AND FINALLY If grief has broken you, stay strong
HAVE you noticed how people personalise issues — viewing things through the prism of ‘my’ experience, even if the facts don’t fit?
I love it when readers tell me how something in one of my replies has chimed with their own experience, helping them, too. On the other hand, they can get the wrong end of the stick.
On June 12, I featured ‘Carla’, who had decided she didn’t like her mother at all. My advice was measured, suggesting that she could at once find her mother annoying and put up with her. But EJ protests: ‘I take great issue with your statement “at 26, you should be more detached from mum”. Please do not generalise how “attached” one should be, or not be. I find this deeply offensive.’
EJ then launches into a long wail of intense grief for her own late mother. It begins: ‘How can you know what the relationship is and what mother and daughter have been through?
‘Having lost my beloved mother two years ago at the age of 50, I wish with all my heart I’d never left her side from the moment I was born.’
Her words are very touching and I feel great sympathy for her loss.
But when she says, ‘I know not everyone is lucky enough to have that relationship with their mother, but I did . . . and it’s wrong to judge and say that we should not be attached’, I have to reply.
I was writing to a particular reader about her own issue, not generalising about all daughter relationships! In Carla’s case, stepping back would simply mean not letting her difficult mum get under her skin so much. That’s all.
EJ’s story is entirely different, her pain is overwhelming: ‘I am totally adrift and desolate now without her.’
I beg her (and anyone else broken by grief) to look at the services offered by the excellent charity Cruse (cruse.org.uk) because (and I will generalise) those who were beloved in life would want us to be able to go on after their death.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel. mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.