Hi all, sorry if this gets long but trying to give some background.
I was not a planned baby, my parents had just had a hook-up as young teenagers, which meant that I was given up for adoption at birth.
I decided to trace my mum 15 years ago, it has always been bumpy, she is very immature emotionally and I almost have to take the role of parent to make it work. She has turned on me and thrown me out of the family on multiple occasions when she has thrown tantrums or decided that I am not making enough effort (despite me being the one that does all the initiation and travelling of meet-ups etc)
I also have half siblings that I have always got on with, however, although we have never fallen out, contact does fall when Mum has one of her tantrums. They do acknowledge she behaves badly but always do as she says to appease her and never go against her.
In the beginning, I was desperate for a relationship with her and put up with it all and always took the blame and apologised etc. As the years have gone on, I have just accepted it as it is and stopped trying so hard, the relationship is pretty much dead in the water these days and I haven't seen her since last August and the only messages have been her thanking me for Christmas and Birthday presents.
One of the siblings has since had their first child (mums 10th grandchild) and things have gone downhill more than ever. This grandchild is treated like the messiah. The other 9 have been completely forgotten about. Mum has financial issues that she has caused herself so she cannot afford presents for Christmas, Birthdays, easter etc which is no problem, except there are always treats for 10th GC! The sibling has also changed, she has always been a little selfish but now it is crazy to watch, she has started making a lot of digs through Facebook posts towards me and other siblings. She never invites us to anything but if we do stuff without her there will be a passive-aggressive post etc
On Mother's day I lost my temper at the sickly sweet posts about what a great mother and grandmother my sibling was posting her to be and I posted a quote about not all of us having good mothers and that we didn't want to see the sickly sweet posts (I know it wasn't the best approach but I was just sick of it)
A couple of days later Mum aimed a post at me about nasty people and sibling replied on it being really nasty about me, saying to ignore someone who had only been in her life 5 minutes and as someone who had known her their whole life she was amazing and that sometimes when someone walks out of your life it makes it "fucking fantastic" etc, it was really nasty and I was shocked at how badly she really thought of me as like I say, we had never had a cross word before!
So I completely detached, removed them from Facebook and got on with my life.
Now to the point (sorry!) it is my Birthday and I have received a card from sibling , "To a lovely Big Sister" to boot with some money inside and I am completely confused! I don't understand why she would send something after being so nasty and then ignoring me since. I also do not know what to do, if it was just a card I would junk it and move on but as there is cash, do I send it back? If so do I include a note?
This has really thrown me!
TIA