Jail, Rehab

[Scent of Cedar *]

Your son is not 3, you can't kiss it and make it better.

Child of Mine posts: Addiction is a terminal illness.

As moms, we just don't know how to help our addicted kids.

That is a hard thing to know.

We know they are suffering. We know they have lost the lives they were bright enough, and such wonderful people enough, to have claimed. We know time is passing; passing so fast for them.

And that is all we know.

As for the guilt, you have nothing to feel guilty about. YOU did not do this, he did. Understand that he wants you to feel guilty, he's counting on it. He's hoping that you will feel guilty so that you will "rescue" him.

Absolutely true. If they can hurt us enough, we will come through with what they need. To change the dynamic, we need to be the ones to change. While our kids are trapped in their addictions, they cannot change.

So we have to.

I realize I am sick as they are.

A kinder place to come from: What I am doing is not helping. I will change my responses.

We have been so hurt by what has happened to us and to our families already, Wendy. If we can learn to be gentle with ourselves, if we can keep an intention to be kinder to ourselves, then we can be stronger.

Strong enough to do this thing.

I made an intention to be kinder to myself a year and a half ago. It was my only New Year's resolution. The results have been astonishing. I had been condemning myself for where we all were, for everything that was going so wrong...and I was doing it by rote. I was doing it without even knowing I was doing it. I became stronger when I stopped doing that.

Just that little intention: To be kinder to myself.

Not kind. Just kinder.

No pressure.

Youngest son (24 yrs old) that is on herion, threatening to kill his self today because I have cut off on money. His car insurance cancelled and he has no money for drugs. Sad thing is, I have no money either. My account is actually overdrawn.

You are here with us, now.

We will help you be stronger enough.

Just as Echo said, this is your day one or maybe, two. It is better already, just to know you are heard and understood.

And to know this is survivable.

Not sure why I am posting

When I post? It is because I have decided to live.

That is all I know sometimes, too.

I am grateful for this site every single day.

I have told him to get counseling, he needs help that I can not provide. I do not think he is serious, I think he is trying to manuplate me one more time!

Here are some words that helped me:

I am sorry this is happening to you. You can do this. You are strong enough. NO MONEY.
NO YOU CAN NOT MOVE HOME. I am trying something called detachment parenting. I know you can do this. (I actually say that. My kids hate this site.) I love you. Stand up. You were raised better. I want to see you become the man your father and I raised you to be.

Stuff like that.

I had to write my words down too, Wendy. Sometimes, I go right into PTSD mode. I literally cannot think.

Those late night phone calls were the worst.

It is no easy thing, to watch your children suffer.

Oh. I also say: I love you too much to watch you self destruct. I love you too much to watch you self destruct, and I refuse to help you do it. I love you too much to laugh at you, with you. (When they try to get through to you by laughing about the horrible things that happen to them. Winding up in psychiatric units, losing all their belongings including their licenses, that sort of thing. Mine do that. Laugh about the outrageous things that happen when people are high. While my heart is breaking, and one more time, I am in freaking PTSD mode.)

I taped a picture of young soldiers, younger than my son's age during the time of his addiction, next to the phone.

That way, I could be stronger enough, when he would call crying about everything he needed.

NO MONEY, Wendy.

That is where I started.

The kids will not like that.

If they loved me enough? They would not be doing what they do.

That is a piece of why this is so hard. We have to learn to let go of all those things we believed about how to be good moms.

Helping isn't helping, when the thing we are battling is an addiction.

I am sorry this is happening to you and to your sons, Wendy. do you have the Serenity Prayer already, I wonder? One of the moms here told me to read it, and to keep reading it, until I got it.

I did, and it helped me.

Here you go:

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change
the Courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

I would repeat that, over and over again, in the night when I could not sleep.

The suggestions about National Alliance for Mental Health and al-anon are good advice. Learning we are not the only parents coping with these kinds of things, and learning too, that the accusations the kids make are the same, almost verbatim, helps us cope with the guilt.

This helped me, too: It is the situation that is bad. Not you, and not either of your sons.

Addiction is a terrible, terrible thing.

Let's see. Dr. Kathleen McCoy has a blog where she talks about how to talk to our adult kids. I will try to find the link for you, but if I can't you could try googling her.

I like to paint my toenails something flashy, when I feel badly. It isn't so much to do, but it is a first, tentative step toward self care. When I see those bright and flashy colors, I feel better.

Exercise of any kind. Karate class, ballet class, tennis ~ whatever appeals to you. You might have to make yourself do it, at first.

That's all I know.

:O)

I am glad you are here with us, Wendy.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I had been condemning myself for where we all were, for everything that was going so wrong...and I was doing it by rote.

I have felt that I am being punished for being a Bad daughter, a Bad mother.

I get up from the bed to TRY something to make me better, my life better and I fail at that. And when I do fail, or fall, or whatever it is that happens, this becomes a new offense.

In prisons they give points for every disciplinary infraction and in this context points are not a good thing. For my repeated failure to heal, I give myself disciplinary points too, adding to to my judgment, more time served. I have joined with my jailers to condemn myself.

Wendy. If we can learn to be gentle with ourselves, if we can keep an intention to be kinder to ourselves, then we can be stronger.

So many of us have fallen into the pit of our childhood pain where everything is our fault and there is no one to help us. I vow from here to soothe myself when I fail (oops, fall.)

What kind of inner world is this, I ask, distraught, felled and despairing, (my real offense love and devotion) I beat myself more?

When I post? It is because I have decided to live.

So here is how I begin from here. I read this thread. I type this reply. I post. Therefore, I am, I choose to I live. The conductdisorders.com version of Descartes. A radical act to live. For now, this.

 

[BusynMember]

Sometimes I have felt that I am living a life sentence for my crimes: Bad daughter, Bad Mother. I fail every time that I get up from the bed to TRY something to make me better, my life better. And when I do fail, or fall, or whatever it is that happens, this becomes a new offense.

How on earth were you a bad daughter? Did you lock your mother in the closet when you were five years old? Tell her she was a F****** biotch when you were eight? Try to kill her? Did you not make Cheerleaders which shamed her? Or did you do everything right, but it still wasn't good enough for her?

Let me guess. You didn't always please her, because pleasing her was hard to impossible. You did not always have a perfectly clean room. You didn't get straight A's. You didn't get dinner done in time for her when she staggered in from work. You did not do what she wanted you to do in life? You made your own decisions?

I always like to hear how we are "bad daughters." What is a good daughter?

I don't think I was a bad daughter. I was a child who had some disabilities and got upset when called bad names and defiant when told I was bad and selfish, which wasn't even true. She was the adult. I was the kid. The dynamic continued in adulthood though and I feel my mother always tried to sabatage me in our tiny family and just because I did not always obey her wishes, I do not feel that made me a bad daughter. Am I on the right track?

 

[Copabanana]

You did not always have a perfectly clean room. You didn't get dinner done in time for her when she staggered in from work. You did not do what she wanted you to do in life? You made your own decisions?

Yes, SWOT. And much later, when I faced she had not protected me from abuse, I got mad. And when she hurt me, I left. For years and years. And when she hurt me more, I left again. Over and over again. But in the end, I only loved her.

 

[blackgnat]

My Difficult Child also threatened suicide a LOT. Even half-heartedly attempted it at times, apparently.

It USED to send me into a tailspin. Then when I learned it was manipulation I would either tell him, "Okay, then I'm calling an ambulance, because I'm not equipped to deal with this" (He didn't like that response) or "Well, I really hope you don't do that, but if you want to, I can't stop you". (He didn't like that one, either).

I'm so sorry you are going through this-it's a hellish place to be in. It's going to take time to get out of it, because we have conditioned both ourselves and our DCs to be everything to them and if we can't/don't fix it, then the sky will fall.

 

[momofthreeboys]

Oh. I also say: I love you too much to watch you self destruct. I love you too much to watch you self destruct, and I refuse to help you do it.

Wow, I've been on this site for about 10 minutes and I must say, just knowing that others are thinking and going through what I am going through has lifted a 100 pounds off of my heart...
I thought I was the only person in the world who understood my feelings; I feel as though maybe there is hope after all.

 

[Tanya M]

@momofthreeboys , welcome to the site. Yes, there are many of us here that know how hard it is to have a Difficult Child (difficult child).

You will find lots of support here. We all have stories to share. If you ever feel like sharing we are here to listen.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But in the end, I only loved her.

Good, Copa.

Now you know how loving and forgiving and accepting are done. Begin here, where you are in this moment. Allow yourself joy. You are the one who decides how you will see.

Here is a dream I had last night.

A sun-filled room. My mother is there, and I come there, for her. For her, and for me, I enter the sun-filled room. My mother is so pleased to see me. She is a strong, clear-eyed version of herself, joy at the heart of her. She comments on my beauty, on the length and texture and color of my hair. It is waist length in the dream as it is now, in my real life.
My mother takes something beautiful out of a white drawer in the sun-filled room.
It is my hair. Shining in the sun, catching the light, beautifully red ~ the exact shade of strawberry blond edging toward red that my hair is and was, though it is changing now, with white in it. She compares that head of hair to the one actually growing from my head. The one she has kept, for all these years, in the white drawer in the sun-filled room is longer. My mother says: "Do you see? It was longer, last time."

And there is truth between us.

And it is good.

And the room is so bright, Copa. So brilliantly filled with light.

And that was my dream, last night.

So now I am going to review my posts on the Family of Origins thread. I am probably going to post more horrible things about my mother, and about myself.

Because I will have it, Copa. I will know all of it for what it is and reclaim myself.

That is what your mother would want for you, Copa.

Just as that is what you want for your son.

There was something timeless and very real about the dream, Copa.

You know how some dreams fade when we awaken? This one is not fading.

It is one of those dreams that tells us the true things we need to know.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have felt that I am being punished for being a Bad daughter, a Bad mother.

I don't know that I felt punished so much as inept. I felt stupid somehow, not to have known and prevented my childrens' suffering. I had been so careful, so responsibly a good mother. I wondered whether I had done terrible things to them and blocked it out. That is why I kept going back and back into therapy, even after that first therapist.

I had to know.

I wondered if I were evil; if my mother had been correct in her assessment; if that is why she did what she did. Or maybe, I had been a really bad mom and was too ??? to see it?

There were questions, questions like that everywhere and not an answer and not a friend and not a person in sight but D H. And I was too ashamed, at first, to tell D H what was happening to me.

I did not tell him. Not for years and years.

A fraud, right to the core of me; someone whose mother regretted the birth and the child, both. Especially after what happened with that first therapist. I had gone there already broken and broken. My child was in such danger. Even to think back on it ~ man, the intensity of emotion, everything falling apart, right through my fingers, like sand.

So then, he broke whatever was left of me, and I had nothing at all.

Turns out I didn't need any of that stuff I thought I knew. And here I am today, determined to have the rest of it, once and for all. Note to self: Kick that therapist in the pants. Turns out he was very wrong to do what he did.

But that did not stop me, did not end me, either.

No longer a question of legitimacy. I am here. Like Maya, I am here, on purpose.

Now, where was I going with this, Copa?

I went back and read the remainder of the threads. I must be done with this post.

:O)

Wishing you vision and strength and joy and kindness to yourself today, Copa. That is where you will find these same things to give to your son. In your own heart; in how you see yourself and in who you know yourself to be.

Heh.

I knew I wasn't quite done.

That was a pretty good ending.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Hmmmmm...Cedar, you are kind and maybe your mother is different than mine. I have nightmares about my mother and I'm always a little girl in those dreams and she is always screaming at me, her hair wild, her pedal pushers (which are now called carpis) showing her legs which, like our entire family's, are heavy, even though we aren't. I wake up in a sweat and scared although I don't remember details.

I believe my mother wanted the worst for me, wanted Golden Child to excel in all areas of life and secretly was sad that she left the world, at least this time around, without him having or ever having had a SO. She must have known my sister was in an unhappy marriage and that could not have made her happy either. I think she would have wanted me to be browbeaten, alone, and suffering. I know that sounds harsh, but the ending to her life showed me the logical truth...her lack of love and her contempt.

I don't know what being a bad daughter means. I tried, just like with my sister, over and over again to get along with her, but she only liked me when my world was going right. She could not handle any adversity or mental illness or sadness. And when I told her I was getting divorced her first words were, "Don't count on ME for anything." Well, duh, I knew that. I had just called to tell her. She WAS supposed to be my mother. Then later in the same conversation she asked, meekly, "Are you going to drop Golden Child?" See, I had been close to him, but I grew more and more resentful that E. was only nice to me if I was hanging out with Golden Child. And when I said, "I have other priorities now. I don't know what I'll have time to do" that was when she first started getting extraordinarily frosty (not that s he was ever warm and loving to me or my kids).

Cedar, Copa, I think we are GREAT mothers. We love and care for our kids. The conversation in the paragraph above would NEVER have happened to our kids. Maybe, because of our bad experiences with mothers, we made mistakes because we didn't know how to be a mother by example, but we still did not abuse our kids. And you know what? Even if we had been model daughters, these women were looking for flaws in us so it wouldn't have made any difference. We'd still have been labeled "black sheep."

How can you be a good daughter to a critical, hostile mother who is never happy no matter what you do unless it is EXACTLY what SHE wants. Should we have done what they wanted? Can you imagine how horrible our lives and new families would have been?

We are good mothers (I know I think I am and that my kids think so) and I don't know how I could have been a good daughter to the kind of woman I had for a mother who had a real grudge against me that started at birth. We did the best we could do with what we were dealing with.

We are survivors. I feeling very good about myself right now...setbacks regarding my FOO never last as long as they once did because I know that they don't have a clue who I am. So why should I care? You are both good people.

 

[Copabanana]

She could not handle any adversity or mental illness or sadness.

SWOT, when you read my posts do you see this: that I felt my son's illness or sadness to reflect on me...not because I do not love him but because I was missing something IN ME?

We know this is wrong, and we wish I was stronger and more whole. But there is more.

Could it not be, SWOT, that our mothers loved us but could not bear the idea that it was their fault...that they had harmed us...and it was that horrible idea that they were rejecting...not us?

My Mother could never tell me to my face that she was sorry. But she was.

I knew at the end that she loved me the best she could. It was not everything I needed...but at the end...it was enough.

What I know now, is that it was not my fault that she could not love me better than she did.

I needed attention, and protection, and to be listened to and considered. And was not.

And I know that she tried to blame me...because I needed what she could not give....She did this because of her terrible and deserved sense of guilt.

And at the end, I wished she had not suffered as she had. I loved her. And she loved me. And that was enough.

But it was wrong of me to take responsibility for that which was not my fault, not my responsibility. And this I did. And this was wrong, I know.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, in my mother's case, no, I don't think she felt guilty at all. I don't believe she thought anything was wrong with me other than I was "bad." And she only wanted to deal with good. She was horrible in emergencies and very non-nurturing, at least to me. I think she was far more worried about my brother who had Crohns Disease. She worried about HIM all the time. Now I'm not saying she had no reason to be worried. He was terribly sick. What she didn't get, once we were older, and he was doing better, was that I was sick too and struggling. She blamed me for it. She did not blame him, although perhaps he inherited from her side of the family that could have had a history of it...we don't know. My grandma DID have a bleeding peptic ulcer. She ran to my brother's side every time he was hospitalized which is normal. What is not normal is that when I had a form of early breast cancer and a mastectomy she didn't visit me once. I do think she called but I'm sure she didn't lose any sleep over it.It was almost the last time she ever called me. That was in 1996 and she lived at least another ten years.

Copa, she did not want me in her life. My mother developed a brain tumor in her late 60's and told the entire family not to tell me. She didn't want me there. She even told my dad and he kept her confidence, as he should have, but the point is, she didn't like HIM either and was horrible to him during their marriage (he was no peach, but she was ...I know see...the family dictator.

I think my mother liked my brother because he would never call her in on anything in a tough way and they pampered each other. She also had this grandiose feeling that he was absolutely brilliant...she felt this way about her brother too. As for my sister, she had a different take on our mother and she wasn't the scapegoat...I suspect, but can't prove, that it was her two girls that my mother liked the most and that. Like the dysfunctional person she was, she had a GoldenChild there too. And I heard about her during the days I called her, even though it was a useless cause.She tended to focus on her GoldenGrandchild while I yawned and paid little attention. She said almost nothing about the boy in the family except once saying she didn't feel as close to him, but that's it. Never once did she ask about MY kids and expressed disbelief and like I was lying to her when I told that I had told her many times that Bart had been in the gifted class at school and had a very high IQ. "No, you didn't tell me that!" Gaslighting (yawn).

A mother who loves you does not leave you out of her weill. Lately I am tempted to read that will just to see if she put down some nasty comment like Joan Crawford did when she disinherited Christina and Chris. "For reasons best known to her, I am leaving my daughter nothing." I found out I can pay a small fee and get a copy of the will. As I am trying to know the truth about my REAL FOO and not the fakes they were, this may help me see even her a bit more clearly.

Copa, a parent disinherits you only because of hate and contempt. It is an act that the parent knows will live with you for life because of t he abandonment. I don't believe she had much money and even if she had, I have lived my whole life without money and that really wasn't the issue and isn't now. I know my sister's money couldn't have been much as she doesn't have it anymore. At any rate, Copa, if your money did leave you something, she probably died love you.

But if your parent disowns you that is an act of disdain and hate. Bet my sibs have tried to get my dad to do the same. Hahahahaha. Good luck. And this time I'll fight bro if he tries to short me. I know the passing of our father, the only person who really loved me in the family, will be the 100% e3nd of my contact with either of my two strangers who shared the same womb and obviously nothing else.

Copa, no, I think my mother really hated me.

Copa, maybe your mother did leave you something, which Does show a degree of "I care." I hope so even if she had very little. It means she did love you. You were her daughter in her heart.

My mother is not and never really was a mother to me. I have already decided in my obit to put down my father and grandmother's names (and various fringe relatives) and leave out everyone except except for the family I made. (Morbid topic I know...lol). Unusual, but I'm unusual and I'm sure she left me out of her obit as my uncle, her brother did. I feel nothing for her except that she was mean and abusive to me and lied about me AND my father's family...but that's another story.

So the short answer is NO...lol! Knowing she is in an other place, not on earth, and probably learning many lessons and changing her opinions, as I feel we do when we pass on, makes me anxious to see what she is like now when I also pass on. But I do not miss her on earth. I have not once visited her grave. The only thing it would do to me is cause a setback and painful meltdown that would leave me blubbering and incoherent. She was a very horrible person to me (and my father) even if she treated some other people ok, which I believe she did.

 

[Copabanana]

Hi SWOT: Thank you for your heartfelt and generous reply. I will try to reply to the parts to which I believe I have something to say.

What she didn't get, once we were older, and he was doing better, was that I was sick too and struggling. She blamed me for it

.

A woman I knew had a sister with cystic fibrosis. Her life and those of her healthy siblings had been scarred by their parents' preoccupation with the ill child, at the expense of the others. They grew up with the sense that their only importance if they had any at all was to support their parents and the ill child. Her position in her FOO came to distort her perception of life itself.

In your family, it seems somehow different. Almost as if your mother was acting not from the strong need and pull towards your brother, but more for herself. I find myself wondering this: Is there a way that you were somehow like your mother? In appearance. In vulnerabilities. In interests. And that your mother focused upon you in a negative way because of your resemblance to her?

As I type this, I am wondering about my own family.

My Mother had a sister, Rose, 9 years older than she. If she still lived she would have been 100 this year.

For reasons I do not know my grandfather came to hate her. I believe he had always hated her. I will never know why. I loved my grandfather. My mother adored him and he adored my mother.

What is there to say? I am forced to accept that there was a pathology in my family that I do not feel strong enough to try to understand.

What it was about my grandfather and my aunt, I cannot go there. Did my Aunt resemble my grandfather in some way? Was he rejecting part of himself? Did some abuse happen, and my grandfather feel the need to scapegoat her?

If I look at your family, at your mother, as you described her, I think in terms of extreme psychopathology. With my grandfather? There is nothing in me or my memory that is ready to go there. In fact, I will say, I never will.

What kind of Mother would reject her child in this way? I cannot conceive of it.

But then, if I think about it, my sister could feel this about me.

My sister, I believe, feels I have let her down in every moment in her adult life that she needed me. On my part is this evil? Survival? Self-righteousness? A valid and understandable choice? I do not know.

when I had a form of early breast cancer and a mastectomy she didn't visit me once.

My sister had breast cancer in the couple of years before my mother died. By that time she had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with us. I neither tried to call her nor thought I should.

These things are muddy and murky sometimes. Am I avoiding responsible by feeling such?

There are always two sides to something. That is why we are doing such brave, brave work here. We try to find a way forward with our adult children, not for them. We try to find the right way to go, but seldom fall into,"I am right.You are wrong.

It was almost the last time she ever called me. That was in 1996 and she lived at least another ten years.

This is abuse, I feel. But then by coming down hard on your mother, I have to face the reality of my own. My Mother stole our inheritance. I knew that 33 years ago. Only in the last week did I find my grandpa's will in my mother's things. The last piece of things. The proof. I knew that will existed but there it was in black and white. His assets, in thirds, to my mother, my sister and I.

I understand why she did it. But she knew all the time that she was doing something at least morally wrong.

She too, did not call me for a decade at least, preferring to not expose herself to my anger. I have taken responsibility for decades for our separation in those years...because I did not call or see her. But she was the mother, SWOT.

I know, SWOT, that I am a person that takes responsibility for things. I think this has always been part of me. Like most things, it has its good and bad aspect.

I ask myself, sometimes, where did this profound love for my mother come from, that emerged in me as she was dying, and after she died? How does this love for her make sense, with all that passed between us and that which did not? I do not know the sense of this, SWOT, but I love my Mother, and I found I did, always. My sister, I do not know. I really do not know.

a parent disinherits you only because of hate and contempt. It is an act that the parent knows will live with you for life because of t he abandonment.

This a painful thought, SWOT. I hate to think of my grandfather choosing to reject his adult child, my Aunt, which he did. I know this to be true, beyond doubt.

What does that mean, that love and responsibility in my family of origin, involved such abandonment, betrayal and cruelty. What my mother did was as cruel and wrong.

Her daughters needed the help that that money would have provided.

She had decided she needed it more. And in her way of thinking, she was safeguarding the money to become ours when she no longer needed it, upon her death. I truly understand her point of view. Had she discussed it with me, I would have done the right thing by her. But she did not.

I never got the help of a parent to establish myself in the world. I did okay. But that I did not have a mother that had the heart to help me caused me pain. Worse still, my mother acted to destroy her family by putting her needs, her security, he interests before ours.

I suffer more for her than I do for myself. How she hurt herself, SWOT. And there was nothing that I could do to help her, to make it alright. Until the end.

So much pain, SWOT. So much pain.

 

[BusynMember]

Not so much anymore here, Copa. Just a shock at the new understanding that my ex-siblings (Thing 1 and Thing 2, I will call them) are every bit as disturbed by our FOO as I was, and ended up in less happy situations. I am looking at them through new eyes. I admired my brother once and thought he understood. I thought my sister had actually done well with all the dysfunction but now I feel she was hit the worst and had the least insight into what was going on.

My mother could effectively tell stories with her slant that made one look bad. I am a writer, but she was much better at storytelling then I ever was. She spent years telling me stories about how horrible my father's family was and ridiculed my father's brother for telling on us to my father (his brother) that we had not greeted him at a family holiday. You know what? We were never taught manners and we SHOULD have said "hello" to him. She also told me that my father's father demeaned my uncle's girlfriend, calling her ugly and that uncle was so horrified by the putdown that he never married her.

Now it's true he never married, but how the hello do I know she told the truth about my father's brother and his girlfriend, and why on earth did I take her mean words at face value? I don't know the truth behind that story, except that it makes my father's father sound like a monster and my uncle look like a whipped puppy. Which was how she wanted them to look.

She used to say horrible things about my dad's family all the time, but the very few tiimes I saw them, they were nice to me. So why did I believe her? Why does anyone believe what she says, second-hand? I now no longer believe ANYTHING she has ever told me unless I was there. I was Scapegoat One. Father was Scapegoat Two. And Thing 1 and Thing 2 totally bought her side of the story. Doubt that even asked my father about it.

Copa, my mother did NOT hurt herself. She was Queen of Hearts and she took care of HER. If she was nice to somebody it was because SHE wanted to be and it somehow made her feel good. If she was mean to somebody, same thing. I don't hurt for her because she didn't suffer. WE ALL THREE DID...as all three of us had serious enough issues to seek help, although Thing 2 was a bit late with it...her life is horrible. That says it all. If all three of your children need therapy and fight amongst themselves, you had a bad upbringing. I got away early, at least emotionally, thank God. Even as I called Mother to try to made amends in this lifetime, I knew...in the back of my mind I knew...I just didn't know her wicked plan. I suspected it though, but it hurt when it happened.

So I do not and never did hurt for my mother. Her life wasn't so hard. If she had d spent all her money, I wouldn't feel she targeted me and it would leave me with a better feeling about how2 she felt about me. I could live with that as I don't care about her stupid (my most hated word) money. But she did give money to my sister and brother and maybe the grandkids too. I will see once I access her will. She not only cut me out of her life, but my children as well.

I hurt for the child inside of me sometimes. I don't hurt for her. I feel bad for my father who is still the family villian to Thing 1 and 2...the bad guy who "abused" E. She didn't do it. He did. I am just grateful that, in spite of the hurt at her grave slap, we WERE NOT close and she didn't have anything to do with my kids. I can just see her playing divide and conquer as she did with Thing 2's kids.

We are a very happy family when holidays come. Nobody fights. Everyone gets along. I hear from Bart, even though he is phobically afraid to drive far to Chicago, where we usually celebrate. Things turned out for the best. I just am very interested in psychology and exploring my own FOO is extremely interesting. I'm sure I will eventually run out of things to learn about them...they are a cliche dysfunctional family (I have started reading about other stories about dysfunctional families). Until then, it is a very interesting ride and I'm so glad I'm lightyears ahead of so many others. I just wish it had not taken me so long. It is especially comforting and interesting to learn that SO MANY siblings from these crazy families have cut one off or, if a larger clan, they form "sides." Part of that is our dysfunctional family never taught us to love one another. We were not told to be close or encouraged to do activities together. Just like we were never taught manners.

Copa, I am so sorry that your heart hurts for the love your have for your mother. It was a long time before all love died for mine. Nobody wants to believe his/her mother despised her. And, Copa, it makes me feel better to commit the truth to writing. So it's good for me to do so. I hope writing things down and sharing with understanding people helps you as well.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Ack! Now it's happy Hour and I have to go be with D H and I can't go through everything you've both written the way I want to!

Roar!!!!

Tomorrow.

I will so be posting on this thread tomorrow.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Oh, Cedar, HAVE A BLAST! I so look forward to your posts.

Be naughty !

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have nightmares about my mother and I'm always a little girl in those dreams and she is always screaming at me, her hair wild, her pedal pushers (which are now called carpis) showing her legs which, like our entire family's, are heavy, even though we aren't. I wake up in a sweat and scared although I don't remember details.

Gah. That made my stomach tighten up just to read it. Something about the heavy legs.

I am serious.

I think she would have wanted me to be browbeaten, alone, and suffering. I know that sounds harsh, but the ending to her life showed me the logical truth...her lack of love and her contempt.

That is how my mom is too, SWOT. She was just awful about my father immediately after he was dead. She did not grieve my father, did not filter her life through what the loss of her husband meant. She would say things like, "It's all mine. The house, the stuff, the stories ~ the how the family will see itself going into the future." They don't see the way we do, SWOT. They don't have the capacity. That is how they could do what they did to their own children. We were / are not real to them. D H told me for years and years that my own mother was jealous of who I was and what I had, and that she hated him because he wasn't afraid of her and so, could not be dominated by her and so, could keep me safe from her, SWOT.

And I didn't believe him but he was very right. And I always wonder how my D H could have stayed with me, given what he knew. About who I am really, about what really happened, to me. He says I am the only one who sees the ugly, and that it isn't real; it's my internal mother. That is what I have been figuring out on the other thread, SWOT. That sense of ugly? That is our internal mother. They are in there punching us in the nose and kicking us in the pants every day to this very day, SWOT. But I have a solution for that and I put it on the Watercooler thread. I thought you were wanting not to talk about FOO issues anymore, so I have been working like a fiend over there but not posting. Some of the things I have come up with are quite valuable. Like: resentment and how to see and recognize and heal it; like how to recreate my internal mother and sisters.

Like how to save our own lives, SWOT.

We never have to listen to that uglified internal mother we plugged in to that place where we need our mothers, again.

We need our mothers. This is true. Everyone needs a mother, a wise person who loves us and for whom we cannot do wrong. We need our sisters and brothers, too.

I have our backs on that one, too.

Briefly: Choose another. Make a compilation of mothers you feel a response to and create your own. Maya Angelou is mine. She has like, a million books filled with mother. She was willingly Oprah's mother figure; she understood the need of a mother because she did not have one, either. So, she rewrote her mother and her life and the next thing she knew, she was Maya Angelou.

Now you don't have to go to the Watercooler thread.

Sisters: Oprah and Anne Lamott. Know who I am going to pattern my brother on? Jabber.
I think I will have Lil for a sister, too. She is very strong. I loved that last post she did, about being disgusted with her child.

Now, that's a mother.

You read all the time, SWOT.

Find your people.

I believe my mother wanted the worst for me

I believe she did, too. What I don't get is why. I never get what the win is. I have seen my mother play some pretty complex games for no benefit I can see. Or, what was in it for that therapist? I was freaking paying him, and he still couldn't maintain himself. Maybe we are just such juicy victims SWOT that they cannot resist.

Instead of being bad, I mean.

Maybe, we are Juicy, and irresistable.

Juicy Lucy, like the hamburger shop.

I think she would have wanted me to be browbeaten, alone, and suffering. I know that sounds harsh, but the ending to her life showed me the logical truth...her lack of love and her contempt.

I keep going back to this. Why would someone see their own little girl in this way? Is it true, do you think, that they think we are them and that in hating us, they are hating themselves? Or could it be that they don't feel they deserve us? So, like the vampire child in the Anne Rice stories, they destroy every beautiful, expensive porcelain doll?

There is something here ~ something that will lead to compassion. I can feel it. Something about the way the dolls' faces are painted, something about human.

I sound a little like a dork.

I get that. As one of my lady friends says? "You do have that geek thing going on, Cedar."

:O)

And when I told her I was getting divorced her first words were, "Don't count on ME for anything."

Very like my own mom. I'm sorry that happened to you too, SWOT. I think they wanted us to be scared/horror. Here is the truth: They must have been amazed we survived it, every time and whatever it was, and that we came through with flying colors.



needlepoint

"I have other priorities now. I don't know what I'll have time to do" that was when she first started getting extraordinarily frosty

D H would say: It was that scent of independence you were giving off that froze her solid on the spot.

I know! I could never believe him, either. But you know what? Now that I am determined to get to the bottom of this once and for all? I am finding he was absolutely right. Now, how could he know that about me when I cannot see it?

Good thing D H thinks I'm cute. Otherwise, knowing what he knows? He could destroy me too, any time he wanted.

Just like she did.



needlepoint

Grrrr....

Maybe, because of our bad experiences with mothers, we made mistakes because we didn't know how to be a mother by example, but we still did not abuse our kids

I agree with this very much. Every night ~ every night ~ the last thing I would think about was how the day had gone. Had I lost my temper inappropriately (D H mom would run around biting her own hand when her kids were little and they upset her. Another thing she would do is to use a wooden spoon to spank them when that was what she felt they needed. I did those things, too. Not being legitimately Italian, I did not say, "Madonne, madonne."

:O)

D H mom taught me how to love and celebrate and hold my babies. She loved to watch me nurse them, and she loved to hold them and ask them what was up.

So cool.

I have been very fortunate, that D H mom loved me, too.

She and D H father went to that first treatment center, to see daughter. My parents did not, of course. They came to see me in the hospital too, both times I gave birth.

My mother did not, of course. Neither did my father.

That was pretty freaking embarrassing. I have been embarrassed about things like that in front of D H parents since the beginning. I wonder what they thought, and I feel so badly for myself about these things.

Maya Angelou would at least have written me a book.



Actually, this is me putting distance between what I once believed and what is true. And in addition to that needlepoint "F you, mom" in that little saddlebag on the back, there is a beautifully done room with a fireplace where we all meet and burn those letters we've written. It looks like an English club house. Leaded glass in the beautiful windows and all the butlers look like Lurch. "You rang?"

How can you be a good daughter to a critical, hostile mother who is never happy no matter what you do unless it is EXACTLY what SHE wants.

D H says that what my mother wants is me, dead. She also wants her other children, dead. She wants to be dead, herself.

I want to live.

That is the difference.

We are good mothers (I know I think I am and that my kids think so)

So, I don't know how good a mother I was, after all. But I do know I get such a charge out of my kids and their babies and dogs and all their stuff like you do too, SWOT.

We are alive.

Our children are alive to us. And we get to talk to them and about them and about their Buddha babies and their musical appliances.

How cool is that?

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

OMG, Cedar

D H told me for years and years that my own mother was jealous of who I was and what I had, and that she hated him because he wasn't afraid of her and so, could not be dominated by her and so, could keep me safe from her, SWOT.

My mom wasn't jealous of me. She believed I was bad to the bone and the longer she lived the more she thought so. BUT...what shocks me here is that my mother hated my husband too. She did not come to our wedding, although I didn't care or even want her there. Why did she hate a man she didn't know? Well, she had called Bart one day to try to get his social security number from him (in secret of course). I think I told you the story of how my grandmother wanted to give money from her estate to my biological son but not my two adopted kids and I told her I would not be a party to that so she got my mom to do it. Apparently it cost E. some money to do this...taxes whatever. So she wanted to transfer this to Bart, but we wouldn't give her his SSN so that she could do this divisive and evil act. So she called sixteen year old Bart and he said he didn't know his SSN, which was true.

Bart came downstairs, looking puzzled, and said, "Hey,l Grandma called me to ask for my SSN and I didn't have it so she called me a liar." He was puzzled because we never called names. Nobody called him "liar." Plus he didn't even know her. I was really fu rious that The Disappearing Mother called my son, a grandchild she totally ignored most of his life, and told my husband to call her and please ask her to never call Bart again. Was I wrong? Hey, by then I had learned to protect myself from E. and I knew my husband would take up for me. He did. To the end of her days, she vilified him. Her only conversation with him ever was this one and it must have killed her that he would protect us from her. So she hated him. And that's why. How dare anybody take up for me and my son against her!!! He had no right to talk to her that way, blah, blah, blah.

Like she had a right to call my son and call him a liar. Such double standards!

Ok, now going to finish reading your post. I am sorry you went through the same thing as I did.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Hey,l Grandma called me to ask for my SSN and I didn't have it so she called me a liar."

I know. My mom hurt my children like that, too. Getting them to question who they are, really. It's an art form. A really ugly thing. For the hurt to my children, I hate my mother and my sister. When I am better? I will hate her for what she did to me.

Lurch: "You rang?" "Yes I did, Lurch. You have a job to do. Could you kindly find every freaking remnant of my mother and unplug it. I will be plugging in other mother and sister and brother characteristics, soon. For now? Leave those places empty. That is sacred space."

So, there must be a beautiful chapel in that saddlebag of mine, too.

So beautiful, that place where we mourn the loss of sacred things. The thing that is lost? Is that we need to keep believing in our mothers or our families of origin. It is a sadness, to lose them, to leave them behind.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I keep going back to this. Why would someone see their own little girl in this way? Is it true, do you think, that they think we are them and that in hating us, they are hating themselves? Or could it be that they don't feel they deserve us? So, like the vampire child in the Anne Rice stories, they destroy every beautiful, expensive porcelain doll?

Well, as always, your post has brought up some interesting reasons why E. probably hated me. One is that she could never dominate me or get me to do what she wanted. She listened to her mother, my grandmother, no matter what, although she was mean to her sometimes too. But she listened to her wishes. Including the one about dividing the money her mother left ONE of my children. But I don't play that way and we sat Bart down and he didn't care and still doesn't care. He has a sense of fairness and never once brought it up as an injustice to him.

I look a lot like E. I don't want to, but I don't have a choice. That could be part of it. The person she hated the most (herself) maybe she saw her in me. I'm not sure one way or the other.

But I definitely challenged her on many levels and you don't do that to E. or she'll eat you up alive.

My poor father when I think about it. No wonder he was never home. I was never home either.

Make no mistake about it. E. hated me. The evidence is clear.

Oh, yeah. For a while I didn't want to talk about FOO, but then I asked myself if it helped me to discuss it. IT DOES! Why should I stop what helps me because Thing 1 and 2 may read my view for once. They don't have to. If they do, I don't care. They are now strangers to me, as trite as neighbors I used to know.

I do this for me...for us...so we can understand and heal together. It is not about them. I don't go trying to find about their thoughts. If they want to know mine, feel free.