I called my mother to tell her I had been sick which is why I didn't go to her yarn shop on Saturday. She brings up the subject of my brother because she went to look at pictures his wife posts online of their children and family. My mother started in on her usual critcisms about his wife, about him, about his children.

She continued on with other issues she had regarding him, and as I was listening to her I realized that she was expecting him to act one way, but that she wasn't reciprocating the behavior she expected of him. I construed her as saying one thing, but then doing another. Specifically, she was carrying on how she really didn't care if she didn't have a relationship with him, yet her actions were stating something different.

Instead of just telling her what trends I was picking up on, I first asked her if she'd like some feedback about what she all had been saying. For a brief moment I was in my LIOS mode and putting to use all of last year's edu-ma-cation I've received for $40,000.

She said she would hear my feedback. When I gave it to her she wouldn't listen to what I had to say. (Many people are like that, but I realize I was hoping she would be open to hearing my perceptions.) Is it threatening to be told: I think you are saying one thing, but doing another?

I guess I'm too used to the LIOS crowd and the circle of people I associate with who can tolerate this type of feedback. I've been spoiled. Yet, I thought my mother would be open to it as she watches Dr. Phil, Orpah, etc. and is into self-help books.

I kept saying to her that all I wanted to do was help her reconnect with my brother and offering to her some advice that would help her accomplish that. I said she didn't seem to be very clear about what she really wanted out of the relationship with my brother, and that if she did get clear about it, get her thoughts and actions into synch, she would find it would be easier to connect with him.

She told me that people don't think about relationships like that. Some do, and for those that don't, subconsciously they do. I said sometimes people don't need to state their boundaries or needs, but sometimes you do, but in order to move ahead getting clear about what you want is important. She would have none of it. She resorted to denial as a defense.

Then she pulled out the old artillery that I was thinking she was crazy and nuts and her tone got really angry, and I said that I didn't feel that way at all, I was only offering to help her. Then she pulled out another missile that she could hear the hatred and hostility in my voice, that I really hated her. I said if she wanted to paint that story about me and she wanted that to be her truth, she could say that, but I said that I didn't feel that way at all about her, and that maybe instead of assuming and judging how I felt, it would be better to ask me and trust that how I felt is honest. Truthfully, I was on the verge of laughing and was holding back because it would have been inappropriate to laugh at the way she was carrying on.

And she was carrying on. She was going in circles. At every turn she was running like mad to avoid everything I was saying. In my opinion, I wasn't saying anything that was threatening to her. I tried to keep a calm and steady voice.

I feel very sad that she can't hear what I had to say. She is apparently in a place where she is "happy" and she doesn't want to change. (She even says she is old now and isn't going to change.) That really saddens me even more because at any moment in our lives we hold the power to change and undergo metamorphosis and transform ourselves into an entirely new person. To think this way at 62 is something I cannot conceive. I will not give up improving myself, ditch my curiosity about life, or kill my inner child, until I draw my last breath!

The psychoanalyst in me says she is probably taking this tact because if she declares she is too old to change, then by golly, she doesn't have to do the work it would take to get over it all! It is so much easier and takes no energy not to change, but this I feel is an illusion people create for themselves. In reality, they are resisting, and I experienced in a very useful exercise in class that resisting takes far more energy than to go with the flow. There is also the illusion that it is everybody around who needs to change and conform to our needs and expectations and that we are fine and don't need to change, when the reality is, if you have a problem with someone else, it is really you who has the problem.

And going with the flow of life means changing! All around us Nature is going through her changes, her cycles. Mountains are made and then erode and new ones get made elsewhere. The landscape that you see in your own back yard wasn't there 100,000 years ago, nor was it there a million years ago. We will never see the dramatic changes that Nature makes because our time is vastly different than Nature's.

But even in our own short time on this earth, change still comes to us. Sometimes we plan for those changes, but often they come abruptly and disrupt our lives. Then we struggle to find a new equilibrium for awhile until the next one comes.

Sometimes it takes for our world to be turned upside down for us to see things from a new perspective. It often takes for us to go through a change to incite us to do things differently, to see them from a different perspective.

I believe that I upset my mother enough that hopefully she may look at the situation in a new way, but if she is too perturbed she will shrink back and refuse to take a new look at things. From that $40K edu-ma-cation I've been receiving, we talked about this very thing. I didn't intent to shake up her world, but that's the way things go.

For some silly reason which I have no words to explain, I still love and care about my mother in a deep way. With all of the crazy stunts she has pulled, all of the shit she has unloaded on me, I still stay with her. Many people tell me that long ago they would have told her good-bye, but that is not me. I don't give up on people that easily.

I shouldn't be shocked by her reaction, but I am. That's why I am writing this post. It is my intent that by writing his, I can let my shockedness go. And I can take comfort in the thought that very soon people will be seeking me to give them the feedback they want, that they will listen to what I have to say, and maybe they will get upset, and maybe they won't, but the best thing of all about this is they will pay me $80/hr for it!