Happy New Year 2019

            I know it’s tradition to make resolutions for the New Year, but I’ve learned that doesn’t work for me. I always forget within a matter of days or weeks. If I do remember, I tend to shrug it off because I forgot. So this year, rather than make useless resolutions I decided to make some wishes instead.

            I wish for you, dear reader, abundant good health; physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For I have learned they are intertwined.

            I wish for you strength and wisdom for the challenges that will come your way this year.

            I wish for you joy, peace, and love.

            I wish that you would live life to the fullest extent you’re capable of; for then you’ll never grow old.

P.S. If you’ve been following my blog, I will resume telling my life story next week. Thank you for reading!

My Favorite Christmas Music

With the holidays just around the corner, I thought it’d be nice to share some of my favorite Christmas carols this week instead of my life story. I hope you enjoy the music and have a wonderful Christmas. So, in no particular order, here are my favorite Christmas songs.

 “Joy to the World”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDmIddF7DfQ

            “Silent Night”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GUnfLPpjLs

            “Little Drummer Boy”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1fA59oH7Q

            “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”

           

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRqq5EeVpRo

            “Oh Holy Night”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17kiIIxSdC0

            “Carol of the Bells”

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1Tr1qCHwq4

            Last, but not least, “Christmas Eve”

           

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHioIlbnS_A

            I found the last one while looking for just the right version of my favorites to share with you. I hope you’ve enjoyed them. I wish you and your families a Very Merry Christmas.

            Thank you for reading my blog.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 39

If time healed all wounds, which it doesn’t, I would have been healed a long time ago. I wouldn’t still feel all the pain and all the rage.

I prayed off and on for years for God to heal me emotionally. I honestly thought He’d just reach in and heal me as a surgeon cuts out a cancer. Boy was I wrong! One day I got to thinking about it and realized that maybe God wanted me to seek human help. So I started praying about that and I said, “Ok Lord. Obviously you’re not going to do this work yourself. So, where do I go? To whom do I turn?”

Every time I prayed, I felt the Lord telling me that David was that person. My initial reaction was “What?! Are You crazy?! Have you lost your marbles and the general universe isn’t aware of it, yet?!”

After all I thought He’d send me to a woman, it hadn’t occurred to me that God would send me to a man and certainly not that one. I could think of other men I’d far rather go to. After going round about this with God a few times, I acquiesced. It wasn’t easy. I still wasn’t too crazy about the idea, but God knows what He’s doing, even when we don’t. I had to learn to trust God’s choice for me even though I wasn’t sure I could trust David as I didn’t really know him that well.

I’d met David and his wife Jan at a church we attended. I babysat their twin boys for them one night, while they went out. I think that was the only time I babysat for them, but I’d see David in church from time to time and we’d say “Hello. How are you?”

That was the extent of our relationship pretty much until God told me that he wanted to use him to help me heal.

A lot of the reason for my not trusting David was that in the past, whenever I saw him, he looked like he had so much of his own pressure, he couldn’t possible handle mine. Not only that but on one occasion he shared something with me regarding his marriage to Jan, which should only have been said to a counselor or minister; certainly not to a former babysitter. Then on top of that he was the person who insisted I repair my relationship with Andrew before going to Canada with him and Patty. No wonder I didn’t think I could learn to trust this man!

I talked to him about what I felt God had told me and he told me he’d felt God leading him to me as well. He’d been helping mother deal with her own crap and had taken her as far as he could. In fact, he tells me that when he told mother that he felt God putting me on his heart, she looked at him and said, “Have fun.”

I started by going to visit him at his house in an effort to get to know him better and learn to trust him. Unfortunately, that didn’t work as well as I hoped. He was impatient with me and my lack of trust. He often gave me what I came to think of as his, “I’m a Man” speech. Basically he’d say, “Honey, I’m a man. As a man, this is the way I am with all my faults. Etc, etc, etc.”

I never really understood how that was supposed to help me trust him, but I persisted in hanging out with him because I was desperate for emotional healing.

There were other problems with hanging out at his house as well. His wife and sons would frequently barge into his study where we were talking. I didn’t mind his boys so much as they often had good reasons for coming in. His wife, on the other hand, seemed to suddenly decide that she needed to work on some art project or other and the supplies were in his study. After the third interruption, I looked at her and yelled, “Don’t you ever knock?”

I think she thought she’d find us locked in an intimate embrace doing God knows what in his tiny study. What she didn’t know was that I had absolutely no desire to do anything physically intimate with him. I was just trying to learn to trust him enough to allow God to use him in my life.

There were other problems, too. At times we’d get in his car and go looking for a place to park where we wouldn’t be disturbed, but in a city like ours, that’s virtually impossible. Hanging out where I lived wasn’t an option either. I lived with mother and her husband, Bill who ran hot and cold about David. Some days he’d think David was okay, others he couldn’t stand him. Then there was mother herself. We’d be in my room as that was the only place in the house we could talk privately and if mother wanted to talk to one of us for some reason, she didn’t hesitate to knock on my door.

During this time, David was taking a bath one day when he felt the Lord telling him to look in Song of Solomon as there was something in there which I needed to hear. He asked the Lord where, but all the Lord would tell him was that there was something in the Song of Solomon he needed to find and give to me. David got out of the tub and went in his study where he started looking through the Song of Solomon. When he came to chapter 4 verses 12-16, he knew he’d found what he was looking for.

12 A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse;

 a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

13 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates,

 with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,

14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all

 trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices      

15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters,

and streams from Lebanon.

16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south;

blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

David wrote this story in a letter to me and included a copy of these verses, which I later lost. This didn’t crack me open, but it did help me to realize God was in this. It also helped me realize that God understood me.

With the holidays around the corner, I thought it would be nice for the next two weeks to post holiday related blogs. This means that for two weeks, my life story will be on hold. I will resume posting it after the New Year. Thank you for your understanding.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 38

I also learned that despite my being honest with my son about everything, my mother has him confused about some things I’ve told him. He came home one day and asked why he was caught in the middle between the two of us. I took him to lunch and tried to explain. Apparently I’d already told him the main stories of why I feel the way I do about my mother. She denies them and now he doesn’t know who to trust. I also told him that if I had any other choice about how to deal with my mother that wouldn’t put him in the middle of things, I would do so. Unfortunately, diplomatic tactics don’t work with my mother and now she’s managed to undermine the level of honesty I tried to build with my son.

I finally came to the conclusion that at some level, I hate and resent my mother. Yes, hate and resent. I never thought I would say that about anyone other than her second husband, Don, but it’s true. I hate her and I resent the way she’s treated me over the years. I know part of her behavior stems from jealousy. I know it would be very hard to not be jealous of any woman or child, which her husband had chosen over her sexually as Don did me. I am also sure some of her jealousy stems from my physical build.

When I was about 14 or 15, she allowed me to try on her prom dress. It fit beautifully until we tried to zip it around my chest. The zipper wouldn’t go more than a couple of inches past my waist. I was simply better developed at that age than she had been at 18. However, this doesn’t stop the hurt and anger I feel. Her jealousy is her problem to deal with and taking it out on me was not right.

I’ve also come to realize that my mother is a self-centered, judgmental, legalistic, controlling hypocrite. It’s been hard to face that, but it helps me to deal with her the way I need as the need arises.

I say judgmental because one day long before I got pregnant, she told me to be careful about my walk with God. That if I were lukewarm, He would “spew me out of His mouth.” This came out of nowhere and I was stunned. Not only that, but what I didn’t tell her was that as far my relationship with God was concerned, I was cold. I believed in Him at that time, but that was about it.

Looking back on that later, I realized that there was an attitude of judgment coming from her. To this day, I have no idea why she said what she did to me then.

I have come to a place emotionally where I don’t really care if the breach between mother and I becomes healed. The damage she has done is so great; we might as well be on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon with no way to communicate. I’ve prayed that God would heal that area of my heart and help me forgive her, even if for some reason beyond my control, the breach between us cannot be healed.

           

     Facing how I truly feel about my mother has been very difficult for me. However, it has also been 

very liberating. I’ve come to a better understanding of my emotions and myself as I’ve faced how I 

feel about her. Not only that, I’ve come to understand why I never seem to have any energy 

regardless of how much or how little sleep I get. It’s because all my life people like my mother and 

her second husband and the majority of the men I dated were big emotional energy vacuums sucking 

up all my energy and giving little or nothing back to replace what they took. Eventually that kind of 

drain leaves you with nothing for yourself or anyone else.

      As I’ve healed I’ve learned more about just how toxic to me the relationship with my mother has 

been. For years I thought being abandoned by my biological father and abused by the first stepfather 

I ever had and the relationships with men were what did the majority of the damage. I have finally 

come to the realization that in reality, the worst part of the damage that was done to me was done by 

my own mother. She said it all when she told me that she had me so that “she would have at least one 

person in her life who loved her unconditionally.” 

     Then I read an article online titled, “…When Parents Make Their Children Partners…” by Bo 

Budinksy. As I read the article, which someone had posted into a Facebook group I belong to, it was 

like seeing my relationship with my mother as it really is. I’m supposed to be her emotional support 

system and when I don’t do what she expects in that regard she gets angry and tries to rein me in. It 

wasn’t until I started getting angry at her and fighting back that she backed off. Even then we had 

several loud/yelling disagreements before she finally started showing me the respect I deserve and 

quit trying to run my life. Unfortunately there are still times when she’ll try something as I 

mentioned above, such as she did when her husband died. 

     The more I think about the way she treated me growing up and the way she attempts to treat me 

now, the more I realize that she does not respect my boundaries unless I put up a no holds barred 

fight and force her to respect them. I see a certain irony in all this as she once recommended to me a 

book titled, “Boundaries” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. It’s about what boundaries are and 

how to set them for yourself. It was informative and helpful. I’m also sure that she read it, but she 

doesn’t apply those ideas to me unless I force her to do so by being unwilling to let her continually 

violate mine. 

     The last time I had contact with her was because her sister, my aunt and uncle were going to be in 

town for a rare visit. I figured I could handle being around her for one evening as my aunt, her 

husband, my brother and his wife would all be there. As it turned out, my brother and his wife 

couldn’t make it as they had other plans for that same night made months in advance.

     Everything went fine at dinner that night. My aunt and uncle did most of the talking about 

Grandmother’s recent death and our hopes that the body of my great uncle who flew rescue in WWII 

would finally be brought home. There were a few minutes when we were left alone at the table while 

my aunt and uncle were making transportation arrangements for themselves as they didn’t have a 

rental car this trip. Mother turned to me and said, “You know I always did love you. I know I made 

some mistakes in the past, but I can’t change the past. The past is the past.”

     I looked at her without saying anything. I just thought, “The past is the past? So that’s it? I’m just 

supposed to let you off the hook without you giving me a real apology or taking any responsibility 

for everything you’ve done?! Yeah, right.” 

     Since that night, I’ve had no contact with her and I have no desire to do so. I simply can’t go on 

being around someone who refuses to take personal responsibility for their actions.

           

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 37

As I’ve written this, I’ve begun to see something else. I wasn’t allowed to be angry or to express that anger when I was growing up. If people did something that hurt me, mother basically told me I was out of line to get angry. Yet if she got angry with us for some reason, heaven help us. No wonder I’m still dealing with anger issues; especially in regards to her!

I know people don’t understand why I don’t just talk these things over with my mother, well as a general rule; one or more of four things happens:

1.                  She makes an excuse.

2.                  She tends to think I shouldn’t let it bother me, especially if she’s given me her “reason” for whatever it was that she did.

3.                  She’ll get defensive and say, “I’m not perfect you know!” I don’t expect perfection. I expect her to take responsibility for her actions, but obviously that’s too much to ask of her.

4.                  Often times, the only way she does listen to me is when I get angry enough to scream at her and I really don’t like to do that. She’s also supposedly enough of an adult that such tactics should not be necessary.

            I’ve been told she loves me and she’s the only mother I’ll ever have. If she loves me so much, why doesn’t she listen to me and respect what I have to say? I know she’s the only mother I’ll ever have, but I didn’t get to choose who my mother was, so why should I let that affect how I feel towards her? I believe parents need to earn their children’s respect just as much as the child needs to earn the trust and respect of their parents. I cannot go on stuffing the feelings down and looking the other way. I’ve done that for too long and in the end all that happened was that I became an emotional volcano just waiting to explode.

This isn’t so much a case of repressed memories as it is a case of looking back and taking off the “rose-colored glasses” I’ve worn where she was concerned. I think the reason I didn’t really see her actions for what they were, was a matter of emotional survival. With feeling abandoned by my father, deceived and abused by her second husband, made to feel too sensitive and as if I cried too easily and too much by her third husband, then used by virtually every man I ever went out with, I desperately needed to believe there was at least one human being in whom I could place my trust. That made it all the harder to confront my real feelings about her.

Mother did come to me once and tell me that the Lord had shown her something about the way she treated me when I was growing up. Apparently she had developed a rapport with a bus driver whose bus she frequently rode. One day the driver told her that it must have been intimidating for me as a daughter to grow up with her as my mother. The Lord used that statement to show her that she had controlled my life when I was growing up. She also said she hoped and prayed that someday I’d find it in my heart to forgive her. I think she knows that in a lot of ways, she did the same thing to me that her mother did to her when she tried to control me while I was growing up.

Even now there are times when she has tried to control me and unfortunately she occasionally succeeded as I had not gotten used to standing up to her. For instance, when I was pregnant and living with her I was on WIC. She asked me one morning if she could use some of the milk WIC supplied me with. I gently explained that it was against the rules and that if anyone found out, I could get in trouble. She had a fit and told me she should be allowed to use it as her tax dollars had paid for it too.

Another time I was at her house for some reason and just before I left, she and I were standing out by my car talking. We were leaving at about the same time as I needed to go and she had to catch a bus to go somewhere. She asked me if she could get a ride to the bus as she was cutting it close time wise. I told her I was sorry but I really needed to be on my way. She got upset with me and cried, “What?! You can’t wait 30 seconds for me to pull myself together and then give me a ride?”

That simple statement and the attitude that came with it, made me feel as if I didn’t have the right to refuse her request, even though it was my car and my time she was asking for and the bus stop was in the opposite direction of where I needed to go. It certainly wasn’t my fault she was cutting it so close to the time the bus was due. She did apologize on the way to the bus for her attitude, but I still felt like I had been manipulated. I wish I had simply driven off without her.

When my nephew graduated high school with his two – year college degree in hand in addition to his high school diploma, my mother and my son were invited to the ceremony, but I was not. Mother told my son, Caleb to not tell me what was happening. When I learned he was going somewhere with his Uncle Mike beyond hanging out their house that night, I asked where they were going. He said he couldn’t tell me. Nothing I said made any difference. So, I called my brother Mike and asked him. He told me about my nephew’s graduation and that he hadn’t told my son to keep it a secret from me. At that point, I knew it had to have been mother who’d told him to keep it from me. I was furious.

I got her on the phone and asked her if she’d told Caleb not to tell me about my nephew’s graduation. She said she may have as she didn’t want me to be upset because I hadn’t been invited. I started yelling at her that it wasn’t her place to tell my son to keep those kinds of things from me and that if she ever did such a thing again I would cut off all contact between her and Caleb – period! I also made it very clear that how I reacted to and dealt with such news was my responsibility, not hers! My brother arrived just before I got mother on the phone and heard my end of the conversation with her. As he was going out the door with Caleb, he told him that the only kind of secrets that should be kept from someone are those related to things like birthday gifts.

Part of what scared me about this was that if this sort of thing had happened when he was younger; he could easily have learned that keeping things from me, such as someone touching him in an inappropriate way was fine. I’ve worked really hard to be sure my son knows it’s okay to talk to me about anything and that if anyone ever touched him in the wrong way or without his permission, it was okay to do something about it and to report it to another adult. It bothers me that with one incident my mother could have undermined what I tried to build.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 36

At one point I went to a counselor. She was a really nice gal who charged me on a sliding fee scale as I was broke and paying for the sessions out of pocket. Someone gave money for me to mother to pay for three sessions of counseling. She started to hand the money to me outright, then took it back, put it in three envelopes, sealed them, then wrote the name of the counselor on the outside before handing them to me. I remember being shocked and annoyed. Shocked because she’d once told me that I handled money better than she did; annoyed because she was behaving as if I couldn’t be trusted to use the money for the purpose it was intended. Looking back on that, if I’d really been intent on doing something else with the money, all I had to do was rip the envelopes open and dispose of them out of her sight.

I realize now that we’re both lucky I moved out of the house when I did. I honestly think had I continued to live there, I would have gotten fatter and smoked more. In addition to that, I probably would have struck out at her physically at some point. Just like I wanted to as a teenager because she seems to think it’s okay to try and control me, even though I’m an adult. At this point, if I’d snapped and hit her, I wouldn’t have stopped till she was seriously wounded or dead. My anger at her would have been beyond my control because I wasn’t allowed any real control over my own life with mother around all the time. In fact, the only thing she seemed to expect me to control was my temper. And that kind of control only lasts so long before something snaps.

Sometimes it’s hard for me to look back and see how much control she’s had in my life. Even more difficult have been my efforts to break free and be my own person. Even now she would control me if I allowed her to. Every time I get near her, she tries to control me, sometimes in small subtle ways. For instance, she once owed me money. I left a message on her machine asking her to leave it in an envelope in my church mailbox. Instead she chased me down at church and gave it to me in person without an envelope.

When her third husband, Bill died, she called me up and the first thing she said to me was, “I want to come over and talk to Caleb and I don’t want you telling him anything before I get there.”

I tried to ask her what was going on but she wouldn’t tell me before I gave my word that I wouldn’t tell Caleb. I realize now that she took control in that situation by demanding to tell my son herself, without even telling me what had happened. She never asked me how I thought it would be best to tell him. I checked with my brother about how she handled it with his children, and he told me that she’d had him tell them.

Not only that, but when she came to my house that afternoon, she brought a good friend, which I didn’t mind, but she also brought along my brother and his wife, without any kind of warning. It was as if for a time she and my brother and his wife walked into my house and took over.

When I chewed her out later, she tried to excuse herself on the basis of the shock of learning about Bill’s death. I told her that she hadn’t been in such a “state of shock” as to make the same demands with my brother and his wife in regards to their children. Shocked or not, it was just a very subtle way to take my place with my son by telling him and comforting him, instead of me. I told her then that if she ever tried to override my parental authority like that again, I’d cut off all contact with Caleb for at least six months.

A few years later at the start of Caleb’s soccer season, the coach decided to limit practice to one day a week as the boys were getting old enough to have other things going on and they’d worked together enough, that they’d be fine with one day week. He chose Wednesday as that’s right in between the weekends when games were played. He let the parents know that if that was a problem, we should contact him to see what could be worked out. None of the parents objected, but mother did. I learned from the coach that she’d e-mailed him a request to change the night of practice as it was on a church night and games were on Sundays, so Caleb couldn’t go to church at all if practice was held on Wednesday. When I learned what she’d done, I was so angry I wanted to run home and send her an e-mail message right away. Instead, I called David on my cell phone and told him what had happened.

The end result when I did e-mail her was the usual. She apologized for the trouble she caused, but not for what she did. It didn’t matter that I pointed out to her that she was not responsible for taking Caleb to and from practices and games. That she was not responsible for anything to do with soccer. That as his parent, those decisions were up to me, not her. By the end of our correspondence on this issue, I had called her a “Bitch” more than once and told her that she was not allowed to have contact with him for at least six months. The only reason I didn’t make it longer was that I felt like I was punishing him for her misdeeds, even though it wasn’t his fault. I hated that, but I honestly felt like that might be the only way I’d get her to back off and respect my parental authority. This also resulted in her name being taken off the coach’s e-mail list for soccer and not being allowed to attend any of the games for that season.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 35

One night I received a phone call from a friend, Rick M. inviting me to his apartment to play backgammon. I stopped long enough to brush my hair and be on my way. As I went down the driveway to my car, mother poked her head out the door and called to me. I stopped and looked around. She looked at me and said, “Ok.”

When I asked what that was all about, she said that she just wanted to be sure I hadn’t dressed up like I was going on a date. She claimed she was protecting Rick M. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but it wasn’t her place to tell me how to dress for anything. Not only that, but he’s an adult and I’m sure he would tell her that he was capable of taking care of himself.

I dated a man, Frank, who happened to live on a houseboat. I usually stayed overnight with him. The first time I came home after sleeping on his boat, she asked me where I’d slept. Although I didn’t say it at the time, my first thought was, “What the hell makes it your business where I sleep when I stay with him?”

I told her I slept on his couch, although the truth was that I slept in his bed with him. I still don’t understand why she thought she had any business asking me that question. I wish I’d had the courage to tell her it was none of her business.

In fact, she seems to make it a habit to poke her nose in my life. I remember house sitting for some friends of ours when I was around 20. A male friend stayed with me one night and left early the next morning, which caught a neighbor’s attention. Our friend asked me about it in front of mother. The friend didn’t have a problem with it as long as it was someone I knew. Mother on the other hand asked me if we’d had sex. I realize now that was none of her business. My life as an adult is mine to live as I please. She has no business poking her nose in it.

I learned in more recent years that mother interfered in other relationships I had as well. A friend of mine was in a jewelry story looking at diamond earrings when mother saw him. Apparently he told her he was considering buying me a pair. She told him I didn’t need them.

Another man I dated was seriously considering asking me to marry him. He came to the house one day when I wasn’t there and mother told him I wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship.

Then there was Al. A man I dated in my early 20’s. The church I was attending forced me to break it off with him as he was a very new, immature Christian. I didn’t like it, but I felt that I had no choice in the matter. I learned several years later that he thought mother had forced me to break it off.

She never told me that she cheated on my father with other men and therefore my brother, Mike had a different father. It’s one thing to not tell me as a child; it’s another to not tell me as an adult. Especially after she told me she had left my father because he beat her once. I had to learn the truth of this matter from my father. It wasn’t fair to him or me, to tell me the bad things he did, but leave out the rotten things she did. She didn’t even hint that he had as much reason to leave her as she did him.

Not only that, when I confronted her with it and asked why she hadn’t said something, she told me that she wasn’t sure until then that Mike had a different father. How could she not be sure? Michael looks nothing like Von. I saw the difference the first time I saw a picture of Von but was unwilling to believe it. I know she told me she was no angel, but she never told me he had just as much cause to divorce her, as she had to divorce him. As far as I’m concerned, this is a case of “the pot calling the kettle black.”

As I’ve written this I’ve begun to see motives. She wanted to keep me tied to her so that she could use me as her emotional fuel tank, which is why whenever possible she chased guys away or interfered in my relationship with them. She also wanted what I had, from my clothes to my figure and even the relationships with some of my boyfriends, in particular Andrew. That’s why she borrowed or tried on my clothes without my permission. It also explains her interference in my relationship with Andrew. This also explains why she was so late for my wedding. She wanted the attention I was getting that day. She simply couldn’t let me enjoy what I had, because she wanted it too.

Even now, I see signs that mother would control Caleb and me if allowed to. There was an incident at Caleb’s after school group, which required stern measures and affected his being there the next day. As she was going to be affected by this, I called her to let her know what was going on. As we talked, I also told her how I planned to handle the situation. She told me that she thought I was being a little harsh in the matter. Even after I told her I’d had similar trouble with him in the past and this one just happened to be the most serious. I finally told her that my decision wasn’t open for discussion. She said she’d say one more thing and then shut up. I let her say her thing, then I started to restate my position. She tried to say something else. I told her to “shut up and listen!”

I finished what I had to say, then told her that she wanted to control the situation and I was tired of it. She’d done it to me more than once and I had had enough. Then I hung up on her.

She called and apologized for how she made me feel, but she didn’t apologize for her actions. She has a bad habit of avoiding her responsibility to apologize to me for her actions unless I really make a huge fuss and I’m tired of that too.

Then to make matters worse my mother has had the nerve to tell me about respecting Caleb when he says “no” to something.  Considering that she has not always respected me when I say something, where does she get off telling me to respect my son’s “no’s?” I do a far better job of that with him than she ever did with me!