The thing is, she probably didn't even mean it like a rude and awful thing to say. She probably just thought that she was stating some obvious fact.

I'm pretty sure this approach to communicating with family is part of the reason why my cousins are all a bunch of fails who happily wallow in their own lack of...well...much of anything. My one cousin came right out and said one night (when we were drunk, of course) that he knew when he was fifteen that he wasn't going to amount to much and that's just how it is.

But I think, on some level, they want to be better...which is where the resentment comes in.

*facepalm*