Went NC with mum because of repeated abuse and stopped providing for her. I now found out she doesn't have money to even buy bread and gran is paying all her bills, even though she has cancer herself. Guilt of letting her starve is chipping away at my mental health.

TL:DR: I (33F) am at a loss for what to do or how to deal with the guilt after going No contact (NC) with my mum (58) earlier this summer, her now not having money to even buy bread and the guilt is eating me alive. I have yet to find someone going through something similar and feel very alone. Some perspective would be appreciated.

Long version:

I (33F) am a single child of my parents. I grew up in Eastern Europe in a very open-minded family (for the area) but moved 2000 miles away to a different country 11 years ago for university. I decided early enough in my move that I will not go back to my country after feeling a lot more myself and "at home" in my new country and realising Eastern Europe was not where I wanted to be. Everyone in my family saw the change and hope in me and understood I had no plans for coming back, apart from my mum. She struggled immensely with me leaving and I don't think she ever came to terms with it since.

My parents (58M & 58F) had a relatively happy marriage and I had a happy childhood from many moments I remembered. I do have vivid memories however, of always being anxious around my mum and having frequent "inside jokes" with my dad around the fact that we had to pay attention to our behaviour if she was in a bad mood. I just thought that was normal and that all mums were like that.

Even though I had a happy childhood, although suspected shielded by my dad a lot, but mum has turned into a cold abuser towards everyone in her life once I left. She was never able to cope with the fact that I am not coming back, ended up committed in a mental institution for a few days with psychotic depression, saw a psychiatrist for a year and took treatment but then stopped because "she was feeling better". It all went downhill from there. She first cut contact with her own mum (Gran, 78) convinced herself that gran is a narcissist (Gran has her own defects, mostly from having to live during communism in a country where survival was more important than someone's feelings. But I have a great relationship with gran, and while the generational divide is present, she is anything but abusive or narcissistic to me. Not saying my mum had the same experience tho. Gran continues to be confused as to why mum won't talk to her anymore).

She then stopped hanging out with any of her friends.

She then became convinced my dad and his family were "out to get her and playing a game and that she had figured out the game they're playing and that she knows they're out to get her" (I heard those exact words from mum). She then became emotionally manipulative, full-on aggressive verbally and physically to my dad which eventually led him to leave their 32-year marriage and file for divorce. (His only request for him to stay was for mum to go to therapy and her answer to that was "I'm not crazy, you're all crazy, you should all see a therapist, not me!")... spoiler alert: we all ARE seeing therapists now, that even includes gran. I congratulated dad for getting out of there and we have since developed a fantastic father-daughter relationship. I love him to bits.

She has since hurt me and my entire family multiple times and stopped being the mother I had as a kid years ago. She got made redundant from her job in 2020 and has since decided she wants to be a "Lady of leisure" and that "she has worked enough in her life and she's done with it and she won't be working for pennies anymore". Once dad left, I became the one sending her money and supporting her. The psychological abuse throughout all this aggravated my Long Covid, caused me to have CPTSD and be in therapy for the past 6 years with panic attacks and multiple bouts of burnout. I used to support my mum financially after she was made redundant and once my dad left her a few years ago, but now I have a mortgage with my partner and we can't afford to keep sending her money every month if we ever want to get through our own debt and have some form of comfortable life.

Once my dad left, my mum continued to be very low contact with gran (basically only calling her when she needed something) and had started relying solely on me for financial support. Initially, she would get some unemployment, but when that ran out, she cashed in her pension savings and sent them to me to send to her monthly because she couldn't trust herself with that much money. She still refused to get a job. When that ran out, my gran then sold a garage and a storage unit she owned to allow me to keep paying my mum some form of reasonable living allowance. Mum wouldn't take it straight from gran. I used to send her the equivalent of £1000/month, so not a small amount either.

Gran then found out from mum's neighbours - who called her - that she hadn't paid her bills in months and now they can't do renovations to the block of flats because they need everyone's approval, and she won't answer her door. (I was still sending her money at this point) Mum has also had notices from the police for playing loud music every day at 2am and arguments with the flat's administrator for their trying to figure out a payment plan for her. She has been sued by the electricity company and the internet company because she hadn't paid them in months, while she was still receiving £1000/month from me. Gran then started paying mum's bills because she can't cope with the thought of mum not having heating or electricity. (even though mum still refuses to talk to gran, gran is still being kept updated by mum's neighbours).

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Relevant tangent:

I once sent mum flowers as a surprise on Mother's Day, and the delivery company called me saying that when they tried to delive,r she answered the door, said "I am not [mum's name I gave the delivery company]" and closed the door on them. When I called her to wish her a happy birthday a week later, she had a 5 minutes chat with me and when I tried to have a chat about how my life is going she answered with "you don't have to raport to me, I am not interested in what you do with your life, I trust what I raised and know that you will make the right decisions". This was at the same time as I was preparing for the most important exam of my life to become a chartered professional, to which "she didn't want to know any details, she knows I will pass anyway, so why bother her with details". This is a complete 180 from the mum I grew up with, who had centred her entire life around me and couldn't cope with the fact that I left, and she couldn't stop thinking about me. When I grew up, I had a mother who cared and in the past 10ish years she has done a complete 180. I was missing my mum and she was nowhere to be seen.

This is by far not the first time mum showed no compassion or empathy, or care towards me in the past few years, and I have had enough of feeling like I am losing my mum every time I talk to her. I have basically grieved her every time she spoke to me like that, and there are many moments when I couldn't stop crying because I felt like I had lost my mother, even though she was clearly still alive.

All of this while being the only child and thousands of miles away from home. After multiple times of her screaming at me while I was visiting and saying things like "In my house you do as I say without comment, I am the boss here and you aren't gonna tell me what to do, and if I say we need to do these things, I need you to execute the order and stop arguing" and calling me to ask for money and then turning aggressive and abusive when I wouldn't give her an - She once called me from a different number to be sure I answered and when I wouldn't agree to give her money on the first try she literally said "ahh, I see the niceties aren't working with you anymore, not problem, let's try the hard way" and then became manipulative and literally saying to me over the phone SPOILER SELF HARM:">!what should I do?! should I just cut my veins and end it?! you tell me, should I cut them lengthways or sideways?!<" and then laugh. I said that this is a horrible thing to say to your only daughter and blocked her again. I then caved through guilt, sent her £200 as a "one-off" until she can find a job. We tried to have a somewhat reasonable relationship, but when she kept going back to her aggressive ways, I blocked her and asked her not to contact me again until she's been in therapy for 6 months and is ready to take accountability for how her behaviour is impacting others.

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This month, Gran calls to tell me she has cancer and has to undergo an operation to get it out. It's not life-threatening, but it's still a big operation when she's old and alone, and her daughter doesn't speak to her, and I'm thousands of miles away. A few days ago, she had to cross the city in the cold winter with the surgery still healing on her face and while hurting in order to pay mum's bills. She can't let mum deal with the consequences of her own actions... but then gran found out from her neighbour that mum went to the corner shop and asked them not to throw away the expired products at the end of the day because she'll come get her and that she doesn't have money and was only able to buy 2 eggs.

That message absolutely crushed me. My mum is clearly starving, will only look for office jobs she used to do (she worked in logistics for an international corporation, but that was 5 years ago) and believes that supermarket or cleaning jobs are "too hard for her" or "beneath her". She expects to find "a loser" to provide for her (actual words she used with me in the past), before she will try to do anything to better her life. I can totally see how she suffers from a mental illness and how it must be so hard to find a job like that, but I am also torn because then I look back and I realise the chronic illness and my panic attacks and my burnout and my IBS and my chronic heart palpitations, these all come out the second I interact with my mum. The last time I tried to interact with her, I ended up on sick leave for a week.

I am angry that Gran is suffering so much from her only child.

I am angry that my birth country has no social services to catch people who find themselves in illness or difficulty. (The only help available from the state is literally £51/month!!!)

I am angry that my entire "happy" family has literally exploded in the past 10 years.

I am angry that I cannot shake the guilt off for letting my mum starve. (To be clear, I could afford to send her about £200/month but that would mean still having a mortgage when I'm 68!)

I also worry that if me and gran keep "saving" her, she would have no reason to change her situation.

I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, in a lose-lose scenario for me, no matter what.

My partner, my friends, and my therapist, who have all seen first-hand my mum's abuse towards me in the past few years, are all telling me that I'm doing the right thing, but the guilt is eating me alive. I keep justifying it to myself that if mum had been like this my whole life, it might have been easier, but she's clearly suffering from an illness that she needs help with, and I hate that I cannot help her without destroying my own mental and physical health.

I keep thinking her abuse is "not that bad" and that I'm just being a selfish prick and turning into the same "cold blooded" person my mum has become...

I am so confused and torn, and devastated and have no idea which path to take.