The worst bit of course is blaming one’s own children.
Yes that’s it! She sees me purely as just as extension of her. How I behave, my success and failures is all a reflection on her and therefore she tries to have the most control over my life, disregarding that I am my own individual person.
I find it so hard to navigate. I would like to get to the point where I am her toxicity doesn’t effect me. I used to not understand why she was like this and it caused so much resentment. Now I do understand why she behaves the way she does but it isn’t enough to not get under my skin 
I think this should probably be put into context, otherwise the wide and wondrous path would be a path of blaming everyone.
What blaming others actually does is it might limit the extent of the bad feelings that I experience, sort of take the edge off, but what it also does is it creates a cell for me where I am forever trapped in sorrow and malice.
Because if others are at fault then that means I cannot change without them doing so first, which is the realisation that Sonya was writing about.
Realising that I am in charge of my own life means that I can no longer blame others yes but at the same time it opens up this huge possibility to actually improve my life now, without waiting for permission from anyone.
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My mom does this all the time 
Nothing is ever her fault always my dad, or me, or my sister. I can see how her accepting or seeing she’s done something wrong is her being vulnerable and that is super scary for her
It’s really quite a good thing then to have seen the realisation about blaming men. Because it’s not really just men/women getting blamed, but children.
Which is just insanely stupid.
If ever there was evidence that ‘blind nature’ is who we are, then bringing people into the world, then blaming them has to be Exhibit A.
Oh, for sure.
However, I have seen some reasonably “happy” people who are that way because it’s everyone else’s fault.
My recent ex had a lot of this type of happiness.
Maybe it’s incorrect to call it happiness, as in Felicious.
Perhaps, a sort of “licence to kill” good feeling. Maybe it a sorta malicious glee, a schadenfreude.
The same type of feeling as a mugger opening a wallet they stole and finding $200 cash and 3 credit cards.
A stolen feeling of relief.
Well, it’s not a small thing that no matter what else happens in life, it’s now highly unlikely you will ever be anything like her.
Level unlocked. 
I think that in certain feeling/being-states, having a perspective of caring towards others is quite impossible
I’ve spent the last year or so in a bit of an emotional hole, and trying to contact a deep caring for others had become somewhat inaccessible. ‘I’ was too busy tending to my own hurt to be able to prioritize that.
I think most people live in this region of feeling, and it seems quite incomprehensible to those who can see and understand the existence of others. “How could you ignore or not understand their suffering?” But they can’t. It’s beyond their view
Only last night I again had a glimpse of that (relatively) selfless caring for humanity which I had lost track of. A very encouraging event.
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So for the past year I’ve started weight training and it’s been going really well. I am super happy with the results 
and I’ve chosen to continue going to the gym when I’m back home In Malaysia and although I’m happy with the results and with how my body has changed my mum is not
As much as I try to not let if effect me or say it doesn’t, the comments she makes about my body do still get to me. In Asia, the beauty standard for women is very slim and dainty, how my natural build actually is. This is also something my mum would like about me a lot, that I was very slim and slender. She would always add value to me when I was skinnier and when I was younger this constant reaffirmation of skinny = more love and affection meant that I grew up with the identity of being skinny and pretty meant I’ll be more loved or liked.
Nowadays, I would say I have filled out a little more, with Western beauty standards I would still be considered slim but to my mum it’s the biggest tragedy that her previously size 0 daughter is now a size 4-6. Even though I’m happier and healthier this doesn’t matter to her because I am a reflection of her and now I don’t look the way she believes I should.
Obviously, this has built a lot of resentment towards her and anxiety on how she would react daily to my changed figure. I still catch myself looking in the mirror and critiquing my body with her comments in mind, even if the day before I was happy with my body before she commented on it.
I’m not sure where to start on getting to a place where the comments she makes doesn’t effect me anymore and dismantling the identity I’ve built over the years of being skinny meaning I have more value.
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It’s funny, when I was a size 0 I wanted to put on more weight and now that I have more weight on I’m still not fully happy with how I look
I think the issue is how much value I place on having the perfect figure which doesn’t exist anyways! Yet I will hate parts of my body for being too big or too small. I will tell my friends that they are perfect the way they are and they don’t need to change themselves yet I will be doing that exact thing.
I think it’s the drive to be perfect and therefore special . I’m scared that if I am no longer that way then I won’t achieve the love and affection.
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It’s such a weird beauty standard to start with, the emphasis on being tiny and childlike.
All through history, these bizarre standards come to rule and shape people.
Now, in the west, the over 6 feet, broad built guy is the “standard”, where once the aristocratic look was everything. A couple of thousand or so years ago, northern Europeans were binding baby boys skulls with rope to make the brow larger, and head taller.
China was binding women’s feet in horrible contortions right up to the 1950s.
Africa, neck rings that women can’t take off without dying.
Face tattoos, tribal scars, piercings…
Modern Asian women being expected to look like children, is just the latest in a string of standards which make no sense.
However, there is always the safety that pleasing one’s parents may bring.
The idea that we may need them one day.
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However, unless your parents are loaded and you are really lazy, one can safely ignore their stupidity.
I am however very lazy, and my mum is loaded, so I keep her on my good side.
I assume that is sensible.
(Mostly joking there…)
Hahah my parents have done pretty well financially and I do enjoy being lazy maybe more than I should
Then size 0 is it for you!!!
one of my favourite sayings;
“Never a truer word spoken in jest”
Something tells me that it isn’t the beauty standard that bothers you in your mother’s criticism, but rather the security of being what she wants.
She could equally be a Samoan mother and be saying that you need to put on 50kgs.
Women stick together, especially when it comes to control of young women.
An ex of mine, a Russian, was beaten by her mother, just as her mother was beaten by her grandmother; all in the name of control.
Control of the womb is everything in nature. They, on nature’s behalf, don’t give a shit about the person.
Funny that this should come as a topic, even if I am the one pushing it.
The Sri Lankan woman, happiest person I have known, let me know her mother just moved in with her to help (take control) of the baby son.
I was so tempted to give her advice months ago about how to keep her marriage ‘healthy’ (if there is such a thing). I offered, but didn’t push the issue.
Control. Turtles all the way down.
Blind.
I guess I wish for her to accept me fully as I am. I resent the standards which she sets for me because I see it as unattainable.
Yes I was also beaten too, my mum had one of those long thin canes that would leave welts, nothing that ever scarred or bruised tho! We wouldn’t want to have ugly scars
I can see so clearly how she wants to control me, I think more than anything she wants me to have children. Something she was never able to have (I am adopted) so her controlling me to look “attractive” to her standards so I am able to find a man to put a baby in me
Oh wow!
My favourite type of person! Adopted, beaten, and used!!!
No need to convince you just how shit the world is! What am I going to do with my “world-weary-wise” identity with you???
I connected quite strongly a fortnight ago with a woman who was adopted. Her name is Andrea. It was quite remarkable, being myself the son of an adopted person (my father).
There is actually a great advantage in it. Being on the “outside” of the mainstream of blind human reproduction, you can see through the bonds.
So thoughtful of your mother not to leave scars.
My father left home at 14, when his adopted father sided with his own biological son and beat him.
Instead I’m the product of accidental human reproduction
When I was little before realising what it takes to be a parent, I wanted wholeheartedly to be a mother but I always made the point of wanting to adopt babies. I think I saw quite early on the selfishness on wanting to see your genes or legacy live on when the sensible thing would be to adopt a baby that already existed if you wanted a baby. That’s what made sense in my 8 year old brain
Of course I also identified with babies who were unwanted so it was like saving more babies like me.