Family of Origin (FOO) Support Thread Part 2

[Scent of Cedar *]

Seeing the truth for the first time is like experiencing a traumatic shock. It took me little baby steps to see the full enormity of what my DNA chums did to me.

I feel that too, SWOT. You said it better. It is traumatic ~ not just ugly, but weighty in a traumatic way ~ to see the deficits lined up one after another and really get it that these terrible things really, actually happened to...me.

To me! Oh, those dirty rats.

I like that phrase "DNA chums".

We are addicted to our childhoods; all of us

Interesting turn of phrase. I never thought of it that way ~ like an addiction. It will be a simple matter then to put it out of our heads once we are through this part.

That is true, too. There is nothing to feel badly about once we know how what happened affects us today and clear it. Nothing can be changed; only how we see ourselves can change. And that is happening. That is why there is that trauma feeling. I am putting together what I've always known with who I am. It's like I've stopped running from it.

Remember the poetry?

An innocent did gambol o'er the land; conversed
in mists of shifting, timeless hue
Glimpsed and pursued that creature destined to become
herself
Caught, and was caught by it
in the omniprescient dew

And all of it happened so long ago, and cannot be changed and so, it doesn't matter like it used to. There has always been a negative emotional charge when I have thought about my childhood. I think that might be gone. There seems to be, instead, a growing acknowledgement that it was as bad as it felt, and a kind of awed respect. I really was in danger.

That was real.

All that stuff was real.

And what would I think about today, and how would I put the pieces together, and how would my life revolve around fear, if I were to be strangled by someone with a mental illness, today? All those things I saw and heard and all those strangenesses...there was real danger, there. Real heat, blazing heat, in those threats of burning.

Real teeth.

Roar

So this is something else that is changing in my internal landscape now: I roar: "Get away from that child!" And I mean it. And I have the authority to back it up. Not to be too dorky here, but like Azlan (?) in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This is major, you guys. In the past, I have been frozen, eyes open like that man in the river when the plane crashed. I could see and see those terrible things, could relive them a thousand times...eyes frozen open. Everything, frozen.

In the past, there was no sound or motion to those memories of abuse. It was like looking at a movie frame by frame. Now, I don't fixate on seeing myself hurt, as though I were looking through the abuser's eyes. I hear myself, hear the Azlan self roaring, "GET AWAY FROM THAT CHILD!"

And I am running toward whatever the abusive incident was even those times when I saw my brother hurt.

I see her; see her right in the eyes.

And she stops. Like something wicked caught out, the thing that was my mother drops the child.

***

Finding that information on borderline moms changed everything for me. I have alot of that WTF feeling going on this morning.

I am not sure how I feel about my mom.

Or my sister.

Could they not know what they are doing? Could they know and not know, or has everything they've done been done with conscious intent?

The world is going to be a very different place once I am through this part, I think.

Everything looks different, already. It feels like my brain is quiet.

Cedar, I think it is normal to fall back a little but you will come back because you have changed. It is always saddening to think of our own families as being too clear to us, because of what we see. But we also have to remember that we chose not to be one of them and eventually we move on again. And you will move on and thrive.

Thank you, SWOT.

My perspective on everything will change, is changing already. I like that you posted I would move on and thrive.

I like the thriving part.

Cedar, we can move on, learn to let them go, and have great lives.

We can. I cannot imagine not feeling badly about the state of things ~ about that family dinner I am always posting about. But you are very right, SWOT. After visiting and revisiting those Family of Origin feelings and, as you said, finally understanding what our DNA chums have been up to all this time...you know, I really don't feel badly about that dinner, anymore. I feel a little sadness, but there is distance there now, where before there was longing and intention. If I let myself understand that these things happened on purpose, that there was intention behind their actions every time, that none of it, nothing about any of it, was an accident, I am still popped into that shocked place. Because they would have to hate me, they would have to have focused on and hated me, personally, me, to do what they've done.

Isn't that something.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My son has acted like a horrible asssssshole.

I'm sorry for the hurt of it, Copa. I read your sentence, "I am going to get my boy.", and my heart sang for yours. Still Copa, in your happiness at being able to give to your son, in your generosity, in that you never once looked at any of it with irritation but only joy...there you see who you are, Copa.

There too, you know the taste of what your son's pain and confusion cost you.

Joy.

The joy every mother should feel when she is with her child.

It does feel bad SON to have my own child take the side of another person and not give me the chance to explain.

It feels like betrayal, like being stabbed with a long, thin knife that is razor sharp from behind, by a coward.

Your own son, Copa!

And mine. And Seeking's, in that they each have gone behind our backs to family. What kinds of sons do such terrible things to their own mothers.

What kinds of sons commit those kinds of betrayal.

and go poo-poo in our pants (well, some of us in extreme circumstances may, but it is an accident.

Ha! Copa, you are so freaking funny. You must throw out hilarious asides as you go about your real life.

"Extreme circumstances."

SON mad at M because he brought up to SON how he was making filthy everything and disregarding anything we asked him about house, and doing the opposite

Good for M. Man to man; D H says two males cannot live in the same house together. Especially when the house is his and the younger male is rebellious and thinks he could take the older male.

D H says that is too tempting to the older male.

Sorry Copa, for the italics.

It does feel bad SON to have my own child take the side of another person and not give me the chance to explain.

You are Son's mother. His loyalty should be to you. That is why friends or family believe them when they say terrible things about us, about their own parents. Because normal people do not betray their mothers. Our friends and family see the words our adult children say as cries for help.

This is the final betrayal.

It is worse when the family member or friend finally gets the nature of the game.

Nothing is ever healed. The adult child comes out of it looking so horribly bad. And there we are...the mothers, who still love them whatever they have done.

Then son explodes violently (and snapped in pieces my mother's wooden broom) which he excuses as a necessary means of anger management.

No. That is a threat.

And that was your mother's broom that she chose and touched and used.

A necessary means of anger management or...what, Copa?

roar

Shame on Son.

I want to stress this was the worst time together I have ever experienced with my son including the time he broke my foot in Rio, ending my dancing there.

How did it happen Copa?

***

I need to start another response. This one is stuck in italics and it's cramping my style.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Could they not know what they are doing? Could they know and not know, or has everything they've done been done with conscious intent?

The reason why it is such a huge insult to be called a borderline is exactly because these individuals are not psychotic and do not have thought disorders and are deliberately cruel, especially those with no inclination to change at all. That's why my sissy chooses to call me a borderline. I was nothing like the description you read, but she still can't let it go because it is truly a slam on the inborn character of the person. I'm not even sure my mom was 100% borderline, but she sure had many traits. She was certainly mean to me. And she had her share of troubling relationships and, like my sister, never could get along right or pick a man capable of having a loving relationship with her. Maybe that was because of herself. Neither my sister or mother ever had true love, although my father DID love my mother. He did not know how to show it and she was almost as hard on him as s he was on me.

Borderlines are sad people who chose their Armies and their enemies.

Do keep reading. Since every therapist I ever talked to it about said, no, I was clearly not borderline, reading about it isn't going to bother me just because my sister maybe needs to think I am and because at one time I had such a small opinion of my own self that *I* misdiagnosed myself and stupidly told my sister AND brother (facepalm) that I had it. Even though I had never been diagnosed with it, and trust me I've been in therapy since age 23 and I'm almost three times that by now.

If somebody wants to use that as an insult, it's a good one since it is hard to disprove, just as it is very hard to prove.

But those of us who grew up with personality disordered parents are more likely to have PTSD than a PD ourselves. PD (personality disorder).

And, yes, it is scary to face what we had to face with our disordered mothers. But it also explains how they can go forever without forgiving their own children and why they can treat one like a queen and another like dog turd (no offense to dogs). I should have said cows, b ut I like cows too.

You should also read up on Narcicistic mothers, which I think may define mine and my sister more than borderline as both were very vain about how they looked, although my mother didn't try to keep up her looks and my sister is obsessed with her looks and "getting attention" from males. At age 50-60, yes, she is still obsessed with being told she is pretty. She is! My feeling is that almost anyone who spends as much energy trying to look good in the latter ages will look good though. So maybe Sis is more the narc than my mother. Either way, they had t he same way of being mean and I know how to be mean their way too. You can't live with that and not learn how to do it.

One way is to pick out a diagnosis and say your sister or brother or hated friend has diagnosed borderline and tell that to other people. However, I really have nobody for her to tell who would listen to her. All my kids would laugh at her since their childhoods were not like mine or like the descriptions of those who grew up with borderlines. Even Goneboy would not think that. His seperation is as much about himself as the rest of us...and his own demons...and he is aware.

Cedar, keep reading. Your dysfunctional family will come to life in the pages. I highly recommend putting "Experience Project: My Family Doesn't Like Me" into your search engine to read stories that will bring you back to the bad ole days and let you see that, story after story, your family could be substituted for those the of the writer you are reading.

You will also seek solace in how many people do not speak to family members, especially siblings. It is so cliche as to almost be normal to see things so differentnly that you don't speak. I started to feel right at home as I read. I even started laughing because it was all so similar.

Often it happens after a difficult event, like a death. My grandmother's death amped it up for me since the person who protected me the most from my mother was no longer around and my mother really let the claws come out after that. I was close to my grandmother her entire life, talking to her every day on the phone, like a friend. She often said, inappropriately so, that except for her son, I was the person she loved the most. "I love Brother" and years later when Sister stop refusing to see Grandma she's add "I love brother and sister, but YOU are special to me." It was no secret.

Maybe to my mother.

My sister had not really sustained a relationship with Grandmother until several years before her death. So my mother, after Grandma died, had Grandmother's furniture renovated to give it to my sister to remember my grandmother by.That was actually a slap in my face on purpose since, of all three of us, my grandmother spent the most time estranged from Sis for no reason. They were not anywhere near as close as me and her. That was the first slap before the disinheritance. Last time I visisted Sis, grandma's beloved renovated furniture was in her basement as secondary furniture. Maybe she has thrown it out by now.

That's the essense of borderline. "My fake world will be your world and I will be mean about it too."

My grandmother never loved my sister as much as me and she told me so, even right before her death. Brother either. She did love Brother though. Sister was like "Well, it was nice she finally sees me but for years I would have not recognized her if we'd passed one another on the street." Knowing my grandmother, she said very kind things to my sister, but that is what she said to me. And, again, we spoke every single day, sometimes for an hour. And nobody can take those memories away from me.

Read, read, read.

That is how I finally realized I have lots of brothers and sisters who were scapegoated and survive just fine without the rest of their FOO. I am just glad my FOO is so small that there are not many people to dodge.

Cedar, you are strong, hear you roar, in numbers too big to ignore and you know too much to go back and pretend....Cause you've heard it all before, and you've been down there on the floor, no one's every gonna put you there again" (Taken after "I am Woman" sung by Helen Reddy).

ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

 

[BusynMember]

Here is part of a story from Experience Project and see how much this sounds like your own family. I will comment at the end.

"I have a good boyfriend of many years whom I live with, I go to a fine university and get good grades. Life is okay.

Except my family doesn't care about me one bit, I don't understand why and it saddens me so much. My boyfriends family has more interest in me than my own mother!"

The reason I need to spill this now is that I have surgery next week and I am terrified since I have never had surgery before. My boyfriend is coming with me but the doctor told me to bring a family member too as I cannot be left alone the first few days I return home.

I told my mother and she immediately told me she wouldn't go. I did not even get to say what I was getting surgery for. I handed her the papers which she looked at briefly and then handed back to me. Then she told me how concerned she was with my little brother because he had been so unhappy lately, and I just sat there astonished.

Before I leave she asks me to write an sms after surgery next week. I tell her the surgery is 10 day from now, not next week (and let me remind you the date of my surgery was on the paper I handed her). Then she asks me when I will be home from surgery and I say I don't know. Then she asks me why I don't know, if it isn't just a routine operation, and I say no and then we say goodbye and I leave.

It is not like my mom treats me like ****. She does not call me names or anything, she just doesn't care about me. This incident really crushed me as I had a tiny hope that she would be there for me when it counted the most, but it turns she wont."

Well, my mother DID call me names, but the rest rang true for me. In fact...

This reminds me almost exactly of when I had just given birth to my son and was bleeding internally and had a fever of 104 and doctor told me to get myself to the ER right away.

My mother was newly divorced and playling Teenager with a younger man and I have no idea why she was the first person I called. I guess I was still very young (24) and I still thought to call Mother during hard times. I learned not too soon enough, but this was before. I told her I was bleeding internally and the doctor said I had to get to ER right away. She lived close to me so I asked if she could please watch the baby while I went to ER with husband.

She replied, "I told you, I'm not going to babysit for you ever."

I think I begged a little.

"No."

I called mother-in-law who rushed over right away and never EVER forgot that my own mother would not babysit for her first grandchild, whom she never did see much, when her daughter was as sick as I was. She never stopped bringing it up, it puzzled her so much.

Years later I had a mastectomy (fortunately very early stage cancer, but still...) and Mother didn't visit either.

This is a very good forum to read. I never post on it, but I do read. You can read about any topic. People write their experiences (which is where Experience Project gets it's name) and trust me you will relate.

This helped me heal just like the first thread helped me so much. It made me see that my family was horrible, but that it was also very typical of horrible families. There is a plotline to the way they interact and they are remarkably similar, even with some members refusing to acknowledge the abuse that the writer experienced.

 

[Copabanana]

I am up for a few minutes but I want to try to go back to sleep. My despair is so great.

I feel that in my life I have been betrayed to the heart by every person (except M but him too--because now I do not trust him) that I have ever cared about or should have cared about me.

Not until now have I really understood the cost. Myself.

I am lost and separated from anything through which I can find myself. My Mother. My son.

I do not know who and where I am.

That people I love hurt me so, I do not know if this is cause or effect. By that I mean to say am I cast aside, because I am unable to be loved. Or is it that I am cast aside because that is just what happens to me, the person I am, if no one loves me.

The upshot is the same: I am lost. I am confused fundamentally about who I am.

For 25 years I knew who I was because my son loved me and I loved him. I am nobody anymore. Just a person who hurts.

Maybe I should go back to work because that is the only place where I carry the day with what I do or act. Maybe I can remember who I am there. Except I get hurt there too.

Because in my real life there is only betrayal, hurt and pain.

I do not know why M is so mad at me. What was my fault about this?

He is trying to be nicer but I feel like he is a snake in the grass and I do not trust him either.

I do not remember being so devastated in my whole life.

I wish I could be more upbeat. (That was a joke.)

Cedar, about my foot in Rio. We had to move from the apartment where we had been staying. My son is a much more proficient Portuguese speaker than am I.
I had been asking him to help me look for another place. He did not want to. When I had finally located one and was trying to move our stuff (by suitcases down the street a few blocks), I asked him to help me. He refused, and got mouthy. I went into his room and got angry. I wanted him to help me with a suitcase. He became more hostile and defiant. I moved closer to him than he wanted. He used a defensive Ju Jitsu or Karate move on my foot. He was about 17 and a half.

People tell me with my son that he is like he is because it is my fault. Because I did not assert myself over him and control him.

They are right to a certain extent. I am the kind of person who does not assert control. I invoke participation by request and by people wanting to do the right thing. Often in my work, especially, people want to do the right thing for me.

But I did try to get my son to do the right thing.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If you comply with the medication regimen there is a good chance your body will adjust, and you will not feel the grogginess, I said. Or there are so many other options to try. No, he lectured me there are not.

SWOT used always to post to us that having a mental illness does not excuse personal responsibility. You are his mother, Copa. If you say those words to him, he will hear you. My son does things like this, too. Lectures me on how I don't understand his situation. (I need money. That's his situation.) It is self pity, and should not be encouraged. Whether the chemicals the kids are using were prescribed or are from the street, there is going to be a period of adjustment on both sides of having taken the medication. Their brain; they reap the benefits, and they are the adult responsible if the benefit was not all they'd hoped. That does not give them the right to act like jerks. Like me Copa, you need to stand up to your son.

I know your son's situation is different than my son's. But I dislike your son's disrespect for you and M, and I dislike the way your son hurts you.

Anger is one thing. Your son's nastiness is compounding the hurt in an already heartbreaking situation.

You're his mom, Copa. You need to tell him to stop.

I had to do that with my son, too. It took me so long a time even to see that I could say "Stop it."

But I did it and posted on P.E. right away and I was so glad I did it, Copa. It was a beginning of a change in my son because it was a beginning of a change in the way I saw him. If I don't respect my own son enough to hold him to a certain standard in his interactions with me, what kind of mother am I?

We forget that our sons are little boys inside.

They are bigger than we are, now. They look like men.

That is scary.

HOW DARE HE.

I think M could not believe why I brought son back here.

I would have done the same, Copa. Joy turned to shame and to pain...but that is your boy. How could you just put him back on the street?

He was evidently throwing or smearing cut oranges all over the floors and walls in the kitchen. M was beside himself when he came home.

I would have been, too.

Your son is so mean, Copa.

Who had to clean that mess?

There is shame and confusion about what I did to him to cause him to engage in this vendetta of control, domination, vengeance, towards me and M.

I think what you are describing here is emotional flashback, Copa.

This shame and confusion and the guilty certainty that we should have been able to ~ well, to make that family dinner I am always posting about ~ that is the feeling of emotional flashback.

This is a good place to begin then, Copa. In all that reading I did yesterday morning, one of the things mentioned was that daughters of borderline disordered moms, having been broken into responsibility for the behaviors of their crazy mothers, fall immediately into responsibility for what their adult children do, too.

A double whammy. Past and present trauma.

Because I am breaking through that where my FOO is concerned Copa, I know you can do it, too. Once we break through that initial mother-lode of guilty responsibility for what our mother's did, we are free of that sick, almost pathologic certainty that we are responsible for what our kids do.

Maybe that is true. I have only been this healthy since yesterday.

:O)

M says he thinks my son wants to go too.

Is son playing a game with M? The game being: She may be your woman but I am her son. She loves me more than you. She will do what I say. You, M, will never have her without me. I can do whatever I want ~ to you, and to her ~ and she will never, ever, turn from me. But she will turn from you M...so watch yourself, boy.

If son goes to that city, Copa? Then you and M need to stay where you are.

I am most interested in what my proper and best role is right now.

To be his mom Copa, and to love him; to teach him to respect you so he can respect himself. Every man who is good in the heart of him respects his mother. It has nothing to do with the mom. It has to do with the kind of man a son is.

Weak and blaming, or strong and self-sufficient.

It is working for my son. Changing the way I see me changed the way I see him. Changing the way I see him...either that will help him or it won't. I would be remiss as his mother, knowing the other, frightened mom way did not work, not to try strength.

For the sake of my son's manhood, Copa.

The way I see it is that if my son sees me in that hateful, disrespectful, blaming way that he sees me and I go along with it, how can he ever, ever know it is a deeply wrong thing for the heart of a man, to disrespect his own mother?

My son will see me as he chooses. But I can refuse to agree with him.

You can too, Copa.

He is wrong. My son was (or is, if he should continue or go back to the worst of the old days) wrong to use the wounds my mother inflicted to dominate and break me, now.

But once my son made that horrible choice? I am the only one who
can tell him how wrong, how terribly weakening, such a choice is, for him, and for his manhood.

M will agree with me on this, I am thinking.

M is a man. He will know whether I am correct in my thinking on this aspect of being a mother to a son.

As SWOT posts for us Copa, having a mental illness does not mean we are not capable of responsible thought and action unless we choose to use our illness as an excuse to be weak and despicable.

We all have challenges. Just as my mom could have done better but chose not to, your son can do better. Total lack of control would have been to smash the oranges on the walls and the floor.

Your son cut them in half first.

I cannot tell you how furious is M. I think he is mad at me too, and holds me responsible. I think he thinks that I allow my son to tyrannize us. And no matter how angry I get and how insistent with my son that he reverse his behaviors toward us or leave, M thinks I have not acted strongly enough.

Could it be true Copa that if M were to leave you, son would have you exactly where he wants you?

Emotional flashback, full time.

This is the son who taunted you with your own brokenness at the hands of your father.

Trampling sacred ground, Copa.

Shame on your son, to hurt you that way.

The one thing I am coming to that might be good is that I am seeing that my unhinged behavior towards my son is and was quite likely the response that would be elicited in anybody that was treated as my son is treating me and M.

Yes.

Your son is triangulating, Copa. He is threatening M to his face under your nose. M cannot take the authority of the man of the house. Your son knows this, and taunts M with it. Son wants M gone.

Then you will be vulnerable and pliable and manipulable.

Without M; without that man who loves, and completes, and brings you happiness and as tried so hard with M, in spite of everything.

M knows what son is doing, Copa.

But he is powerless to stop it.

I think he sees himself as the victim in all of this.

He is, Copa. He loves you. He cannot be a man, cannot protect and see you cherished and insist that you be cherished.

All these things, your son has caused.

So he can make M leave and have you to himself, weakened and wide open.

Read on the site, Copa. That is what troubled adult kids, male and female alike ~ that is what they do. Triangulate and move in on the weakened mother. I couldn't stop, wouldn't see it, either. That is why my D H sold houses, moved us away, took me on vacation, sent me on vacation, let me do whatever I wanted and insisted on that 5:30 Happy Hour without anyone else there and without phone calls.

We were losing our marriage, Copa.

I have posted before that I hated my D H in that time. He came to hate me, too.

Most of us on the P.E. site have lost our marriages, Copa.

That's why.

PS The reason M feels so convinced that everything is my fault is because I let the cat dominate me.

PSS This is how alone I feel right now: If you all knew my sister, you would side with her. Against me.

I was you, Copa.

M will pull you through. Your son will pull you down.

Choose the life with M, Copa.

Remember that blackgnat spent time in an Intensive Care unit with a bleed in the brain courtesy of her son.

And she took him back.

And it didn't help.

We all need to remember where mother love can take us, Copa. That is why we work here so hard. We need to be stronger than we are to help our kids. We need to see through our own eyes, not theirs.

I would not side with your sister, Copa.

You are coming through this beautifully. These things we go through with our kids are not survivable. There is too much pain.

That is why we have to change.

One way or another, we are not coming through this the same.

SWOT and nerfherder and Belle and IC and Seeking and Confused and I ~ we all are right here, Copa. We are not siding with your sister. Your sister would have broken already, had she been forced to live through loving a self destructing boy.

You are strong.

Strong enough.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

M says the reason he was so upset is because he too believed my son's breaking the broom was a threat. M is afraid that he will have to fight my son and if he does he will have to defend himself with whatever he has and this frightens M.

M says my son has told him that he has killed people. He believes he is lying, of course. Where did that come from? Killing people?

He says that the issue is dominance and subjugation, that my son wants to subjugate us in the house. M thinks he is willfully trying to give us this message: if you do not let me do what I want, when I want in the manner that I want, I will make it so that you suffer too.

Actually, this sounds right, because my son has long insisted that he will not be controlled by me or by us. After all that is what Brasil and my foot was about.

 

[Copabanana]

Your son is so mean, Copa.

I blame myself for this, too. How could it be that my sweet, sweet boy turned so mean?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If somebody wants to use that as an insult, it's a good one since it is hard to disprove, just as it is very hard to prove.

When did you stop beating your wife, right?

The reason why it is such a huge insult to be called a borderline is exactly because these individuals are not psychotic and do not have thought disorders and are deliberately cruel, especially those with no inclination to change at all.

One way is to pick out a diagnosis and say your sister or brother or hated friend has diagnosed borderline and tell that to other people.

And another way to dominate and shame and anger your victim is to claim to believe there is something terrible the matter with the way they think when you know it is not true. Your sister persists. Could she hate you the same way my sister hates me, SWOT? The same way Copa's sister seems to treat Copa, as well?

I still get that emotional flashback feeling when I remember that I think my sister really does hate me. With hatred, I mean.

Like, hatred.

She hates me like racism, like a fanatic hates.

Isn't that the most extraordinary thing.

You should also read up on Narcicistic mothers, which I think may define mine and my sister more than borderline as both were very vain about how they looked, although my mother didn't try to keep up her looks and my sister is obsessed with her looks and "getting attention" from males. At age 50-60, yes, she is still obsessed with being told she is pretty

I think I might be Narcissistic, then.

Except I am more concerned with not looking ugly than I am with how beautiful I look. I do have those issues around appearance. "That'll do, pig."

Remember?

I feel so badly for myself now, about that.

I am proud of my hard work, and of the change that has been accomplished.

Either way, they had t he same way of being mean and I know how to be mean their way too. You can't live with that and not learn how to do it.

That is true. I was thinking about how I thought life worked when I was young, and how beautifully different everything is, really. As we all go through the proof of life through our own eyes instead of through those of our abusers...oh, wow.

I hope I live a long time after this, so I can celebrate all of it.

All of it.

:O)

"Experience Project: My Family Doesn't Like Me"

Okay I will. It makes me very sad to think they really don't like me, SWOT.

I will read there on that site today.

It makes me feel very weak, to know they don't even like me. How shaming!

roar

My sister had not really sustained a relationship with Grandmother until several years before her death. So my mother, after Grandma died, had Grandmother's furniture renovated to give it to my sister to remember my grandmother by.That was actually a slap in my face on purpose since, of all three of us, my grandmother spent the most time estranged from Sis for no reason. They were not anywhere near as close as me and her. That was the first slap before the disinheritance. Last time I visisted Sis, grandma's beloved renovated furniture was in her basement as secondary furniture. Maybe she has thrown it out by now.

That's the essense of borderline. "My fake world will be your world and I will be mean about it too."

My grandmother never loved my sister as much as me and she told me so, even right before her death. Brother either. She did love Brother though. Sister was like "Well, it was nice she finally sees me but for years I would have not recognized her if we'd passed one another on the street." Knowing my grandmother, she said very kind things to my sister, but that is what she said to me. And, again, we spoke every single day, sometimes for an hour. And nobody can take those memories away from me.

I do think your mom did everything in her power to hurt you with the love you felt for your grandmother, SWOT. I think she knew what she was doing, and that she did it on purpose.

The strangest, most hurtful things happened around my grandmother's death, too. All of it was filtered through my mother, who took charge in the strangest, ugliest ways. As she lay in her coffin, my sister took my dead grandmother's hand and seemed, for all the world, to be examining my grandmother's wedding ring.

Closely and at some length.

My sister felt the ring should have been given to her daughter, who had been named after my grandmother. My mother had the diamond reset into a ring for my father.

The ring disappeared after my father's death, which occurred while they were visiting my sister.

My sister.

Huh.


Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I feel that in my life I have been betrayed to the heart by every person (except M but him too--because now I do not trust him) that I have ever cared about or should have cared about me.

Copa. Your mom may have been a borderline person. Your sister may be, too. Your father...something very wrong was happening there, something that was not your fault and had nothing to do with you. I remember your posting about your father bringing everyone to restaurants for dinner. That was the father he wanted to be, Copa. Proud, happy, showing off his beautiful family and his prosperity and power. Whatever happened to change that Copa, you were a victim of circumstance that had nothing in the world to do with who you are.

You have been betrayed, Copa.

Realizing this is a crucial part of your healing.

We are right here, Copa. Just as you and SWOT have stayed and read and upheld, so SWOT and I will do for you, now. This part is very hard, Copa. Remember the Nine Days post?

These are your nine days.

You can do this, Copa.

Be kind, behave with integrity; make no life altering decisions. You are raw and open and what you do now, and what you do next, matters very much. I came through it Copa. SWOT came through it.

You will, too.

It's such a different life from here, Copa. Everything, every single thing, looks different, from the other side of this place where you are this morning.

Hang on.

Or is it that I am cast aside because that is just what happens to me, the person I am, if no one loves me.

Soon now Copa, you will be more present; you will be open, undefended. You will have access to more and more of your own energy available to you as you free the frozen places. This is the energy you will use to go further, to free more of yourself.

If you are like me Copa, it could be that we throw ourselves away at the first hint of problems. In our hearts, we throw ourselves away Copa because that is what was done to us when we were little. It hurt too much. We learned to betray ourselves first.

We cast ourselves aside, Copa.

Remember all the times I have posted that D H just would not leave? Or that I could not imagine why he didn't? Because I was afraid to love myself too, Copa. And until we learn to love and hold ourselves in respect, we cannot believe it when someone else loves us, or befriends us, or holds our hands in compassion.

We tend not to allow others to comfort us, Copa.

We suffer in silence, cold and dark and eternal.

****

There was a time, oh tender elf
when you were poetry, itself

That is from John Bradshaw.

I am stuck in italics, again.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I do not know why M is so mad at me. What was my fault about this?

I think it has to do with being a man. D H would describe it as being muzzled for the sake of the woman he loved. He would lose me, if he responded to my mother, my sister, or even my kids, the way he wanted to. The men who love us Copa, love us with all their hearts.

M is giving up his manhood for you, to have you, to love you.

D H is free now, from that muzzling of the spirit place. He is giddy with it.

He used a defensive Ju Jitsu or Karate move on my foot. He was about 17 and a half.

The male who beat my daughter over the course of three days and left her for dead stomped on her bare feet in his steel toed boots.

She had pieces of dead bone removed from her feet.

He was trying to cripple her before he killed her, Copa.

He also broke vertebrae in her back.

blackgnat's son put her in Intensive Care with a brain bleed.

People tell me with my son that he is like he is because it is my fault. Because I did not assert myself over him and control him.

The male who beat daughter also kicked her in the head. She was complaining of pain, blurred vision, forgetfulness, emotional lability at a doctor's visit some months into her recovery. The nurse told her: "If you don't want to have brain damage, don't let people kick you in the head."

People who do not have kids like ours cannot understand. They can be the most compassionate, accepting people in all the world. Unless they have dealt with a child like ours they have no frame of reference.

Know this, Copa, and disregard them. Be happy for them that they don't know and pray for them that they never do know what this is like.

Did I post already that on one of those borderline sites, it was noted that moms raised by borderline persons are especially at risk, should their own children become addicted or have other problems? Because we have been taught the other guy's problems or pain or stinky feet are our responsibility.

Just for now Copa, refuse to condemn yourself. Postpone that, for now. All of this is going to look different once you are on the other side of this.

I am pulling you along Copa, and SWOT is singing life back into the bones.

They are right to a certain extent. I am the kind of person who does not assert control. I invoke participation by request and by people wanting to do the right thing. Often in my work, especially, people want to do the right thing for me.

You are a good and decent person, Copa. A normal child would listen. Your son is determined to be mean in the same, soul destroying way my mom is mean, or my sister, when she hurt my daughter.

I see that same meanness in my son, Copa. I believe drug use does that. Empathy, integrity, the capacity to love ~ all that goes I think, when people use drugs prescription or not, sometimes. Depending on the brain chemistry of the person using the drug or the medication.

That is what happened to your son Copa, and that is what happened to mine.

It happens to everyone who uses too much medication, legal or illicitly.

It happened to poor D H mom through her pain medicine.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I blame myself for this, too. How could it be that my sweet, sweet boy turned so mean?

Mine did too, Copa. One day? He was a bright, funny, handsome kid running for class President and working in the classiest restaurant in town with a job he would have worked himself into bartender in and kept right through college and the next day?

He wasn't.

And I never really saw him again, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

My primary task is to decide the course I want to take with my son. That has two parts.

What do I want to help him do? What do I need to teach him or show him?

The gist is: he is responsible to take care of himself and to control behaviors that hurt others, to stop them. That is his primary responsibility. He may not like that medications cause side effects to him. His welfare is NOT the most important thing. Protecting others, IS the most important thing. Until he finds an alternative medication that does not have side effects, he is still responsible to take a psychotropic medication that controls aggressive behavior.

I will separate myself to him to the extent I need to to protect myself from his mistreatment and disrespect. I will tell him that. Right now that means he will not visit my home.

This (from the prior post) demonstrates the attitude I have taken and what I am trying to teach him. Am I on the right track?

SON, you are free to have opinions about me...It does feel bad...to have my own child take the side of another person and not give me the chance to explain.

I told him that he is absolutely responsible to seek and use remedy for same, so as to not target innocent people. Including me and M.

And that often, perhaps usually in life people do not get choice 1 or 2 or 3, and have to choose between alternatives that are the best of options. i.e. when all options are undesirable to one degree or another.

no one has to suffer (your) outbursts, disrespect, aggression.

If you comply with the medication regimen there is a good chance your body will adjust

I told him at some point if he goes around treating people as does he is at risk of prison or of being harmed, even killed.

No one has to accept this treatment, nor will I.

My second decision is how much and what to do for him, actually. I will stop seeking to be his payee.

I must decide how much to help him seek psychiatric treatment and whether or not to help him to get treatment for his liver.

I left him with these requests: On Monday call the Hepatologist, make another appointment and get paperwork for blood work faxed. And clean up those two hospital bills by calling (he has both public medical coverage and private insurance through my retirement that I managed to maintain for him.) I told him I would call the University Satellite clinic to arrange a psychiatry consult and evaluation for him.

I do not think I can go again with him to the BIG CITY. He is not trustworthy. I cannot put myself in that position. But I believe I must do what I can about his dangerous mental state. What I can do and am willing to do is accompany him to a nearby City (1 hour). Is this stance appropriate?

As far as psychiatric treatment (medications and an evaluation) I think that it is so urgent that it justifies my enduring anything to help him address this.

He agreed to an evaluation. Whether or not he consents or complies with medications I have no control over, but I must at least try.

There are two decisions about help. One about his liver. This involves a 14 hour trip with him to a large metro area. We saw how that went. One about psychiatry. That I think I can do in a metro area an hour away.

Do you think either is appropriate? Neither? Both?

Is the stance I am taking adequate? What more do I need to say? Please spell it out in words and I will read it.

If M comes back from mass (i.e. not seize the opportunity to return to Mx) I will talk to him again about the intent to leave for the faraway city as soon as possible after Sept 18th.

Thank you.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar weighs in.

To add the physical danger your son's medical situation puts him in to whatever it is that is causing him to explode and bully with such viciousness...I don't know how you can even function at all this morning, Copa. My son is physically healthy and strong. His situation still broke me and broke me. You have been amazing, thus far. You will continue to function with insight and grace and strength.

Copa, bless yourself for the hardness of your situation, and for your courage in facing it, head on.

Bless yourself for that, Copa.

And right now
I feel like I have fifty
broken bones
and when I'm still it hurts,
and when I move, it hurts even more,
no matter what part of me I move,
all those broken bones grinding
together.
Worst of all
anyone who tries to comfort me
moves those bones
hurts me worse.

Jane Howard Samuels
Wombmates

kd lang: Halleluiah

For when you think about loving your son, what that means, how that looks and feels:

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.

T Robbins
The Ascension Factor
Herbert

For when you are weak and tired and confused and uncertain:

There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter; you bathed bare bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it; remember. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track. You know the winter-fear when you hear the wolves gathering. But you can remain seated for hours in treetops to await morning. You say there are no words to describe this time. You say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember; or, failing that, invent.

Monique Wittig
Les Guerilleres

And for when you are in pain, Copa:

Sybil remembered the crucifixions of her past, and by each of them, where she herself hug and screamed and writhed,, she saw the golden halo and the hands of the Fool holding and easing her, and heard his voice murmuring peace.

Charles Williams
The Greater Trumps

For your son, for how to think about what is happening:

Only God knows why Gavin does what he does, and only God is in a position to pass judgment on him as a person.

Susan Howatch

For how to see yourself and M coming through this:

As his family disintegrated around him....

The flares of emotional pain faded to a dull, manageable ache, the surges of anger became soft waves of sorrow, and he was able to turn, for the first time, toward the loss, rather than away from it.

And then, finally, to move on marked by loss, but not defined by it.

The Prophet
Michael Koryta

And for how to do this, day by day:

Practice detachment and
protect yourself.

Jabberwocky
Conduct Disorders

I am watching Oprah Super Soul Sunday, today. Here is my newest quote:

Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave.

Timothy Shriver

What do I want to help him do? What do I need to teach him or show him?

The answer to the first question: You will help him do whatever he allows. The issue is not whether you are willing, Copa. It is what your son will accept or allow. (I am stuck in italics again. Sorry, Copa.) Your son resents your help, I think Copa. Do you think he could be angry and ashamed at the man he has become ~ to have you see and know that?

That is a huge piece, with our son.

Huge.

We don't get to know for sure what motivates our sons especially, Copa. So, we may choose to believe their rage is come of disappointment in themselves, and that the more we help, the less they feel like men.

So, if that is the truth in your son's heart, if you see it that way...then you will know how much to help.

Very little, Copa. A man is not a man, who cannot respect himself. It makes sense to me that this is at the heart of the hatred my son feels for me. He was such a lovely young boy, Copa. He brought me the most incredible gifts, the most thoughtful, unique things. Rare things, Copa, and precious and fragile things.

Now, he swears at me, hates me openly if I allow it.

I am his mother. I see his heart.

I set him on his feet and let him go.

***

I think Copa, how to be a man. That is what he wants to be; that is what he is. What is there you can be proud of him for? Tell him that. What is there you refuse, as his mother who merits respect, to accept?

Tell him that. Straight on, Copa.

Speak to him as the man he is.

Speak to the hero, and to the strength, inside him.

Then, remember Jabber's advice: Practice detachment and protect yourself.

I am stuck in italics, again, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I must decide how much to help him seek psychiatric treatment and whether or not to help him to treatment for his liver.

No.

After son's behavior, all bets are off. Text numbers, appointment days and times, and that you love him.

If he asks you for something specific and you are willing and can safely accommodate him, and it is not enabling, do it gladly.

The only thing we don't get to do is enable. We can say I love you a million times. We can say "I wish you hadn't behaved so badly last time because now you can't come to my house and I miss you so much my heart is breaking."

We can say, "I am so angry with you for misbehaving when I was so excited to see you, to put my arms around my own son and smile and have lunch and look, just look (!) what you did, instead."

We can say anything in the world, Copa. We just don't get to enable.

I left him with these requests: On Monday call the Hepatologist, make another appointment and get paperwork for blood work faxed. And clean up those two hospital bills by calling (he has both public medical coverage and private insurance through my retirement that I managed to maintain for him.) I told him I would call the University Satellite clinic to arrange a psychiatry consult and evaluation for him.

I would add: "I will be happy to make these calls for you."

If there is no response Copa, then you have done what your son will accept or allow.

What he wants more than life itself I think, is to be what he is: a man.

He has a phone, Copa.

Text him the numbers. I would. We have to be able to look into our own eyes in the mirror.

I do not think I can go again with him to the BIG CITY. He is not trustworthy. I cannot put myself in that position. But I believe I must do what I can about his dangerous mental state. What I can do and am willing to do is accompany him to a nearby City (1 hour). Is this stance appropriate?

Only if you express yourself re: what you hoped for during your last time together and what happened, instead and receive appropriate acknowledgement that your son hears you and, whether he says his actions have to do with his mental illness or not, regrets his actions during that time that should have been a time of closeness and reunion for you both.

That is the betrayal there, Copa. Not what you did not accomplish for your son re: medical needs. What your son did to you, how he ripped you open and danced on your heart.

Do you think either is appropriate? Neither? Both?

I'm sorry, Copa. Neither is appropriate in my opinion, given your son's response. I am bothered Copa, that you feel you will endure anything to help your son not to die. But here is a secret: I would do it, too.

I cannot not help when I see the kids in person.

So, maybe the best plan is to give him phone numbers and purchase train tickets he can pick up at the station ~ even a cab ride to the station, if that can be done via credit card.

But don't go yourself.

If you proceed as though nothing has happened, his behavior will escalate I think, Copa.

If M comes back from mass (i.e. not seize the opportunity to return to Mx) I will talk to him again about the intent to leave for the faraway city as soon as possible after Sept 18th.

Or, as soon as possible before Sept 18th. Arrange for referrals from your doctors here and leave for the new city, Copa. It is only July. That is two months and half a month more.... Or, you could look at this as a test of your determination to change the dynamic of your relationship to your son.

To practice detaching and protect yourself, as Jabber suggested.

Cedar

Copa? This is very hard stuff. No one could know how to do this "right". If it were about you, your son would be living at home or in the dorm and all would be well. It is your son who prevents a successful outcome; it is your son who prefers the situation to be as it is.

I'm sorry this is happening, Copa.

 

[BusynMember]

People tell me with my son that he is like he is because it is my fault. Because I did not assert myself over him and control him.

Ok.

I am woman.

Hear me roar at the idiots (yes, they are ALL idiots) who told you this about your son.

ARE THEY REALLY THAT DUMB?????

Your son was born in an orphanage, exposed to drugs and alcohol, and got no love and some nasty DNA from his birthparents. He has to have had some attachment problems, whether or not they showed early on. He also has brain damage. IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT!

OMG, how stupid is it to tell somebody if they were just stricter a child will be an angel?

Anyone here agree? LOLOLOL!

That makes me so angry for you, Copa,l that I just want to scream at anyone who told you that that they are too stupid to live.

And maybe they aren't too stupid to actually LIVE, but they are very ignorant.

We have no control over our adult kids and they do not become what we make them, unless there was severe abuse in our lives that WE meted out. Nobody can guarantee a wonderful ending for any child. Nobody. Nobody. No way. No how.
Religious people who hate gays (not all do, I know this) and preach against it have had gay children. I'm sure they were strict about how bad being gay is and how their child would be kicked to the trashcan if the child was gay. But it happens anyway, doesn't it?

Quiet parents with good manners can have loud, boisterous children who spill milk and don't have good social skills and pick their noses. SO WHAT?????

Authoritative parenting has been proven to be the worst kind and cause the most damage in a child. Do they honestly believe that if they forced their kids to say "sir" and "ma'am" and shake everyone's hand, and sit down and shut up around adults, and whatever else uber strict parents do that they will have marvelous children? Well, being too strict isn't good either. That has been proven. And some kids are just plain defiant. It's in their blood. What should we then do? BEAT them until they are too SCARED of us to tell us how much they hate us? And many who were beaten like that truly do hate their parents and reject them and get into trouble. It happens to any type of parent.

This is not a parenting problem.

I'd like to swear but I can't so (fill in whatever words fill your imagination) right there!

Are we, in this thread, the only people on earth who understand that every person has individual DNA which probably drives behavior more than how we parented our kids, as long as they were not abused? Even abused children, grow up to be very different types of adults...they all handle it differently.

Pardon my outburst, but nothing is more ignorant than to think "If only you'd spanked him or made him skip dinner or punished him enough, he'd be a stellar fellow."

Idiots. Idiots. Idiots.

I'm sorry. Carry on.

 

[BusynMember]

I blame myself for this, too. How could it be that my sweet, sweet boy turned so mean?

Copa, this is something you need to hear as we share a common bond of adopted children, older than infants. It is not the same as giving birth or adopting an infant.

My son Goneboy was the best behaved, nicest mannered, sweetest boy I'd ever met until he wasn't. This occurred when he met his current wife and happened rather quickly and I believe it was because she was the only person he felt safe talking about his anger to. This was a good thing for him, even if it did not turn out the way I would have liked it to have turned out. He did need somebody to talk to. He was very, very close to Princess in t he way of doing social things with her. He liked her pep and happy demeaner and friendliness and they were together a lot. But he did not talk to her about anything. Princess tells me now, and even used to tell me way in the old days, when she was still a teen and he was in his early 20's, "Mom, I know you don't think so, but something is really wrong with Goneboy."

"What?"

"He has no emotions. He is very cold. He's a robot."

Me laughing. "Oh, come on. He's very kind to you."

"Not really. He's not mean, he's not anything. He's dead inside."

I wish I had listened to her warning. I did not see this part of him because he hid it from me, but she was around him much more than I was and she knew.

After he met his wife, I am just going to assume he started letting his anger out. His anger was that he was thought of as such a nice guy and everyone thought he was so swell and so great and so mannerly and so smart. I'll never forget the day he gave me a smirk and said, "But that's not the real me. I'm not nice."

I think I humored him and made a joke, but don't remember exactly.

He said, "I'm not. You just think I am, but I'm not nice." The way he said it the second time, dead on eye contact, I knew he meant it. Soon after he started telling us about the things we had to do in order to be able to be around him, in his life, including severely restricting contact because he was a Christian and his wife was No. 1 and we did not really matter that much anymore. He did not speak those words exactly. But that's w hat he meant.

He was never nice after that. He never explained anything to any of us beyond what I just typed, including my ex, who he still sees, but in limited time blocks. He dumped his sister first, the person he had depended on the most and perhaps that was because he hinted at them getting married, and Princess thinks he meant it, and she turned him down. Apparently he thought they could marry because they were not biologically related. He did not see her as a sister. He did not see us as his family, not really. But he did not tell us until about the same age as your son is.

Maybe if he had fallen in love with somebody who was not as hostile toward all of us, including ex, as his wife is, things would have been gentler for all of us, but it is what it is. This sweet little boy, with a twinkle in his eyes, great jokes, an enormous IQ and so incredibly handsome (really, he is still so handsome last I checked his FB). He told us he is not nice. He never was nice. It was an act to please us because as a child we did have control over him and he had learned in the orphanage how to get favorable treatment from adults. He was way smart and he knew.

His wedding was a nightmare of her relatives telling me what a wonderful job I did raising him, what a NICE man he was.

Now he was playing to them as he wanted his wife's family to accept and like him and he knew how to do it. And, as things were going south in our relationship, everyone was telling me in the receiving line how wonderful a mother I am, as if I had one thing to do with who Goneboy turned out to be.

I had nothing to do with it, Copa. He does not have my DNA. He did not meet me until he was six years old. That's six formative years we did not have together. He had often said, "I was already myself before I came here. I am who I am because of me, not because of you or dad." He said it without emotion. Looking back, Princess was right and he said many very emotional things without any feeling. He'd just say it, no expression, no inflection in his voice. He could be charming and friendly and lovable when he wanted to be, but that was not the real him.

To this day he is not THAT close to his wife. On FB, until I stopped doing FB, she would lament, "He is always at work." "He works twelve hour days. I miss him so much. Honey, I love you."

Copa, it is impossible for you to have planted the seeds that made this son of yours the person he is. He had the beginnings of his formative years before he met you and probably never felt soft hands and kisses and normal baby love that normal parents bestow upon their children. He had his birthparents DNA and they were not too stable. He had a nervous system that was damaged from drugs and alcohol even before he was born. Goneboy did NOT have that and he STILL had problems. Serious ones, now that I look back. His birthfamily, who he knows now, is intelligent and stable. They are all brilliant. There is no mental illness. They are healthy and alive. Yet he was unable to form normal connections with adults because of the orphanage. And he hid it for as long as he wanted to hide it. It is significant when a parent is cut out of his parent's in his infancy and developing years and if his birthparent takes care of herself during her pregnancy.

How on earth can you blame yourself for how he is? As a child he was happy and you kept him busy and when school got tough you changed schools. Did he have many friends? Bond with people easily besides you? Did he have any red flags before this?

Listen:

As an adult, he wants to know his identity. Adopted kids may love us to death...I am sure Jumper and Sonic and Princess live me totally. But I am not their identity. I raised them. But their identity is who their birthparents are. Goneboy, more than the others, was obsessed with his ethnicity and after he was meanly dumped by a white girl that he had a huge crush on (and it destroyed him) that is when he got even more interested in his own ethnicity. He never dated another girl who was not Chinese. Ever.

I think Goneboy, at his age and with his contacting his birth family, is probably over his identity issues, but your son can not do much to learn about his identity if his parents are dead. Have you ever traveled to take him to his country of birth? I know Goneboy goes to China a lot. He can afford it and does business there too. His wife is from China. He is not, but it is a close match to where he was born and he has been there too.

Copa, do what you want to do with your life. Enjoy it. Don't let ANYONE blame you for your son. They don't even need to know about him. It's your private business. Did you ever call to maybe see a therapist for yourself? That bed is your enemy. If you don't get out of it, depression will eat you up in it's giant jaws. It's the bed taking away your identity.

by the way, I learned that an identity can include, but is is not limited to "I am a mother." That is actually temporary in a way. Our kids grow fast and we need to think beyond them. Some leave home for other countries. Some join the service. Some don't like us. Some just get busy with life and we don't see them much even if they are close to us geographically. Our identity needs to be more than "I am a mother."

I know you are bright and talented. That is who you are. The mother part, yes, you will always be a mother. But your MOTHERING days...days of actively mothering....are over as are mine. Those early busy days of running the kids here and there and everywhere are gone when they grow up.

Copa, Jumper has been home all summer and pretty quiet at first and we did a lot together. I relished it. When a child is 19, it can always be the last time you are THAT close. Her friends are in another city, but then she met a boy and she is never home again. And she reconnected with her "close by" friends too. And the second half of summer, she is not here. She is good about texting us where she is out of courtesy, but it is no longer my job to tell her she can or can not go out. At least, I don't think it is. So the only time I'm doing some mothering is when I'm with my grands and that's not too often. And I don't want to 100% mother again so I'm glad. I so enjoy them and love them when I see them. I'm so happy I can return them and enjoy them rather than angst over them.

One day you may be a grandma. Your son could find somebody and she may like you and that can change everything and often does. A very kind child can turn mean if her/his spouse doesn't like you and she/he loves the spouse enough to turn away from you. Or the opposite. There is hope.

Where there is life there is hope.

Your son was very formed as a person before you met him at age two. He had been abused by his birthmother in her womb and probably neglected in the orphanage. Princess was lucky. She had as very loving foster mom. I remember going to an adoptive parent meeting of mothers mostly who'd adopted babies from Korea. We were sitting on the floor and our little toddlers were playing and we had a long discussion about how much better socialized and reactive the kids who had been in foster care (which in Korea ia only bestowed upon the very best mothers and it's a paid job) as opposed to those who came from orphanages. I wrote a thank you letter to Princesses foster mom because Princess came to us fat, spoiled and all smiles and she bonded right away, cuddled right into me. Apparently that is not what happened to the orphanage babies when they came.

Maybe they were stiff, like I was when my mother tried to hold ME.

"When I first held you, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing."

Maybe the babies felt the same way. If they were older, it is hard to know how they felt. Goneboy hugged us when he first met us. He knew how to be charming. He smiled and started doing a silly dance. Bart was desperate to get attention from him. Goneboy had so much charisma. How much was real?

Ok, so I wrote a novel.

I just hate how you blame yourself when, if you think rationally, it doesn't make sense. It makes sense that your son is confused and angry right now and possibly wishing he had a firmer grip on who he was, where he came from, how he got from here to there, and why his birthparents didn't take better care of him.

I'm very grateful that Sonic is my only adopted kids with no interest in his birth family and no anger toward them either. All of my other adopted children did care and asked questions and at times were sad about the abandonment. Just because adoption was not spoken about does not mean that the child, now adult, did not/does not think about it and have many questions. And this is not your fault either.

It's just the way it is.

 

[SeekingStrength]

Copa,

I must back up and read more because I obviously missed something(s) huge that happened recently with your son. But, please know that I am following this and feel so badly for you.

Cedar and SWOT are doing a wonderful job talking with you. They are correct- you are a fine, caring human being. I am also grateful they are being tough with you, as in helping you see your value and not wanting you to risk unnecessary pain.

And, pain. This thread can be almost too much to read in big chunks. This is inner-most gut kind of talk. I am glad these conversations are happening. The fact that they are sometimes so painful to read lets me know a lot of this needs to be said and read.

SS

 

[BusynMember]

Ss, I had no idea this could be hard to read. Thanks for telling me. Only speaking for me, it was hidden inside waiting to explode and I'm grateful it happened on such a safe forum. Writing about it was and is so healing.

Cop a hopefully knows we love her and that she is not alone now and how much we care.

 

[allusedup]

SERENITY, CEDAR, COPA, I NEED YOU ALL RIGHT NOW!!

I got back from my trip and went to get Dixie, the sweet little puppy the she dwvil my son is with and guess what???? They weren't home so I called my son and he told me Dixie was DEAD!!!!!! Ihad an absolute come apart on the phone with my son. That's why he hasn't been answering my calls. She let that baby die and I told my son it was his fault for not intervening. I also told him I knew for sure that she had f#$!&d around on him for sure (I wasn't supposed to know,but I told him before he knew that it happened). I told him this was just a small taste of what is to come if he is stupid enough to sray with her. HAHAHA!!!! I said...she says"I love you" and she has a pu#@y. Tell me something else good about her...and he couldn't come up with anything. I also told him if she comes up pregnant... I will sue for custody and will win. WHO IN THRRE RIGHT MIND could ignore the cries of a baby...human or not.
I told my son this is why her son is so messed up...he doesn't know she loves him so the poor child misbehaves and gets attention that way. God help me. I raised him better than this.

OK Sisters please tell me.....

In the meanwhile, I am going to tie one on. (I can't get Dixie out of my mind).