Yeah that's tough. All I can say is just do your best to reconcile what happened and when you fully understand the motivations and why everything happened the way it did, maybe then it will be time to patch things up with mom. I don't mean acting like everything was fine and nothing happened, but just treat her like you are a nursing home employee that has been hired to personally take care of her needs, including telling her "I love you" from time to time, buying her a small gift for her birthday and Mother's Day, and letting her spend time with her grandchildren.

I can't possibly begin to know the whole story between you guys, but I'm simply speaking from personal experience and this is the best way to go forward. I had a...troubling childhood that involved veracious beatings when the rules were broken. I actually don't remember most of my childhood up until the age of 12 unless it was a really bad beating that I couldn't afford to forget. I was pretty jaded up until my senior year of college when I realized why my dad did it and why my mom let him do it. They loved me. They didn't know how to raise children and that was how they were raised (they are from Louisiana); my dads dad died when my dad was 4, and my father was abused until he kicked his stepdad out when he was 15. He doesn't know anything about how to raise a child, he just knows how to show a child that there are going to be terrible consequences for breaking the rules, and he did his best to try to show me what right and wrong were.

There were never any beatings where he did it for no reason, which I take as definitive proof of his motives (despite the fact that reasoning is susceptible to retrospective alterations), and there was never a time when I was punished for following his rules. He was consistent, but still abusive. That said, I think there is a wide birth between the senseless abuse for the sake of taking part it your own anger, and the kind of abuse I went through, and it sounds like you went through. You don't have to pretend it never happened, but moving on and forgiving my parents has made such a positive impact on my life. They understand everything will never go back to the perfect loving family scenario they hoped for when I was born, but we are getting by and doing better. My sister has not moved on, and I don't think she ever will. It has destroyed her emotionally and I fear that she will suffer with it for the rest of her life. I've tried explaining this to her, and she understands it, but she just can't mentally make that hurdle. Until she had her son last year I was worried I would get a call one day, and find out she had finally escaped all that pain we built up as kids. She has him now and is focused on that though.

Just wanted to offer some unsolicited advice, I hope it helps you in some small way.