Im an adult, so why am I so afraid to stand up to my parents (specifically, my religious mother)?
My family is Catholic, mainly because my mother and grandmother are devout; the rest of us are basically agnostic and atheist. When my sister married a Jehovah’s Witness and converted, it caused tremendous tension with my mother and grandmother. My mother swallowed and acted okay with it because she didn’t want to lose a relationship with her daughter, but my grandmother did things like sending my sister letters about how she was tearing apart the family for an eternity in hell. It took several years of my sister doing her thing and not returning my grandmother’s wrath for my grandmother to see that she was the one causing strife. Eventually she accepted my sister, apologized for being such a complete asshole, and now they have a very close relationship where they don’t judge the differences. So, my advice to you to is to follow something like Orthogonality’s script, expect a lot of blowback from your parents (including ostracism, possibly), get on with your life as best you know how,
Little* to offer on the main point of your post. But: You say your mother has begun spouting views within the last two years that she would never have held previously. You don’t say how old you are or how old your parents are. I know that you have reason to believe that this is associated with her increased activities with the church. However, your description of your mother and some of the new beliefs she holds set off alarm bells in my head. A sudden “flowering” of new or more extreme or odd views, relative to what the person would have held previously, is often one of the first signs of dementia. Even if your mother is relatively young, early-onset dementia is not so rare that you should completely disregard this as a possible cause. The things you mention she’s said are not unthinkable coming from an older adult who is beginning to suffer from progressive cognitive decline. It’s very common for an adult with dementia who already holds strict beliefs to try to knit these together (i
