How do you reconcile with an unrepentant abuser.

Since the day I was born I have been despised and rejected.  It started within a moment of me being born a girl, or many it started while I was in the womb. I do not know.

This rejection translated into being sent away, being abused in every possible way and being treated as a worthless person rather than a daughter.  I spent my childhood trying to be enough to earn love and approval. I went to great lengths to accomplish this but in the end, I was never wanted or received.

In my early thirties, I was told that my mother changed her heart and wanted me. I was told she regretted the way she and my father had treated me my whole life and that they finally wanted a daughter.

I was so elated. It was everything I dreamed of my entire life.  I imagined being held by my mother and loved for the first time ever. I imagined sitting with her and sharing my heart and telling her all about her grandkids.  So I sent her a letter telling her how elated I was to hear that she wanted me as her daughter. I told her that all the past is forgiven, I just wanted to be her daughter.  I told her what my young family was up to and how my husband and I were attending freedom sessions at church.

I waited day after day for an answer to my letter. I checked for that letter for six weeks. Then on my 32nd birthday, It arrived.  It was a four-page typed letter, single space.  In it she told me how ashamed she was of me. She told me that all the sexual abuse I experienced as a child was in my head. That I would wake up as a toddler having imagined the trauma and then think its real.  She tried to convince me I was mentally ill.  She then went on to tell me that by going to Freedom sessions and getting counseling with my husband, I was dishonoring her.  She told me that the bible says that if you dishonor your mother or father you should be put to death.  She assured me that I deserved to die, rather than have the love of a mother. She gave me a choice. I could have a family but only if I never spoke of the abuse in our home to anyone ever again, meaning I was not to get any further counseling. Then, maybe she would let me in.

It was such a cruel letter.  She blamed, and shamed, condemned and devastated me. I read the letter and crumbled. Suddenly I believed that if my own mother thought I should die and wasn't worth loving or having a life, then I should die.  I became severely suicidal.

My mother never spoke to me after that day in 2004. She never apologized or asked for forgiveness. She never showed me her love, ever. Others don't understand why I am not a part of the family. I have decided that repentance is necessary for reconciliation.  Without repentance there can be forgiveness, there can be compassion, there can be healing, but there can not be reconciliation because to reconcile means to come together and there is no together when ongoing abuse sets a wedge between you.

As years go by, I grieve the loss of a dream. The dream of being loved by a mother. In the meantime all I can do is forgive, love, and choose to be a loving forgiving mother myself.