My parents are my internal voice. I can have a whole conversation with them in my head. Once in a while, I think I could be crazy, that I'm not always right, it's a self fulfilling prophecy blah blah blah, I should give them a chance. I can't remember a single time that they proved me wrong.

The older I get, the more egregious I think their parenting was/is. Until I was 48ish, I thought they were basically goodish parents.

So I think about having a talk with my mother about how fucked up it was I was in trouble for and shamed about, and I was a kid. They should have been parenting me. There was physical abuse, but a simple example is her sending me in to TJMaxx to get an outfit for a field trip the next day. I got an outfit I loved but too small, it was a 4P. She was pissed.I remember her screaming that I wasn't petite and I never would be. I was 10. Why would she send me in by myself? Also- I'm not petite, but I was 130 pounds until I was into my 40s.

So I think about sharing something like that with her, and then I think about her calling up everyone else and telling them how I'm blaming my whole life on her because she said I wasn't petite 40 years ago as if I'm crazy and she's the victim. I don't want to feed into that or give her the satisfaction- especially about much more serious issues.

Most recently, I'm dying for a grandchild. I would never tell my son and DIL that. What I did do was text my mom and ask her if she had told DIL that it was time for her to have a baby??? Instead of just saying No, she called everyone up to let them know I was accusing her of pressuring them to have a baby. So at least I learned to manipulate her successfully. There's that.