Dear Joshua,

My question is regarding my relationship with my mother. For most of my life I have been extremely dominated by my mom. She is very critical, manipulating and very dominating. I allowed myself to be dependent on her mentally and financially. You could say she crippled me with her wealth. I never got a career or went far in my schooling. I always believed that all money or stuff could only come through her. She made me to believe that.

For the first part of my marriage my husband put up with her constant meddling and controlling personality. When our son was born she got even worse. I allowed her to be in my marriage and have a heavy hand in the raising of my child. It was always stressful for me and ever since I was a little girl I felt to be in horrible bondage by her. I was very unhappy. My husband did his best to get along and allow her to have time with our son at her convenience.

To shorten this story my husband in 2009 quit his profession to start his own business. After doing this my mom went on a war path and has tried everything in her power to ruin his reputation and get me to divorce him. We moved away for 3 years then moved back but to a town outside of where she lives. I have done everything possible to make amends with her. She refuses to bury the hatchet with my husband. Our son who is a teenager wants nothing to do with her as he says she is very cruel in the treatment of his dad. I did bring our son to see her last year but every time we went her and my step father would start yelling all kinds of abuses at me.

My husband’s business never took off and we have had financial hardships because of it. The positive side of my husband quitting his job is I had to grow up and get a job after not working for 10 years. Since moving back I have started my own cleaning business and it’s really doing well. That part of my life is really taking shape. I just wish I could get my mother to respect my marriage and treat us like capable adults. I have not spoken to her in a year. She cries to everyone that she cannot see me or her grandson. It’s nonsense. She is very manipulating and people fall for it. My husband calls her being in self imposed exile! I’ve pleaded with her in emails and tried talking to her in person but nothing works. She is extremely hard headed. The one thing it comes down to is she loves money and is very wealthy. She has a wonderful relationship with money but not with her family.

The last thing I want to write is I feel so peaceful not having her in my life. She has always been so toxic and everyday growing up was a day of constructive criticism from her. Can things between my husband and her ever be resolved?

Thank you
With love,
Pamela Massey

Dear Pamela,

This is a feeling reality. The only thing that really matters is how you feel. You create through your feelings in that when you feel good, you create what is wanted and when you feel bad, you create what is unwanted. Therefore, it is your work to feel good. You may have never thought about how you feel before. You might not have known that feeling good was your work. But as you feel good, you create your reality, your future, from that stance. So then, the only thing that really matters is that you feel good.

If you were able to look at your mother and love her unconditionally, which means that you accept her despite her behavior, attitudes, opinions and approach to life, then you would feel good. Your acceptance of her makes you feel good. You do not love her unconditionally so that she feels good, but only so that you feel good. In fact, you do not love or do anything in order to make another feel good. The only reason to love someone or something unconditionally is so that you feel good. It is only how you feel that matters.

So, if you could look at your mother and be in her presence and accept her behavior and still feel good, then that would be fine. However, this is not quite possible given your current emotional state of being. You are on the path to becoming who you really are and as you evolve along that path you will be able to love more things and more people unconditionally and you will feel good. This is not where you are now, so simply accept this fact and do whatever it takes to feel good.

Your mother was your entry point into this physical reality and while you chose her and the conditions surrounding your birth so that they would launch you on a certain intended trajectory, you owe nothing to your mother. Your relationship with her is eternal and you will reunite in unconditional love in the nonphysical. But here on earth, you have certain things you are here to explore and you need not interact with her any more than you need to interact with anyone else. This is your reality and she cannot create in it. However, she does have influence and if you are unable to maintain your positive stance while in close proximity to her influence, then you can do but just one thing and that is to remove yourself from that influence.

Your judgment of your mother causes you to loose touch with the well-being that is provided to you. You have the ability to ease up on that judgment by looking at your relationship and her actions from the higher perspective. She comes from a different time. She has a completely different, lower vibration that is based in fear. Her own trajectory created that fear at an early age. You cannot understand what her life is like from her perspective. She believes the only way to feel good is to control her conditions and when those conditions are beyond her control, she wills the conditions to change to suit her. This approach to life is very stressful and does not work. Yet it is the only approach she knows. If you can begin to have a little empathy for her by seeing the world from her perspective, you can ease your judgment and begin to feel better.

Unconditional love means loving the conditions as they are. When you realize that you cannot change another to make yourself feel good, then the only thing you can change is your perspective on the conditions. As you wish for your mother to be different than she is, you create resentment because you feel that if she loved you, she would behave differently. Once you realize that her behavior is separate from her love for you, then you do not have to believe that the behavior means anything other than fear. It is all just fear.

When you want your husband to be different toward your mother (or anything) so that you might feel good, you create resentment. You might believe that if your husband loved you, he would behave differently. But this has nothing to do with it. Allow him to be as he is. Allow him to feel the way he does. He is on his own journey and the only help you can provide is the example of your own alignment. Realize that he loves you, but that his behavior is independent of that love.

The closest you feel to unconditional love is in your relationship with your son. In this area, you allow him the most leeway in his behavior. Yet, this too can become a source of resentment. He does not have to behave in a way that makes you feel good. When you allow him to really be who he is, without judgment, you allow yourself to love him unconditionally and that will make you feel good.

Your judgement of your mother is perfectly acceptable, but do not want her to change so that you can feel good. You must change your approach to her (and everyone else) in order to make yourself feel good. They cannot create in your reality and you cannot create in theirs. You will never change them, so stop trying. Realize that they are here for your growth and expansion. All you want is to love unconditionally. You are already loved unconditionally, so you need not look for it in others.

You are love and you are loved.

Joshua