Gabriel Mizrahi

The problem is, what does she do if she, say, moves away and her mom's like, OK, well, I'm cutting you off.

Interesting.

But if this money comes with all of these weird obligations and messages, the cost of accepting it is increasingly steep and it sounds like she can't ignore it anymore.

But if the answer to that question is absolutely not, the second I assert myself she's definitely going to cut me off, which I hope that's not the case, but I don't know, I'm sort of getting that feeling, then yeah, you might have to make this choice that Jordan is talking about.

I suppose there might be a way for you to accept your mom's help and maybe find other ways of asserting yourself or giving yourself some agency, like, I don't know, going over there less often or keeping your visits shorter or taking trips on your own regularly so you get some time and space for yourself or...

Maybe you and your therapist need to talk about how to not let your mom's actions get under your skin as much, stuff like that.

So maybe that's the third way, something else to consider.

Jordan, I'm just sitting here thinking about how unbelievably complicated and often hurtful this relationship with her mom must be.

Yeah, because of the abuse, you mean?

I mean, what a thing to live with, knowing that your mom was a victim of her father herself and still let you be alone with him.

And then this awful thing happened, which maybe the fact that her mom was his victim too changes things slightly.

I mean, it certainly explains a few things.

I'm not sure that it lets the mom off the hook for everything she's done, but I gotta assume that mom has her own trauma.

But I'm guessing her mom is not going to really talk about all of that in a real way, almost certainly won't apologize for it.

And anyway, unfortunately, the damage is done.

So not only does she cater to her domineering and manipulative mother in all of these ways, she's catering to the person

who is partly responsible for what happened to her.

And I just, I guess I just want to acknowledge that that is really tough.

I can only imagine.

And I get it.