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Business Insider
10-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Google (GOOGL) Co-Founder Sergey Brin Calls United Nations ‘Transparently Antisemitic'
Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL), has accused the United Nations (U.N.) of being 'transparently antisemitic' following a report that was published alleging technology firms profited off the 'genocide carried out by Israel' in Gaza. Don't Miss TipRanks' Half-Year Sale Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. The U.N. reportedly calls out big technology companies such as Alphabet for their connections to Israel. An angry Brin called the U.N. 'transparently antisemitic' during an internal forum with employees of Alphabet, according to multiple media reports. Brian was apparently angry that the U.N. report accuses Google and its parent company Alphabet of profiting from the war between Israel and Hamas by providing cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to the Israeli government and military. 'Deeply Offensive' Brin wrote in a forum for staff at Google DeepMind, the company's AI division, 'With all due respect, throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides. I would also be careful citing transparently antisemitic organizations like the UN in relation to these issues.' The U.N. report was authored by Francesa Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Albanese has been accused of antisemitism on numerous occasions in the past, and the U.S. has called her 'unfit' for her current role. The subject of whether the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza rises to the level of genocide remains debatable by both politicians and international organizations. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that the war is a defensive act after Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,195 people and taking 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023. Brin's comments were reportedly made on a Google Chat forum that has nearly 2,500 members, most of whom are AI researchers at the company. Brin has said in the past that he and his Russian Jewish parents immigrated to the U.S. to escape the antisemitism they faced in the former Soviet Union. He remains on Alphabet's board of directors and is still actively involved with Google, particularly in AI research. GOOGL stock has declined 7% this year. Is GOOGL Stock a Buy? average GOOGL price target of $202.39 implies 16.08% upside from current levels.
Telegraph
28-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
New York, London, Paris: the great cities of the West have fallen
New York is generally considered one of the greatest cities on earth, if not the greatest, as the classic tagline goes. Never mind that in my view, it is stifling in summer and slushy in winter, a concrete jungle from which it often feels there is no escape thanks to a terrifying, erratic subway, an incomprehensible bus system, and all of it laid out on an alienating grid system suited to human compasses, not people. Then there are the rodents and the cockroaches, the poorly-made housing, and the sky-high prices. New York is no stranger to Leftism: byzantine laws around planning and tax have long been in place to defend the poor and the dispossessed, at considerable cost to the less poor and dispossessed. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, New York's Leftism was bound up with Ellis Island and its unique magnetism to waves of immigrants from the old world, including a hefty influx of Russian Jewish emigres, some of whom brought communist and socialist sympathies and trade unionism along with a furious work ethic. It was they, plus later waves of East Asian and Hispanic immigrants, who made New York the 'greatest city on earth'. They made Broadway, Wall Street, the restaurants, the garment district, the art galleries, music studios and talk shows and museums the end of the cultural rainbow the world over. The barmy progressivism and the barmy ambition and creativity co-existed, with the result greater than the sum of its parts. The historically unique alchemy of New York is now a poisonous swirl of evil forces. Always at the vanguard of culture, New York's likely next mayor – the proudly socialist, Palestine-obsessed Zohran Mamdani, 33, with a massive fawning celebrity following – shows that the toxic wind that began to blow after the killing of George Floyd has become a tornado. Mamdani's rise speaks to much damage already done. His election will be the end of New York, at least for years to come. Let us start with his moral compass. In a famously Jewish city (home to the largest community outside Israel) Mamdani has piloted his way to the top as a proud signatory to the extreme anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Following the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, he condemned Israel. He has refused to say whether he supports the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state and has refused to condemn such phrases, associated with brazen jihad, as 'globalise the intifada'. He casually and confidently uses such false terms as 'genocide' and 'apartheid' to describe Israel's treatment of Palestinians, New York Democrats cheering him on. Al Jazeera boasts that 'Mamdani's New York victory boosts pro-Palestine politics'. The Guardian crooned: 'Mamdani stood firm in his support of Gaza. The Democratic Party could learn from him.' All of this matters for city governance. It positions Mamdani as favourable towards the types of grisly, illegal campus protests that took place last year, which in places openly praised Hamas and Hezbollah, left Jewish students either advised to leave campus for their own safety or barricaded in their rooms, outside of which they faced swastika grafitti and shouts of 'Zionists out'. There will probably be many more, and even worse, if Mamdani becomes mayor. What would those fleeing the pogroms of Russia think of it all? Beyond campuses, the Palestine mob will proceed emboldened on the streets. What would those alighting at Ellis Island in rags, fleeing the pogroms of Russia, think of it all? Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Under this banner, his ticket includes promises to nationalise food shops, force rent rise freezes on already rent-controlled apartments, welcome illegal migrants to a city already unable to handle current rates of arrival, make bus travel free for everyone, allow tenants to hold landlords to ransom over inspections and other works, and build 200,000 new 'affordable, union-built, rent-stabilised' units over the next 10 years. He is going to throw hundreds of millions at making schools green to further the classic loony credo of 'climate justice'. It's all mad. Who is going to fund all this in a city that now, apparently, hates business, capitalism and rich people? Mamdani was born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He should do some reading on socialist 'utopias'. Mamdami's approach to crime is perhaps the most indicative of the end-times New York seems likely to find itself in. Instead of bolstering the police, who since George Floyd have famously retreated, leaving an epidemic of low- and high-level crime unpunished, Mamdani will create a Department of Community Safety. He was formerly a supporter of the 'defund the police' campaign and is reported as having referred to the NYPD as a 'rogue agency'. This man should not be mayor. Like so many socialists who hate Israel, Mamdani – who used to produce rap videos before being a housing officer in the city – comes from high-falutin' academic stock, and the apple does not fall far from the tree. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Palestine-mad Columbia University. The elder Mamdani is celebrated for his writing on post-colonial theory: his 'works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452… the history and theory of human rights, and the politics of knowledge production', according to his bio. It is not hard to see where his privilege-hating son got his ideas from. They are the inheritance of life amid the anti-colonial professoriate of the Ivy League. Should he be elected, Mamdani will become only the most eye-catching among a breed of politically demented city hall heads swiftly ruining great cities. Sadiq Khan is Mamdani's London spiritual brother Sadiq Khan is Mamdani's London spiritual brother: another woke, Leftist mayor hoisting himself high on the phantom spectre of endemic Islamophobia and social justice. Like Mamdami's possible New York, London is weakened by two-tier policing, a sense of unprecedented fear for safety among Jews and women, rubbish-filled streets, endless Tube strikes and pointless environmental gestures. Meanwhile rough-sleeping, shoplifting, and muggings are only getting worse. Then there is Paris. Ahh, Paris. Truly a once-great, beautiful and important city which, like London, always put New York as a physical place in the shade. But since its mayor, Anne Hidalgo, took over in 2014, it's become broke, ugly, dangerous and inconvenient: another would-be socialist utopia. Hidalgo, so intent on gestures of eco-radicalism, seems animated by a loathing for the lives of actual, hard-working people. Like Khan and Mamdami, she prioritises the comfort and ease of illegal newcomers over long-term city-dwellers. No wonder she is vying to become the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees. It would be the perfect role for her. At any rate, to the horror of settled Parisians, Hidalgo has destroyed signature parts of Paris's architectural heritage, digging up 19th-century fountains, lamp-posts and benches and replacing them with plastic mushroom seats. She has ruled over the worst rubbish crisis the city has seen in generations. She axed half of Paris's parking spaces because they take up too much public space. The blight of eco-obsessed socialist mayors used to feel distinctly European. The fact that American cities are electing people like this is particularly jarring. Just a decade or two ago, the American dream meant the very opposite of what people like Mamdani stand for. Karen Bass, the woke mayor of LA, and Michelle Wu, who has been peddling social justice ideology in Boston, my hometown, are two further examples. Let us hope that this moment of destructiveness passes before it becomes impossible to resurrect our great cities from the embers of social justice zealotry left by the worst generation of mayors ever.
Los Angeles Times
13-05-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Steam, soak, repeat. Bathing in L.A. is an art — just ask these spa devotees
We're in matching pajamas — burgundy, orange, brown — spread like starfish across the heated floor. We're in the jimjilbang, roughly translated from Korean as 'heated rooms for steaming and relaxation.' Some whisper, some sleep, some stare at the ceiling, lost in thought. The pink Himalayan salt sauna glows like stained glass. I taste the salt of my own sweat gathering on my upper lip. Everything moves at half-speed. I'm here to clear mental space, like closing tabs on my phone, making room for deeper processing. I bring big questions and big feelings to the spa, letting them work out during the rituals of bathing. I rinse off the outside world upon entry and unwind in the hot tub. The heat is a litmus test of where my mental edges are at — how long I need to return to my body after the week's stresses. Icy cold plunges reset my nervous system — like a computer reboot — reminding me to release with every breath. I rinse and repeat, these waters providing me with safety and comfort on my path for good orderly direction. For years, I've been touring spas not only in the U.S. but globally, including Japan, Denmark, Paris and Mexico. Inadvertently, I've become bathing-obsessed (like getting-married-at-a-hot-spring obsessed), writing my observations on a Substack named S.P.A., paying tribute to the ancient Romans who used the abbreviation to mark the presence of water — most commonly thought to stand for either Salus per Aquam (health through water) or Sanus per Aquam (sanity through water). I explore 'Why not both?'' since water cleanses us — not just physically but spiritually, emotionally and mentally. Los Angeles stands out as one of the most vast and varied bathing cities in the world. Across the city, there are dozens of Korean spas, Russian Jewish banyas and even natural hot springs hiding inside nondescript buildings and strip malls. The history of L.A.'s bathing landscape runs deep, and there is more than what meets the eye today. During the late 1800s, settlers in Los Angeles searching for gold or oil instead found water (not quite the fountain of youth but not not the fountain of youth either). Massive public swimming pools, known as 'plunges,' were scattered across the city where people would learn to swim. Bimini Baths, once one of the largest, stood at the present-day intersection of Third Street and Vermont Avenue, where a Vons grocery store now sits. One relic from this era is the Beverly Hot Springs, an artesian well once used by Native Americans that was rediscovered in 1910 when Richard S. Grant purchased the land as a wheat field. Over time, the well was forgotten, until 1984, when it was rediscovered and turned into a spa. The alkaline water with rich mineral composition is the only natural hot spring that flows directly into a building left uncapped in central Los Angeles. The walls mimic a cave and the water echoes against the bouldered ceiling. When I go, I wear a disposable hair net and pretend I'm a grotto nymph, crawling around the corners of my subconscious transporting me back in time. One of the earliest establishments I visited in L.A. was City Spa, a Russian bathhouse that has been operating for more than 70 years. It was here that my journey into bathing culture intersected with the pioneering work of Leonard Koren, who began documenting L.A. bathing culture back in 1976 with Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing. A visit to City Spa confirmed my suspicion: This cherished Eastern European-style establishment was formerly Pico-Burnside Baths, once the stage for Koren's artful magazine photo shoots. Wet, which ran for 5½ years, was a glorious celebration of bathing and featured contributions from figures like Richard Gere, David Lynch, Debbie Harry and Ed Ruscha. The issue themes were playful, ranging from 'Drinking Water: Bathing From the Inside Out' to 'Getting Wet in Public Places' (you can peruse the back issues in the LACMA archives). The idea for the magazine came to Koren while he was in architecture school at UCLA. Disenchanted with modern and more 'heroic architectures' of his day, he 'became more curious about less self-conscious, more human approaches to place-making' — like the everyday space of bathrooms. The 34 issues that followed were odes to the 'small, intimate environments' of bathing, and were the beginnings of Koren's long career in publishing, as he went on to make celebrated books about raking leaves, arranging objects, Japanese fashion and more. Curious to talk with Koren about all things bathing and Wet, I set up a call to connect with him in Rome, where he now lives. Courtney Wittich: In your early 20s, you co-founded the Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad, a collective that made murals around the city in the '70s, and then you pursued a master's degree in architecture at UCLA. What pulled you toward bathing as a creative focus? Leonard Koren: While in architecture school, I fantasized about creating a widely accessible environment that offered some of the same aesthetic wonder and intimacy as the traditional Japanese tea house did. The American bathroom, I ultimately realized, was in lots of ways a contemporary solution. This led me to further explore the silly and sacred dimensions of baths and bathing. CW: The first bathing event you hosted was at Pico-Burnside Baths, which led you to the creation of Wet magazine. Can you tell me a bit more about that? LK: I had been doing what I called 'Bath Art' projects. I did silkscreen prints and lithographic prints of people bathing in various substances and various modes. There were quite a few people who had modeled for my projects, mainly friends and acquaintances, designers, people in the movie industry. And I realized that I really should repay them for their kindness. I had very little money at the time and realized that if I sent everyone $5 it wouldn't be very meaningful to them. Then, when I was talking to a friend, he reminded me that I knew this place — the Pico Burnside Baths, which was an old Russian Jewish bathhouse. I made an appointment to talk to the owners, and I asked them if I could rent the bathhouse for the evening, and they said, 'Well, we don't do that.' After talking for a while, they said, 'OK' (I believe it was $450 for the night). I said we're going to have men and women here, and they said, 'No, no, there's never any coed bathing here.' And I said OK, and as I was walking out the door they said, 'If you're out by midnight.' And that was basically it. I asked some friends to cater, who were great cooks. I hired an electric violinist to rove around the bathhouse and play during the event. People came in every manner of dress and undress because the invitations I sent out were purposefully vague. My theory was that people didn't know how they should dress or how one behaves when a person, fully clothed, is talking to a nude person. New social rules were invented on the spot, creating a lot of what I call social energy. It was a very electric evening — people like Rudi Gernreich, the inventor of the modern one-piece bathing suit, and even a reporter from the L.A. Times, Beth Ann Krier; there was an article of this bath party on the front page of one of the sections of the L.A. Times. I was excited it was a very successful event, and in the following days, I thought about how I could harness this social energy. Out of that rumination came the idea to start a magazine about gourmet bathing, which I called Wet! CW: Did this bathing event become the template for the magazine's future events? LK: It's difficult to say. The bathing events of Wet were conceived as artistic social experiments, not as business prototypes. The rituals and social understandings that evolved out of the Wet bath parties were fluid, ever-changing and unpredictable. I would think that the magic of spontaneity and extemporaneous invention is something that the current bathing businesses hope for. CW: Each issue of Wet had such a unique visual identity via the logo, layout and cover art. How did you approach the design for each issue? What influenced your choices? LK: Wet was above all an art project. A key aspect of the project was to make each new issue of Wet as conceptually and visually different from the previous ones as possible. So all the design and editorial decisions naturally evolved from this self-imposed mandate. CW: You were creating this whole world around bathing — events, bath art, papers, a magazine. Wet was so ahead of its time in how it blended design, philosophy and culture. Did you think of it as part of a larger cultural shift? What were you consciously responding to — or rebelling against — when you made it? LK: I came up with the idea for Wet when living in Venice, California, in what had once been a gondola garage. At the time Venice had a tremendous amount of creative freedom because no one really cared much about what went on there. I think Wet was simply my artistic response to the absurdities inherent in being a human being at that particular time and place. CW: While living in L.A., did you have favorite places to bathe? Any spas or springs you kept returning to? LK: On weekends while in architecture school and while making Wet, friends and I would travel up and down California looking for obscure, undeveloped hot springs. Of the developed hot springs we found, Esalen and Tassajara, circa 1976, were my favorites. CW: You've lived in California, Italy, Japan. What have you learned from each place about bathing and bathing culture? LK: In California, I learned that nature is benevolent and magnanimous. For example, nature provides hot springs that bubble up with the perfect bathing temperature in unbelievably beautiful places. In Japan, I learned that close attention to the ways of nature can lead to enhanced levels of sensory experience. And in Italy, I learned that the extremely high level of bathing culture circa 200 C.E. has completely disappeared. CW: These days, spas and bathhouses have become an escape from digital life. Back in the '70s, people didn't have phones glued to their hands. Was there anything people were trying to get away from then? Has the role or function of the spa changed because of modern technology? LK: I think life in L.A. always had its uniquely absurd dimensions. And bathing in its myriad forms has always been a way of reveling in these absurdities — and as a way of transcending them. Courtney Wittich is on-the-clock fashion PR, off-the-clock sauna sommelier, bathing connoisseur and water gourmand. Find her soaking it in and sweating it out.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
My Mom Abused Me For Years. After She Died, I Was Overwhelmed By What I Discovered In Her Diaries.
'I've written a list,' my mother said as our session began in her therapist's San Francisco office. 'It's called 'the 40 most unforgivable things I've ever done to my daughters.'' Fog flowed above the skylights as she fidgeted in her seat, twirling her blue chiffon scarf. I cringed. I hated the idea of therapy, but Mom loved it. She'd convinced me to go, even though I protested, telling her, 'I don't need any apologies.' At 30, I was still frozen in fright as if I were 7 years old and hiding under my bed because I feared my next beating. I sat opposite my mom while she smoothed her light powder pink matching skirt and jacket so no wrinkles would show, as if that would somehow help in ironing out our own. My parents, who were Russian Jewish second cousins, met at a bar mitzvah and married at 19. Mom was 20 when I was born. She got addicted to speed trying to lose the baby weight and used barbiturates to sleep. When I was 7, my parents divorced. My father moved to Mexico while my mom, sister and I remained in New York City. Mom had been seeing her psychoanalyst weekly for decades to process her pain of having been an abuser for the first 13 years of my life. Focused only on becoming a college professor and starting my own family, I'd spent those same decades pretending I wasn't damaged in any way. Denial protected me and I had never seen a mental health specialist. Twenty years after she got sober, she set up this time to formally ask for forgiveness. Until then, we'd often gotten together and had perfectly pleasant times by never talking about the past. My lower back ached as I settled into the stiff beige leather chair, wishing I wasn't there. 'Today's session is for your mom,' the therapist, Terry, said. 'She wants to tell you how sorry she is about the abuse that took place when you were young. She's been plagued with guilt.' I looked over at my 50-year-old mother, whose hazel green eyes I had inherited along with her petite frame and dimples. I also have the same thick wavy brown hair, and perhaps the propensity to fidget, since I couldn't stop nervously twisting a strand as she spoke that day. In every other way, though, I felt nothing like her. 'The fact that your mom is about to apologize for specific acts of violence and neglect in no way excuses her past behavior,' Terry said. I sat motionless and muted, staring at Mom. I knew what she was going to say and I didn't want to hear it. 'When Leslie was 5, I repeatedly closed her in the garbage room and told her I didn't want her anymore,' Mom read aloud. 'Each time she tried to come out, I slammed the door shut and told her she was being thrown away.' I quivered as if she were still locking me in that rubbish room in our swanky Manhattan apartment building. I shrank back to being tiny and helpless. Mom continued, 'I know I can't undo the past. I feel so much pain, I don't want to die without saying how sorry I am for everything on my list.' She read aloud from her categorized maltreatments, among them: strangling me, pulling my sisters and I around the apartment by our hair, hitting us at midnight when her speed kicked in, forcing us to clean at 2 a.m., telling us repeatedly she wished we were dead and had never had been born, regretting the drug dealers she brought home, and holding primal scream groups at the house where we had to hear adults yell obscenities several nights a week. Mom made it only partially through her list before I could barely stand it. My mouth was ajar and my breathing jagged, as if gasping for air in a room that had been lit on fire. Ribbons of red streaked across the skyline as the sun set. The session ended with an eerie silence. Still pulled by a primal force to please her, I finally spoke. 'Mom, I forgive you.' I had not gotten over any of it —I'd just gotten good at saying I had. Mom's description of each act she regretted reminded me of everything I tried to ignore. It was both re-traumatizing and validating to hear her voice these truths in the presence of her analyst. Though I remembered it all, hearing her recount the details woke me up to my deep and unprocessed pain. Mom's face went pale and her limbs went limp. Perspiration surrounded her hairline as she tilted her head down and said softly, 'I can't believe how mercilessly I hurt my own babies.' A late lunch at the Thai restaurant directly below her therapist's office had always been the plan, but after the session I had no appetite. The scent of lemongrass and garlic wafted around the room, but did nothing to return me to my senses. Mom must have known. Before I scanned the menu, she said, 'I don't know how you can sit near me after hearing all that. You must think I'm a monster. How can you even stand to look at me?' I tried again to casually dismiss her anxiety. 'Oh, of course I can look at you and have lunch with you because I love you,' I said. 'That was all so long ago. We can move on now.' There were multicolored Christmas lights and twinkling mini-Buddhas surrounding our booth, but I felt anything but festive. As a child who was abused, I always craved my mother's love and professed my own for her often in hopes of getting more. Over the years that followed, I learned my behavior was typical for kids who went through what I did. The menu blurred as I blinked back tears. I knew I was lying to myself and I wasn't ready to move on. I still harbored unresolved resentment and anger toward my mom. Faking feelings was my jam, though, so I blurted out, 'What great flavors!' after my first bite of pad Thai, even though I didn't taste anything except bitterness. Though I was upset, I realized that Mom's bravery to say how sorry she was for each of her specific offenses enabled me to understand that I would need to begin my own therapy at some point, but I wasn't ready yet. My fierce focus on forgetting my past continued for years. No one close to me could understand why I still had a relationship with my mom after the abuse ended. Therapy, which I finally did begin 10 years after that session, and Buddhism helped to create loving emotional connections for us. We began practicing Buddhism when I was in the seventh grade. My mother had planned to kill herself, but instead tried an ancient meditation chant, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, based on Mahayana Buddhist teachings. She dared me to try it with her for 100 days as one last attempt at happiness. I tried it, initially to prove her wrong, but as we chanted day after day, I felt hope and noticed mom becoming kinder. Within that year, she stopped using drugs and hitting us. This motivated me to stay connected to her. The Sanskrit word myo means to revive. Through the visceral vibration of chanting with her daily, I started sensing maternal love from Mom. Her actions to transform our destiny started with our shared spiritual journey when I was a teenager, enabling me to enjoy time with her even though the trauma of the unspeakable things she did was still locked in my cells. Before I finished that school year, she began seeing her therapist. I was 32 when I received her formal apology. It became a positive pivot in our relationship, but I still couldn't entirely move forward. Eight years later, I became so sick, I ended up on the floor in a fetal position unable to walk my kids to school. I was diagnosed with severe, chronic, ulcerative colitis — an autoimmune disease. A Reiki practitioner I started seeing at the time asked me, 'Did you ever experience any trauma?' I laughed nervously and said, 'My mom used to smack, hit, and yell at me most days for over a decade, but that was so long ago, that can't be why I'm sick.' She looked at me and said, 'That's exactly why you're sick.' That's when I finally started therapy and began to understand why it had been so life-changing for my mom. Our braided spiritual journey and her atonement initiated the reconciliation of our family, but I had a lot of work to do if I truly wanted to heal. While we never had a second therapeutic hour together, I continued the work Mom set in motion on my own. My mother passed away from diabetes 10 years after I began processing my terrifying childhood. She was only 69. I find comfort in having been able to experience joy with her during her lifetime, which is something I once never thought would be possible. On her deathbed, she looked up at me and said, 'How can you truly love me?' Unlike the lie I'd told in the Thai restaurant years earlier, this time I meant it when I told her, 'Mom, I do love you. You can let go and go to your next life. I will be OK.' After her death, I found nine of her diaries while clearing out her office. She recounted the abusive years in each journal. I learned she was consumed by self-hatred for her entire life — that's why she thought suicide was her only way out when I was in middle school. I also found the original atonement list in one of her notebooks. It spanned 10 pages. I discovered that her therapist had encouraged her to create that formal session to make amends. Reading her words line by line, I was overwhelmed not only by her regret for hurting me, but also by how she desperately wanted my happiness. Mom halted generational trauma in its tracks by changing her behavior, which led to my ability to break the cycle. She continues to propel my healing even after her death. My daughters marvel at the transformation from one generation to another, and on more than one occasion, they have told me they're proud of me for changing our family patterns. I continue practicing the Buddhism my mother and I began when I was 13. I still go to therapy to process my painful past. But now, instead of only her wrath, I feel my mother's courage to transform her life and repent. Remembering the words she said to me so long ago helps me heal as I continue to hear her apology in my head. I forgive her again and again. She showed me how darkness can turn into light. What greater love is there than that? Leslie Mancillas is a writing professor in California working on her memoir about surviving childhood abuse, 'My Bipolar Mom Almost Killed Me: How A 100-Day Bet Saved Us.' Follow her on Instagram @ You can learn more about her at Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ Just Before My Mom Died, She Said 6 Words That Changed My Life — And Made Me A Better Mother For 27 Years, I Had Minimal Contact With My Abusive Mother. Then She Moved In With Me. After I Cut Off Contact From My Mother, I Was Shocked By The Brutal Move My Sisters Made
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
My Mom Abused Me For Years. After She Died, I Was Overwhelmed By What I Discovered In Her Diaries.
'I've written a list,' my mother said as our session began in her therapist's San Francisco office. 'It's called 'the 40 most unforgivable things I've ever done to my daughters.'' Fog flowed above the skylights as she fidgeted in her seat, twirling her blue chiffon scarf. I cringed. I hated the idea of therapy, but Mom loved it. She'd convinced me to go, even though I protested, telling her, 'I don't need any apologies.' At 30, I was still frozen in fright as if I were 7 years old and hiding under my bed because I feared my next beating. I sat opposite my mom while she smoothed her light powder pink matching skirt and jacket so no wrinkles would show, as if that would somehow help in ironing out our own. My parents, who were Russian Jewish second cousins, met at a bar mitzvah and married at 19. Mom was 20 when I was born. She got addicted to speed trying to lose the baby weight and used barbiturates to sleep. When I was 7, my parents divorced. My father moved to Mexico while my mom, sister and I remained in New York City. Mom had been seeing her psychoanalyst weekly for decades to process her pain of having been an abuser for the first 13 years of my life. Focused only on becoming a college professor and starting my own family, I'd spent those same decades pretending I wasn't damaged in any way. Denial protected me and I had never seen a mental health specialist. Twenty years after she got sober, she set up this time to formally ask for forgiveness. Until then, we'd often gotten together and had perfectly pleasant times by never talking about the past. My lower back ached as I settled into the stiff beige leather chair, wishing I wasn't there. 'Today's session is for your mom,' the therapist, Terry, said. 'She wants to tell you how sorry she is about the abuse that took place when you were young. She's been plagued with guilt.' I looked over at my 50-year-old mother, whose hazel green eyes I had inherited along with her petite frame and dimples. I also have the same thick wavy brown hair, and perhaps the propensity to fidget, since I couldn't stop nervously twisting a strand as she spoke that day. In every other way, though, I felt nothing like her. 'The fact that your mom is about to apologize for specific acts of violence and neglect in no way excuses her past behavior,' Terry said. I sat motionless and muted, staring at Mom. I knew what she was going to say and I didn't want to hear it. 'When Leslie was 5, I repeatedly closed her in the garbage room and told her I didn't want her anymore,' Mom read aloud. 'Each time she tried to come out, I slammed the door shut and told her she was being thrown away.' I quivered as if she were still locking me in that rubbish room in our swanky Manhattan apartment building. I shrank back to being tiny and helpless. Mom continued, 'I know I can't undo the past. I feel so much pain, I don't want to die without saying how sorry I am for everything on my list.' She read aloud from her categorized maltreatments, among them: strangling me, pulling my sisters and I around the apartment by our hair, hitting us at midnight when her speed kicked in, forcing us to clean at 2 a.m., telling us repeatedly she wished we were dead and had never had been born, regretting the drug dealers she brought home, and holding primal scream groups at the house where we had to hear adults yell obscenities several nights a week. Mom made it only partially through her list before I could barely stand it. My mouth was ajar and my breathing jagged, as if gasping for air in a room that had been lit on fire. Ribbons of red streaked across the skyline as the sun set. The session ended with an eerie silence. Still pulled by a primal force to please her, I finally spoke. 'Mom, I forgive you.' I had not gotten over any of it —I'd just gotten good at saying I had. Mom's description of each act she regretted reminded me of everything I tried to ignore. It was both re-traumatizing and validating to hear her voice these truths in the presence of her analyst. Though I remembered it all, hearing her recount the details woke me up to my deep and unprocessed pain. Mom's face went pale and her limbs went limp. Perspiration surrounded her hairline as she tilted her head down and said softly, 'I can't believe how mercilessly I hurt my own babies.' A late lunch at the Thai restaurant directly below her therapist's office had always been the plan, but after the session I had no appetite. The scent of lemongrass and garlic wafted around the room, but did nothing to return me to my senses. Mom must have known. Before I scanned the menu, she said, 'I don't know how you can sit near me after hearing all that. You must think I'm a monster. How can you even stand to look at me?' I tried again to casually dismiss her anxiety. 'Oh, of course I can look at you and have lunch with you because I love you,' I said. 'That was all so long ago. We can move on now.' There were multicolored Christmas lights and twinkling mini-Buddhas surrounding our booth, but I felt anything but festive. As a child who was abused, I always craved my mother's love and professed my own for her often in hopes of getting more. Over the years that followed, I learned my behavior was typical for kids who went through what I did. The menu blurred as I blinked back tears. I knew I was lying to myself and I wasn't ready to move on. I still harbored unresolved resentment and anger toward my mom. Faking feelings was my jam, though, so I blurted out, 'What great flavors!' after my first bite of pad Thai, even though I didn't taste anything except bitterness. Though I was upset, I realized that Mom's bravery to say how sorry she was for each of her specific offenses enabled me to understand that I would need to begin my own therapy at some point, but I wasn't ready yet. My fierce focus on forgetting my past continued for years. No one close to me could understand why I still had a relationship with my mom after the abuse ended. Therapy, which I finally did begin 10 years after that session, and Buddhism helped to create loving emotional connections for us. We began practicing Buddhism when I was in the seventh grade. My mother had planned to kill herself, but instead tried an ancient meditation chant, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, based on Mahayana Buddhist teachings. She dared me to try it with her for 100 days as one last attempt at happiness. I tried it, initially to prove her wrong, but as we chanted day after day, I felt hope and noticed mom becoming kinder. Within that year, she stopped using drugs and hitting us. This motivated me to stay connected to her. The Sanskrit word myo means to revive. Through the visceral vibration of chanting with her daily, I started sensing maternal love from Mom. Her actions to transform our destiny started with our shared spiritual journey when I was a teenager, enabling me to enjoy time with her even though the trauma of the unspeakable things she did was still locked in my cells. Before I finished that school year, she began seeing her therapist. I was 32 when I received her formal apology. It became a positive pivot in our relationship, but I still couldn't entirely move forward. Eight years later, I became so sick, I ended up on the floor in a fetal position unable to walk my kids to school. I was diagnosed with severe, chronic, ulcerative colitis — an autoimmune disease. A Reiki practitioner I started seeing at the time asked me, 'Did you ever experience any trauma?' I laughed nervously and said, 'My mom used to smack, hit, and yell at me most days for over a decade, but that was so long ago, that can't be why I'm sick.' She looked at me and said, 'That's exactly why you're sick.' That's when I finally started therapy and began to understand why it had been so life-changing for my mom. Our braided spiritual journey and her atonement initiated the reconciliation of our family, but I had a lot of work to do if I truly wanted to heal. While we never had a second therapeutic hour together, I continued the work Mom set in motion on my own. My mother passed away from diabetes 10 years after I began processing my terrifying childhood. She was only 69. I find comfort in having been able to experience joy with her during her lifetime, which is something I once never thought would be possible. On her deathbed, she looked up at me and said, 'How can you truly love me?' Unlike the lie I'd told in the Thai restaurant years earlier, this time I meant it when I told her, 'Mom, I do love you. You can let go and go to your next life. I will be OK.' After her death, I found nine of her diaries while clearing out her office. She recounted the abusive years in each journal. I learned she was consumed by self-hatred for her entire life — that's why she thought suicide was her only way out when I was in middle school. I also found the original atonement list in one of her notebooks. It spanned 10 pages. I discovered that her therapist had encouraged her to create that formal session to make amends. Reading her words line by line, I was overwhelmed not only by her regret for hurting me, but also by how she desperately wanted my happiness. Mom halted generational trauma in its tracks by changing her behavior, which led to my ability to break the cycle. She continues to propel my healing even after her death. My daughters marvel at the transformation from one generation to another, and on more than one occasion, they have told me they're proud of me for changing our family patterns. I continue practicing the Buddhism my mother and I began when I was 13. I still go to therapy to process my painful past. But now, instead of only her wrath, I feel my mother's courage to transform her life and repent. Remembering the words she said to me so long ago helps me heal as I continue to hear her apology in my head. I forgive her again and again. She showed me how darkness can turn into light. What greater love is there than that? Leslie Mancillas is a writing professor in California working on her memoir about surviving childhood abuse, 'My Bipolar Mom Almost Killed Me: How A 100-Day Bet Saved Us.' Follow her on Instagram @ You can learn more about her at Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ Just Before My Mom Died, She Said 6 Words That Changed My Life — And Made Me A Better Mother For 27 Years, I Had Minimal Contact With My Abusive Mother. Then She Moved In With Me. After I Cut Off Contact From My Mother, I Was Shocked By The Brutal Move My Sisters Made
