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So I was standing in my kitchen when my Mother showed up. Usually, I would get very anxious and uncomfortable. But this time she said that she needed to tell me something. She then went into a long apology and asked me how I felt. Said that she would be willing to do anything to try and build that relationship that was never built as a child. I had been going to Therapy for a while at this point. I hadn't talked to her about anything, and was working out how to approach the subject with her with my therapist. There was nothing expected from the apology. Nothing. Not even a relationship, as she said that she knows that asking for a relationship now was terribly difficult, but she was willing to put the time in. I was taken off guard. But Holy Shit... I'm not going to lie, this was a moving moment. My knees went weak, and my heart nearly stopped. I couldn't place the feeling. We are talking. She is making the initiatives. This is so out of her normal pattern that it has to be true. For the first time in twenty years, I trust her. Parents can change. She started doing self work and therapy herself and acted towards starting to repair the damage of her past. I felt that this should be shared with this community. Not to give anyone false hope. Not for any reason but to say that this has happened... the evidence for change exists. Thank you for reading. C

I am having - it seems to me - a very fundamental disagreement with someone who is important to me, a disagreement that has lead to some trust issues, thereby affecting the relationship adversely. The topic for disagreement was a (not entirely) hypothetical scenario that came up during a discussion between us, namely the following: Person X breaks contact with his or her parents due to having suffered continual abuse in childhood. Would it ever make sense for X to allow his/her parents to grandparent X:s children, and if so, for what reason and under what circumstances? What do you think? In order not to have a minimum impact on any potential responses, I'll leave out the details of the discussion for now, as well as my own approach to this problem. Highly grateful for your wisdom!

So yesterday shortly before I went to bed I had a very enlightening conversation with a fellow FDR listener. (Thanks so much, you know who you are!) We talked about my family and me defooing from my grandparents. It's difficult for me to evaluate my parents objectively and to connect with the experience I had with them as a child. With my grandparents I don't feel ambivalent, because I don't like talking to them and they beat my father with the belt whenever his grades weren't to his parents satisfaction. I'm away from my parents now because I am doing an internship. My mother has asked me to call my grandmother because "she wished that". I said no, I'm not going to call. When she asked, I just told her I have an bad feeling whenever I call my grandparents and she didn't pursue the matter much. I was very sure I was going to have a dream after the conversation with the FDR listener and sure enough, I had one and woke up at 4:46 am. It's very short and most of it I think is very obvious, but maybe you see even more than I do and hopefully it helps some of you out there. The dream:I am in a forest with my family. My father says, "We'd like to make an important announcement." He takes me and somebody else to be at each of his sides and puts his arm around our waists. He starts singing a birthday song for my grandfather. I suddenly hang in the air, because apparently my father has lifted me up. I start beating my father in the ribs because I am starting to panic and want to get out of this situation. I am angry at my father because he knows that I don't like and don't want to speak to my grandfather.My father collapses and shows signs of an heart attack. He says, "You have broken something." I cry out, "Heart attack!", to alert the others and think (and maybe also say) "The time has come." - as if the heart attack has been anticipated in advance. I hold my fathers head in my hands and say "Look at me." or something like that so he doesn't loose consciousness. Somehow I feel this is the most important thing, that he doesn't loose consciousness. My father sticks out his tongue like a defiant child. I feel like I am not taken seriously. My father looses consciousness.I wake up. I have deep compassion with my inner child. More info: My brothers birthday is this month and my father's birthday is in December. With both birthdays, I feel very unsure about what to do. I don't know (didn't know) whether or not I should congratulate my brother, since he didn't respond to my last message and I don't like him that much any more. I will probably not congratulate him. The only reason I would want to talk to him now is to find out more about our childhoods. My father's birthday is going to be his 50th, so the whole family (a couple dozen people) will be there, including my grandparents. (Also men in their 50s are prone to heart attacks and my father has a desk job and works long hours.) I don't know how I should act towards my grandparents then or if I should even go. I do realize on some level that it is a bad idea to go. I hear my parents in my head saying, "But it's his 50th!". I go back to my parents when the internship ends in mid-October. I aim to learn as much as I can about myself until then, so I can be strong enough to see them as they are. What I think about the dream: The forest reminds me of the one my other grandparents regularly camp at. Who is the other person he wants to sing with? Is it maybe that one is me as a child and the other me as an adult? My father is clearly ignoring my wishes. Me hanging in the air means that I am a child and that he is preventing me from escaping. He is forcing me to participate in trying to please a violent person. I do what I feel in the dream and now to be totally justified: I try to get out at any cost. I am the wronged party but then it's all about him. He collapses and has a heart attack. I try to save him. I do cry out in order for people to help me but nobody does. Nobody is even calling an ambulance. "The time has come." Is this the anticipation I feel about what is going to happen when I go back to my parents? Why is the dream making him have a heart attack? Is it genuine or not? This is very difficult for me because I still do somehow want to save my father. I have no idea of what it will do psychologically to him if I mention his parents violent behavior. His sticking his tongue out makes me feel sorry for him because I feel like he is a child that is trying to mask great pain. But it could also mean that he is manipulating me with a faked heart attack and then mocking me for believing it. In the dream I did not feel at all like that but rather forgot about the situation he put me in before that. I am glad, however, that I felt such a deep compassion for myself in the dream after I woke up. I rarely had such a deep emotional connection with somebody from a dream. I am very relieved that I am starting to connect to my deepest emotions.