Hi,
I read your letter and my heart hurt for you. I know what it is to have a strained relationship between mom and daughter. I do believe in prayer and my daughter is always in my prayers. You see, I am the mother in this situation, and it breaks my heart. I think my situation is different from yours. Yet the pain is the same. I was married to my children's father for 25 yrs. There is so much that my kids do not know. Their father was an alcoholic who abused me in any way you could imagine. And yet---we never argued in front of the kids. You might say that we ran a good business. I see now that that was a mistake and made the divorce much more of a shock. I was so determined that my 2 children have a father, and he was a loving father. You know that it is time to leave when the promise of peace means more than all of the losses you might suffer. My son was away at college and my daughter, a daddy's girl, refused to come with me. It broke my heart; even more so when she cut me from her wedding that we had planned for years. My ex husband's live in was seated in the mother's place. By that time, I had remarried and we sat way in the back. Sad to say, my ex died from his alcoholism about 10 yr. later. My family knows about my problems with him, but I tell them that I want my daughter to think of her dad as the perfect father she believed him to be, not the one I came to know. My dad died as I entered my teen years and it was very important to me that my daughter have the gift of a great dad.
I know this is just another side of a different story, not really matching your's. But I feel that we forgive others not for their sake, but to give us peace. And I wish you peace and perhaps reconciliation at some point.
Hang in there,
prayerfulme
iVillage message boards 
