I'm sorry, IAD. Our lives are like living nightmares, sometimes. I have never seen anything that hurt me more than the suffering in the eyes of my own child. It made me crazy; it took over my life. Believing for the best is a technique I learned this summer. We knew our homeless daughter was being beaten, every day. She had a closed head injury from a beating, once. She was in Intensive Care for alcohol poisoning, once. She was living a violent, despicable life, and there was nothing we could do and no way we could stop loving her. I had no choice but to find some way to live through it or I would have ~ I don't know what. Found my world shrinking again to a small, dark place where I waited for the phone to ring telling me it was over, I guess.
I spent a little time in that place this winter. I never want to go back there.
I can share which things have helped me survive it, IAD. There aren't too many, actually. All the usual things people say to us to try to make it better don't touch the kind of pain a mother feels watching her child suffer.
These may not touch your pain, IAD. They helped me feel understood, somehow. I hope with all my heart they help you, too.
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Sybil remembered the crucifixions of her past, and by each of them, where she herself hung 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
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I am ashamed of these tears. And yet, at the extreme of my misfortune, I am ashamed not to shed them.
Euripides
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Seboulissa
mother goddess with one breast
eaten away by worms of sorrow and loss
See me, now...
Your severed daughter
laughing our name into echo
all the world shall remember.
Audre Lourde
The Politics of Women's Spirituality
Spretnak
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The pain body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence.
Eckhardt Tolle
The Power of Now
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The Tolle quote helped me see that I could face down the horror of what was happening ~ that I was the one with the responsibility of determining what my emotional life would be. I was so desperate, IAD. Things happened so fast, and were so shocking, that I could never get on top of one thing before something worse happened. husband and I were sort of lurching from day to day. I started listening to Joel Osteen. I started reading his stuff. His message too, is that we are responsible for choosing our emotional outlook. There was nothing I did not read, nothing I did not try.
But bad, painful things are bad, worrisome, painful things. Like gut blows coming from out of nowhere. We cannot prepare for them. What we can do though, is choose to survive them. It's like being coldblooded, in a way. You choose against the hopelessness, the darkness.
That is why I say "believe for the best." It sounds trite and pointless, I know. But when we are hanging on by our fingernails, believing for the best may be the only weapon we have, the only way to put space between the horror of what is happening and our vulnerable innermost selves. After I began picking the way things would come out, if they came out for the best, I made a conscious effort to believe that is how it would be. I understood that the reality was probably going to be a very different thing than what I had envisioned.
I didn't care, IAD.
It was about survival.
When I am worried and distracted, so is my husband. If you have other kids at home, they are going to be adversely affected by your moods. We are the moms. We have to find some way to pull it together for the other people in our lives.
Believing for the best is a technique. Consciously choosing to put away negative thoughts is imperative. Consciously choosing to celebrate the smallest instant of joy ~ the sunshine, the smell of coffee ~ anything, any positive thing, at all, to counter the hell of what you are going through.
It works, IAD.
I found I needed to deal with remnants of guilt. There were still corners of my self that were punishing me. I had to decide against them and choose happy, choose bright, choose strength.
I learned to say "I am strong. I am beautiful. I am young. I am bright." to myself in the mirror first thing in the morning. It counters the negative, overwhelming, worried thoughts of the night.
I am so sorry this is happening to you, and to your child and your family. I hope some of this helps you. If it doesn't, know that if you keep looking, you will find your own way to survive it, to be strong enough, to be happy, even.
Cedar
I wanted to add that I don't hang onto the details of my imagined outcome. I envision how I would FEEL if difficult child were healthy, if she were happy, if everything was superb. Then, I strive, with all my heart, to take that FEELING for my emotional reality. It isn't about believing for the best outcome as much as it is a matter of claiming the emotional reality of a successful outcome for myself in the present, whatever is actually going on. I wish I knew how to describe it better.
Okay.
So, just after you have made fresh coffee, but before you have that first sip, there is happy anticipation. THAT'S what I mean by emotional reality, by believing for the best. It would never matter whether you actually got to drink the coffee, or not.
You had that instant of pleasure, and you can go back and savor it again, any time that you like.
If you return to that moment of savoring again and again, your mood will improve. You will be stronger and better able to cope, though you never actually got to drink the coffee.
If we find the emotional reality a healthy child would bring us and believe in that feeling, choose that feeling over the harrowing, depressed feelings...we will be stronger, whatever is coming next.
Did I muddy the issue further?
:O)
