@thisismarilynb you got this! I know you can do it because I am very much like you. I am only suggesting what I have tried and found to be a fact.

I grew up in a very backward East Indian family where the mother cared only for her sons and they were her only focus. I being a girl - a disfigured one at that (I am totally blind in one eye) so considered improbable to get married off - was a sore point in her life - a millstone around her neck. I was an A student in school but was forced by my mother to leave school at 14 when my father died because she felt girls were not worth spending money on education - their purpose in life was just to get married and run a husband’s household. Add to being disregarded by everyone I suffered physical and emotional abuse at her hands and was a sexual prey to random men (thankfully not my father - but I was too afraid to tell him because when I told my mother I was just beaten more and told it was my fault). With the help of a family friend’s encouragement I was able to leave the country on my own a week before my 23rd birthday and make a life for myself half way across the globe.

It’s a long story of physical, mental and sexual abuse but this is the gist of it. I long since have forgiven my mother because over the years I came to realize she was only a product of her own upbringing - she really didn’t know any better.