You know what has been super helpful to me in the past nine months since my mother ended her three-year silence to tell me she wants to move closer to me?

Instead of trying to plan for every possible outcome and rehearsing all the possible conversations in my head (talk about exhausting and confusing), I ask myself:

"Who do I want to be when I engage with her?"

If you've been following along, my mother reached out to me in January to tell that she wants to move closer to me (she currently lives about 300 miles away). At the time, I adopted a neutral, matter-of-fact attitude towards the idea.

She was then silent for about six months.

In July she reached out to tell me that her husband was in a nursing home. Then a few weeks later, to tell me he was in the hospital. Then again to tell me he was dying.

And finally to tell me that he died (last Friday).

Her birthday was a couple of days later. I decided, given that her husband just died, to call her, even though we haven't traded birthday cards/calls/emails in several years.

When she answered, she was out of breath and told me she'd just gotten back from the lobby of her building where she was checking to see if I'd sent her flowers.

I almost laughed out loud.

Our conversation then proceeded the way "birthday" conversations happened in the past, where we talk about how old we are now and she reminds me that I was born screaming and that I haven't stopped. She says it in a tone that seems partly mocking, partly amused, and partly annoyed. I am intimately familiar with this tone and these kinds of stories.

These conversations feel like she is "grooming" me. Lulling me back into the well-worn grooves of the dynamic she and I engaged in for most of my life. And of course she is...she needs me now and appears to think everything will go back to the way it was when she could control and manipulate me.

I don't think she's doing any of this consciously...but I see it for what it is.

Because I have created so much emotional separation from her and am no longer enmeshed or codependent, not only can I see and identify patterns I couldn't see before, I am (mostly) no longer hurt, upset, or angry.

My tools are working beautifully: I have created safety for myself, I am intentional in the way I engage with her, and this has helped me set healthy, solid boundaries, including:

• I do not rehash the past with her.
• I refuse to engage in tit-for-tat energy (meaning, I won't say something like "I'm not going to take care of you because of the way you've treated me my whole life").
• ​I do not chase.
• I do not explain or defend my choices.
• I don't need, want, or expect her to apologize, nor do I have any desire to "hold her accountable."

My boundaries are solid because they concern my actions and behavior, not hers.

I am unbothered. And unshamed.

Much, much love,

Karen

P.S. My colleague Simona Hadjigeorgalis is offering a free workshop on September 10 for mothers of teens: 3 Keys to Set Loving Boundaries With Your Older Teen (in a fast-changing world) Without Guilt or Power Struggles​