Dear Pastor,

I am 22 years old. I visited Jamaica with my sister and mother in 2005 for the Christmas holiday for the first time since 1999. I thought this trip would have been a great vacation but it turned out to be the vacation from hell. My mother wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything. For example, I wanted to go to Jam Jam and Island Explosion, but I was forbidden from these events. This made me really angry, so I stayed away from my mother for the remainder of the trip.

Final straw

In the mornings I'd get up and hang out with my uncle and then come back at night when it was time to go to bed. But the event that really made me hate my mother with all my heart occurred the night before we returned to the States. I was talking to an associate of my uncle in his car in front of our house for a couple hours. I didn't want to go inside because I didn't want to see my mother.

Finally, I decided to go inside and go to bed. As soon as I got to the door, my mother snatched it open and started to interrogate me about who I was drinking beer with in the car. I wasn't drinking beer. Then she started to cuss me out calling me a whore, slut, bitch and every other despicable name you can think of. She told me that I did not come from good people, so she didn't expect anything better of me.

Shocked

I was so shocked by her words because I'm still a virgin to this day and I was 21 years old, so if I was doing something in the car it was none of her business. I am also a college graduate. I was so disappointed because I thought my mother was a Christian woman. She goes to church every Sunday and studies her Bible. I didn't know that's how she saw me because for all my life I've been a good girl, doing the right things and listening to her, even if I didn't want to, I did everything she told me.

Now, I'm saving up my money to move as far away from her as humanly possible and never speak to her again. I really, really hate her. Why do you think she reacted the way she did?

D. M., Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Dear D. M.,

I don't blame you for planning to leave your mother's house. You are old enough to turn your own key. But what I want to beg you not to do is to cut her off from your life totally. I want you to look at what she said as coming from someone who does not know better. She had no right to call you a whore and to curse your father's side of the family. She forgot that your father impregnated her. She had a relationship with him. So is she saying that she went with a dirty man and regrets doing so? She should be careful. That is verbal abuse.

Has you mother forgotten that you are an adult? My darling, you must forgive her, she does not know better. You are a very good young woman. At your age no mother should prevent you from going out. Don't allow her behaviour to cause you to condemn all Christians. Remember, not all Christian women are so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good.

Pastor