Thanks so much for sending me such a long and interesting letter. I do indeed feel as if the sisters are part of my own family. I'm closer to each of you than I am to my own sister.

There's so much to talk about here that I don't know where to begin. I guess first we should tease apart the medical issues from the psychological issues. The medical people (including Judy) have the best handle on Judy's cancer and I think the practical decisions need to be left to them. Only Judy can decide what kinds of quality-of-life sacrifices she's prepared to make at this stage in her life. She may even decide just to die with dignity, no matter what those of us who love her may feel about that.

And as long as she's dealing with cancer, the larger psychological issues have to be put aside. People can't think about long-term goals like psychological development when they're looking death in the face. So if Judy is being a rag-doll right now, we're not going to inject courage into her by yelling at her. Psychological growth, though supremely important to people like you and T. M. and me, is only important to people who believe they have a future. Judy doesn't have that right now, and she may never get it back.

Eight years ago, when she became suicidal because she couldn't communicate with Joe, she reached out to me for support. During many phone calls over a period of several months I told her that there was "a way out of hell", that there were better people out there than Joe, people who could love her and share a real growth process. The idea of having to take a stand, though, seemed too difficult to her and she soon stopped responding to my concerned emails.

From what I can glean from reports from T. M. and yourself, Judy has decided to settle for a bad relationship simply because she's afraid of being alone. Her inability to believe in herself is the saddest thing of all, for me at least. She could have had anybody she wanted. Instead she always settled for limited marginalized men, third-world immigrants or blue-collar workers with low intelligence or delinquency problems. Time and time again these compromises would blow up in her face. Her attempt to be involved with Joe blew up in her face too, only by this time she had given up. She had "thrown in the towel" in T. M.'s phrase and decided she was never going to have the kind of life she secretly wanted anyway so why try.

It's sad enough for me to counsel unhappy people, but in Judy's case it was far worse because her welfare meant so much to me. When unhappiness is caused by circumstances beyond one's control it's understandable that one should just try to accept some limitations cheerfully. If the cause of someone's unhappiness is their own negative attitude towards themselves, on the other hand, I at least have a fighting chance to save them from their self-neglect and self-contempt. Sometimes such people make a 180-degree turn-around and become happier than they even could have thought possible. This would happen again and again in the 70's when we taught in-the-closet gay people that there was nothing "wrong" with being gay psychologically.

Somewhere inside Judy I have to believe that she understood my advice that she could have the liberated, enlightened life she needed if she would only shake Joe off her back. But something prevented her from claiming her freedom. Was it because she had already invested too much money in his get-rich-quick schemes? Was it because of the "Stockholm syndrome" you and I have discussed in the past? Or was it just nameless dread of going through the same disappointments over and over again? I don't think I'll ever know — and maybe she doesn't know either.

As far as I can tell, Judy has really given up now. Given up her hopes, given up any dreams she might have had, given up expecting life to get any better. So in a sense there's no real work for me to do here except to console you and T. M.. I've given my life to helping people realize their dreams, but if they kill their own dreams my role in their life is over. I think that all Judy wants now is to have a little peace before she dies. She's not thinking in big terms — that stopped years ago. She's thinking of getting through today, and how difficult the next few hours will be. She's trying to survive another few weeks, that's all. And in a way she's more like Joe now, too, because as far as I was able to judge when I spoke with him he never had any dreams in the first place.

You and T. M. are not the only ones who have tried to rescue Judy over the years. Ever since she reached out to me eight years ago I've chronically worried about her and how badly she has betrayed herself with yet another abusive relationship. But I think it's time for you and T. M. and me to let go of heroism and face facts. Wait for her to ask us for something, even if it's not anything we particularly want to give. If we love her, we'll let her decide what she needs from us.

I'm still amazed when I hear how bad Abbott was. I knew he was a drunk, but he was way more enlightened than my parents were. He was letting a nobody like me sleep with his own daughter under his own roof, after all, and I thought that was extremely counter-cultural. Naturally I knew nothing then about his not being Judy's father, or about his living off her. I always thought he was paying the bills. And I know almost nothing about the pedophilia even today.

I agree that T. M. is a little more bull-headed than you or Judy. She got very dogmatic with me about how awful bariatric surgery is, even though she was relying on 20-year-old anecdotes from her girlfriends. But, like you, she is an independent woman, a feminist in just the same sense that I'm a feminist. And I respect her. Like you, and unlike Judy, she knows how to kick an abusive man out of her life. I think it's great that T. M. tried to build a fire under Judy to stand up for herself. I tried to do exactly the same thing. But both of us failed. So she'll have to face the same thing I had to face. Judy is too damaged to believe in her own human potential, and getting angry at her doesn't help.

Please don't feel you have to agree with all of this, or feel you need to write me an angry letter telling me how wrong I am. I know we don't see eye-to-eye about everything and that's okay. If we lived nearer to one another I'd still like you and, if we saw each other once in awhile, a lot of these disagreements would melt away and be replaced by a deeper understanding of one another. But for now, just try to think about my agreement with you that the three of us need to do less for Judy until she decides otherwise. In this context at least, less is truly more.