Omg, my Interstitial Cystitis started with me getting tons of UTIs while becoming sexually active. I don't want to scare you, but be careful -- I advise against taking cranberry. I was told to take cranberry, and I think it contributed to damaging my bladder lining because it is very acidic. Now that I have IC, I can't even eat cranberries and most other fruits, and basically anything acidic (so I can't even have tomatoes or drink wine). If you haven't already, you might wanna look into D-Mannose and probiotics. I recommend finding a good feminine probiotic. I use the 50 and 90 billion feminine probiotic by Renew Life (sold at Whole Foods). I have a huge history of UTIs and am currently in the midst of a 6-month Macrobid treatment. I'm totally here if you need to talk to someone about your feminine troubles.
It sounds like I was brave with my mom, mainly because in the past I would never have thought of seriously confronting her. When I was younger, she had so much more power over me and my life. But now, she knows I can disappear at any time, so I knew she'd avoid doing anything that would seriously make my life worse. It would be painful if I 100% cut her off, so I knew she wouldn't inflict that pain on herself by doing any drastic reaction to my confronting her. What really helped me be "brave" enough to do it is that I had lots of support backing my claims. I have many books/resources I could easily show her that support what I was saying when I confronted her, if she tried to weasel out of it. I had the support of my psychologist in the back of my head, and all of the validation she's given me. I knew I could go to be with my SO if she had a horrific reaction. I'd like to think I'm brave, but I feel guilty for the way I went about things. Despite how horrible my mom has been, I hate seeing anyone suffer. And I hate knowing my mom had to suffer through the breaking of her wall of lies -- lies she told herself, that she had been a good mom, etc. I also kinda had a rage-freakout after I realized my bladder condition was caused by all of the many years of trauma. I went around the house and kinda smashed all the picture frames she had of me as a child. It was out of character -- I wasn't even allowed to be angry when I was growing up. But I think it kinda scared her. That was back in the fall... I've since got a slightly better handle on my emotions. But I remember her holding the picture frames and crying, saying, "It was all a lie; her childhood and the times we had together were a lie." I think she finally realized then, and she realized she couldn't do anything about how I feel towards her. She could no longer manipulate me into thinking whatever she wanted me to think and doing whatever she wanted me to do. Part of me wanted to save her from the pain of realizing the truth, but I wasn't able to. I was just too angry. She's taken too much from my life for me to be able to just not say anything.
Are you in therapy? I do hope that you can confront your mother, if you think it will help you or your situation. I think confronting my mother helped me, but nothing is perfect -- I have plenty of guilt and shit about it, but I think it needed to be done.