The final chapter: Living Backwards (Understanding the Borderline Mother)

But you know she loves you...


When the good mother within the borderline holds & comforts her young child, the child's well-being is temporarily restored. Darkness within the mother, the self & the universe becomes light. The chaos is organized. When the storm has passed it makes no difference to the young child who is simply grateful to return to the mother's arms. From there, the small child sees for the moment, that the world is good. Unfortunately the good mother is a fleeting ego-state, & the storm inevitably returns. By the time her children grow up, they may fear the good mother because chaos always returns.

Young children have no choice but to tolerate mistreatment by adults. Some else must notice. Someone else must help.

However, children are told they are lucky to have a mother..and that they are also lucky that they have a mother that loves them & that "that's just the way she is"..."She didn't mean it"...or "She can't help it"....as if children should just ignore their own intuition that tells them that they have been hurt. These messages not only encourage repression of legitimate anger & pain, but also lead children to believe that their mother's behavior is acceptable. Tolerating inappropriate behavior or abusive behavior requires the betrayal of the self, Young children have no choice, but grown children do have a choice.

When grown children tolerate abuse, they reenact the sacrifice of the self. Hopefully they will never expect their own children to tolerate cruelty, deception or mistreatment.Something is wrong if we fear the person who loves us. Anyone who encourages us to trust a person we fear does not have our best interests at heart.