First time posting, this thread was recommended in another thread. I hope I'm okay in doing this! I'll try not to go on too long...but I need to talk to someone.
My childhood had many types and levels of abuse and neglect. They (my parents, my dad's new wife - who he married the weekend before I graduated high school, and I'm from the States where it's a bigger deal - and my sister. My older brother left long before this) were all very happy to see the back of me and practically forced me out the day I graduated high school (in terms of my dad and his new wife) and ended up leaving the area entirely about two weeks later (as I was no longer welcome with my mum and sister).
Regardless of what they've done, I often feel like I should play the good daughter by having contact and I used to feel that it was my fault that I couldn't have a lovely relationship or that they didn't want contact like DH has with his parents. Rationally, I know this is wrong, but I guess it's easy to blame myself and try to change than facing up to the fact I'll never have it no matter what I do. I've had counselling and even talked about it with a Rabbi and I know I have no obligation to them and I can't let them hurt me or the kids...but I can't stop feeling like I should be doing more which is making the current situation worse.
Right now, I'm trying to get my head around my mum's behaviour. Which may be impossible. About 4ish years ago we had a phone based relationship which I had to stop because the calls were leaving me in tears every call was the same, it was pointed gossip about my family mixed with the same questions over and over followed by her telling me how horrible my choices were. She constantly asked about the same things so she could have a go at me and I just couldn't take it and I doubly couldn't take the idea of her wanting to talk to the kids and put her poison on them. A bit over a year after that, I'd had DD2 and wanted to tell my grandfather (mother's father) so told him everything about why I had been out of touch and the baby and he passed it onto her and she apologised and we had an mail based thing on and off since then. Last year, there was a family debacle around my pregnancy and birth of DS2 -- basically, I joined facebook to get in touch with my sister to send her a wedding present, she ended up using what I put on facebook to gossip about me and make it look to our mother that we were talking. We weren't, she refused to speak to DH when they met, refused to acknowledge any of my kids, and wouldn't even acknowledge my wedding present. Why she wanted to pretend we were talking I don't know but I defriended once it was well known which happened just after DS2's birth. As a family member of ours had stalked both of us, I thought she would understand my need for privacy, but apparently not. Our mother found out, had a massive go about how I can't disappear when everyone thinks things are lovely like last time. I responded with an open hearted email explaining how it wasn't all right before and things with my sister aren't all right now and basically laid it all out and said I was leaving it in her court.
This was months ago. A couple days ago I got a Passover e-card (I became a Noahide as an adult, but followed it from about 12ish. This is something my mother has previously torn me to shreds over, calling me horrible things. Her family is Catholic, but she follows a range of TV evangelists) saying she is praying for me and hopes to hear from me soon. That's all. No acknowledgement whatsoever about my long heart-poured out email or the problems going on now or previously. It's so frustrating, she did this throughout my childhood - act as if blanking it out and not acknowledging it meant it was suppose to be forgiven and forgotten.
I don't know what to do. I want to just say no, even the Rabbi has told me to just block her, but that seems a betrayal to my grandfather (without him I wouldn't be here and as he has no email and hates talking on the phone, everything goes through my mother or by post and post can be sketchy) or maybe it's just I can't let go yet of my childhood hope that one day something will convince her to love me properly.