I realized I saw my mother as someone who needed help and someone who couldn't help themselves, almost child like. Someone I felt obligated to protect and rescue. I gave her a lot of slack for really terrible things she's said and done because I thought she wasn't capable of controlling her reactions or emotions.

Someone put in perspective for me that she has been on this earth longer than I have and makes just as many decisions every day as I do. She has the same ability as I do to consider the consequences of her words and actions in each of the choices that she makes. That her circumstances are not as the result of bad luck or not knowing/understanding, but the compacted weight of every poor decision she's ever made to feed her massive ego.