So I invented that I want my mother to understand why what she did was hurting me and apologise. She knows that I think she wronged me, though I doubt she realizes how very bitter I am about it all. For her, the solution is to start anew, with a blank space. I can't do that; I spent my adolescence being hit by her and apologising to her for whatever she deemed my fault on a given day. The problem with my solution is that she's incapable of it. For the sake of simplification: she does not comprehend other people's emotions (but she does have emotions of her own and she mostly comprehends them)5.

Except for the hitting part, and maybe the bitterness (my sister is just more hurt than bitter), this is my sister's take on my mom. My sister hasn't communicated with my mom for maybe a decade, maybe more. The decision likely came easier to her, since my parents divorced and my father moved away when we were young, and she had already stopped talking to him a good decade earlier.

She's actually excommunicated a number of people from her life, generally on the principle of feeling wronged by that person. In my mother's case, she feels judged, and is judged, in unkind ways. She recounts coming home crying from afternoons out with my mother. For other people, they just weren't there for her as much as she expected.

My sister's standoff with my mom looked just like yours - my sister felt judged, felt hurt thereby, and wanted to confront my mom about it. My mom didn't want to talk about it, thinks my sister is too sensitive, and similarly wanted to "start anew". After years of standoff, my sister decided to just move on.

Largely, it was a dominance struggle, where both sides felt entitled to the moral high ground, and submission from the other thereby. That's the part I consider a failure on both sides.

By entirely cutting my mother off, my sister has cut off part of her own life, and cut off the possibility of reconciling. I think she could have found a way of interacting with my mother that preserved both, but didn't open herself up to what she considered to be abuse. She threw out the baby with the bath water, IMO.

On my mother's side, I just don't see complaining about her daughter being too sensitive to criticism. Yeah, maybe so. And maybe she is, and you're also unkind in your comments. That's the way it appears to me. But whatever it was, she's still your daughter. Suck it up and deal with it. If she were an albino and sensitive to light, you'd deal with it, but because the sensitivity implicates you in bad behavior, you cope by avoidance.

Well, my sister finally coped with my mom by avoidance too. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

For your case, I'm glad that people are affirming your right to decide who is in and out of your life. But I'd encourage you to take it a step further now. Does breaking it off best serve your values? More generally, what are your options, what are the costs and benefits of each, and what's the highest value alternative?