Gabriel Mizrahi

And then she seems to be getting even more difficult messages from her kids that she just needs to like get over the abuse, that she's being selfish about wanting to move away and live a bigger life.

This is a lot.

Well, to your point, we don't know if they're actually saying this or if this is what she's hearing or if she's editorializing.

Who knows?

Maybe it's a little bit of all three.

We also don't know if they feel that she's being selfish to her mother or she's being selfish to them by wanting to move away.

I mean, maybe they love her and they don't want her to go.

Maybe they just want her nearby and they feel like moving away to find some freedom is only going to come at their expense.

Which is not entirely fair, but I might understand that.

So assuming that this is in fact how her kids feel, then it kind of sounds like no one in this family really understands her or takes her desires seriously, and that sucks.

But I guess a couple questions present themselves.

One question is,

Is she prioritizing her children's wants and opinions above her own in the same way that she has prioritized her mother's?

Because that might be a bit of a theme in her life.

And if mom is the template for her, I would not be surprised if she has recreated that in a number of her relationships, including the ones she has with her kids.

Another question is, is moving away, maybe even out of state, truly necessary for her to get the freedom she wants?

I get that she wants a fuller life.

I want her to have a fuller life.

But she might want to get clear on whether moving out of state is a fantasy designed to create the distance that she feels she needs, or whether it's truly necessary to be her own person and start a new chapter.

Exactly.