Mom,

I want you to know I am proud of the wonderful relationship I have with my husband and my daughter. I want you to know how influential you were in developing those relationships, in making me the wife and mother I grew up to be.

You were thought of by others as gracious and kind, and I tried to copy that from you. But you were really a poor mother. It was obvious that my older brother was your favorite, and I was a mistake you had to live with. I credit a lot of the relationship I have with my daughter to my habit of asking myself how you would have acted, then trying to do better, to not make the same mistakes. Overall I have done very well, and she and I have a close, loving relationship.

I want you to know you were never as good as you thought at hiding your feelings. From my very earliest memories on, going back to when I was three, I remember trying so very hard to be a good girl, thinking that if I was good enough, you would like me, that I would be acceptable to you. Decades later, during a deathbed conversation with my stepfather, he told me you always preferred my brother, that he was your favorite, and you had always worked at keeping that from me. You were not as successful as you thought.

By the time I was eight, I had formulated an explanation. In my child’s mind I thought I understood; I must be adopted. That was why you loved Larry more than me. It all made sense. How could I expect you to love an adopted child to the same degree as your own natural child? My explanation gave you an excuse for the way you treated me. But when I was twelve, we went to Houston to get our passports and visas for travel outside the country and I saw my birth certificate for the first time. I was your natural child, too. I never again had the safety of self-delusion. All that was left was reality: I was yours, but you didn’t want me.

When I grew up, married, and had a child of my own, I vowed to myself that I would do better. I gauged my interactions with my child by comparing them to the interactions you and I had years before. I tried to be more open, more honest, more trusting, more loving, more real in my relationship with her. You influenced me and made me a much better mother than I might have been otherwise. You enabled me to have with my daughter what you and I were never able to have.

Thank you.

Lecia, age 56