not like that in the real world' - but it was my real world. It was a real job with real responsibilities. As a 19/20yo she used to get me to do housework etc, fair enough, but she used to pass it off to my step-dad as her own work. I never knew this until she got caught out one night when she wanted to go out & he didn't want her to go. She said 'why not, the ironing's done?' & he said 'Ahh but, you didn't do it did you?' Then he proceeded to tell her he could always tell who'd done the ironing because we both did it differently. The lowest moment came for me at 21. On her account I almost killed myself, it was a miracle my life was saved. She was angry with me I'd walked away from university (I was pushed into a subject I had no apptitude for & was struggling) It was the summer holidays and I had a good job so wasn't being a layabout. She got very angry with me over dinner and demanded to know what I was going to do with my life? I said (and this is my mantra to this day) 'all I want is to love and be loved, nothing else matters'. My poor little heart. She was incandescent with rage. That night I planned my suicide as if I couldn't have the only thing that mattered to me, love, then there was no point in living. I planned my death the following day. By a sheer, utter, miracle, next day, a co-worker of mine turned up to collect me for work (that had never happened before) and in doing so, saved my life. I never returned home again. It was the hardest thing in my life to continue being alive when you have fully committed to death. She has no idea this happened.
When my children were little I'd do everything I could to show them love and nurture. I would make bubblebath paddling pools in the back garden & bake fairy cakes for them. On one such summer afternoon, my mother looked at me incredulously in the kitchen & said 'You're SOOO nurturing' and I'm thinking 'Errr, actually this is f-ing normal'. I didn't say anything. After years of pondering is she really, truly, not on the same page as me at all? I decided to cut her off. She was pestering us to stay with her for Xmas and having avoided it for years I'd simply run out of excuses so I came clean. 'I didn't trust her with my children, I didn't want to be with her & to leave me alone'. Xmas with her & my step dad would have meant the golf-masters on tv, & just not having fun. I wanted xmas for my kids to be a riot of fun, noise, mess everywhere & chocolate all day long. Her neglect was subtle but wounded me all the same. I decided 'enough'. I'd decided years before I cut her off that when her time comes and she needs continuous keeping-an-eye-on like my mother in law, that I wouldn't be doing it. And that if she was in a neglectful care home I didn't care. I wouldn't be running up & down the motorway to help with anything. She'd not shown me the nurture, I owed her nothing. I've only told you a small part of my life here, there's so much more. But now you have the reasons I've cut her off. Despite my great anger that she couldn't show some patience & wait longer for a reply from me, I am still considering what to do. Not that I think she much deserves it. I am thinking 'do I want her in my life?' I had a look at her Facebook today for the first time & saw pictures of people I knew from over 25yrs ago. To be honest it made me feel very glad that I'd escaped that life and left it behind.