This might be a long one - looking for some support and being able to discuss this to feel less lonely. I never went no contact before this incident.
I'm a female, 39, lesbian. I live very far from my parents (like another hemisphere far) and haven't been back home for 9 years (most of it is due to political/financial/personal safety reasons). I don't miss them much as we haven't been particularly close. I'm AuDHD, so that might be playing a role as well. They supported me financially, but not in other ways. My family is probably what's described as an emotionally immature mother and emotionally distant father.
My mother is not a very nice person: she doesn't seem to have a lot of empathy and there were many instances when her comments were hurtful rather than supportive at times when I needed love and care. For example, in my early 20s when I was crying when my pet died due to an accident while I was away from home, the first thing she said was "You see, I told you - your partner can't be trusted. How can you trust her if you can't even leave the pet with her".
I've been in therapy for years, the first run was in my teens. This was thanks to my mother who sent me to therapy when she saw that I came home from school and then spent hours crying in my room. It was good of her to send me to therapy, but she was coming from a place of "fixing me". That's probably been in a lot of how she treats me: whenever there's something she dislikes or doesn't meet her expectations, she is mean about it. Usually not overtly, mostly passive-aggressively. For instance, that I shouldn't be teaching as she would never send her child to a homosexual teacher.
I mostly reconciled with the fact that our relationship won't ever be warm or particularly close, but most recently (about 2 months ago), I ended up going no contact.
I asked her to help me with a simple admin thing. All she needed was to send a letter on my behalf so I could maintain my self-employment status back home. Instead, she started looking into all kinds of legal implications of my self-employment status, telling me things that she learnt about regulations that were blatantly wrong and insisting she was right. Kept saying that it will all lead to problems in the near future and I should just give up the self-employment. I still had a couple of clients who I had been working with for years, and without that letter, I would be paying much higher taxes (and it became unsustainable), so I really needed her to send that letter. I told her that I don't want her telling me what to do, I don't want to stop self-employment, but she kept being mean and insistent.
So I ended up telling her that I will be closing the self-employment as she was not willing to help. She said that I misunderstood her and that I shouldn't think she's my enemy, that she wants to help (but well, her help was not what I needed).
This self-employment has been a big part of my identity, independence, and connection to my home country. And the clients I had to abruptly stop working with were long-term relationships. There was no proper wrap-up, no closure. I just finished the prepaid work and said I couldn't continue. That loss is still weighing on me.
The way she was brushing it off like it was nothing: "Oh, just stop being self-employed" was what really broke me. I was very angry so I stopped talking to her.
She had a birthday and I just messaged her saying Happy birthday without anything else. Usually I send her a bouquet of flowers etc.
She later messaged me with another legal bit of advice that was entirely unnecessary and irrelevant for me and I didn't respond.
Now my father called me and said that she's having some very serious health problems.He was crying for a little bit in our conversation. Saying that I shouldn't be doing it as it's bad not talking to family etc. Apparently, she told him I didn't even acknowledge her birthday - which is a lie, actually. I guess my father was trying to imply that her deteriorating health is on me as she's been feeling so dejected and offended by me.
I feel a mix of emotions - guilt, anger, frustration.
I actually felt OK not talking to her for a few weeks - I felt very bad about stopping working with my old-time clients, but I didn't really miss my conversations with her.
Now there's more guilt. But I still feel so very much aggrieved that I don't really want to reach out. But I feel like I should.