Having my daughter is the biggest regret in my life

Dear AmoMama,

I am heartbroken and very angry and bitter. I need to get this out, and I can't talk to my husband about this.

Nineteen years ago I met a good kind man who had been married to a woman who had cheated on him, stolen his money and abandoned him and their daughter.

This woman had a problem with drugs and alcohol, and we later discovered she was selling herself in Reno to subsidize her vices.

I fell in love with my husband and opened my heart to the baby, who was then two years old. I loved her and raised her as if she were my very own. My daughter called me Mommy. I lived for my family, and my husband and I did all we could to raise that little girl right.

We never lied to her, she was aware that her father had been married to her biological mother, and I truly believed she loved me.

My daughter is now 21, and this woman showed up out of the blue, driving a fancy car and dazzling her with money and glamour.

It seems she has married a rich man, much older than she is, and is wanting her daughter back, pretending the last 19 years never happened.

My daughter wants to drop out of college and she has broken off her engagement to her childhood sweetheart, a good serious young man, and is determined to move to Miami to be with her mother. We had a row, and my husband told her her mother is no good, but she started screaming at him, saying he "wasn't man enough to hold a real woman" and that he wanted her to turn into a drab like me.

I had never been so hurt, so shocked in all my life. This girl is turning her back on all that is decent and good and chasing after this immoral woman and her sordid lifestyle. She has made my 19 years of love and sacrifices a sham. I gave her so much love and now I'm getting nothing back but abuse and rejection.

My husband is shattered, and I am fearful for his health. How can I help him? Make her see she is destroying her father, and eventually herself? How can I make this girl I loved so much see what she is throwing away?

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