Responses
This is a really great analysis on Lydias character! I agree this is an excuse of how horrible she treated Lyrica but people need to remember that Lydia had Lyrica at 15 and at the age of 15 was left by her family and crushed by debt.
i like how lydia is fairly realistic. since she doesn't know what love truly is, she couldn't give/reciprocate it to lyrica. and only realized it far too late which caused lyrica's life. she was selfish and hungry for power as that's the only way the people around her was. it's truly saddening that she could not break the cycle back in her first life, and only lyrica was the true cycle breaker.
not everyone could truly escape the abuse they experienced for years and years on end (decades upon decades for lydia). thus, the qoute "the abused becomes the abuser" best describes lydia. lyrica and her mother are two sides of the same coin. lyrica being able to run free from the hurt of her abusive mother (able to love), and lydia who became exactly her abusers (in the first life, exploited and exploiter). it's probably the reason why lyrica is such a dear to me. she's truly kind, saw the beauty in it all, and did not become what her environment was, and that's something i truly envy.
i'm not excusing lydia's wrongdoings, i'm just saying that she was in survival mode. thus she could not love and only did what she knows (abuse). what she did is wrong, but that does not mean she can't get her redemption and forgiveness. imo, she's doing good as she recognized her mistakes and is trying really hard to correct them, though sometimes she falls short. not a lot of abusers recognize and make ammends with their wrongs, so you guys should chill out and at the very least recognize that she's doing better than before. also! lyrica forgave her already with the abused that she received from her! it's not explicitly said but you could see it in the way she interacts with her mother.