Male who beat difficult child released to treatment facility...

[BackintheSaddle]

Oh, Cedar...you have been such a help to me that I wanted to at least reach out and let you know I feel for you...I'm so sorry this happened to your daughter, it's something that impacts every person in your family differently...try and be patient with husband...you have been telling me the same thing this week...he wants to protect everyone and doesn't know how else (maybe) to deal with the same feelings you're probably feeling...the husband's seem to always be tougher, harder on the difficult children and in my case, that's caused a lot of issues between us as I've shared with you all...but he's just trying to cope with it all in his own way too like you are...take care of yourself through all this, take walks, try and find that place within you that you've worked so hard to nuture...it's there, you're so strong, you will get through this...

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I also think it is human nature to try to connect
THIS to THAT, especially when THAT is so
unimaginably emotionally charged, but none of
these connections we try to make are that simple, and they all CAN'T lead back to us.

We just try to MAKE them lead back to us, because it is the only place we know to put all of our pain and fear.

Ultimately, as you noted Alby, if I am to blame, then I am in control, and this won't happen, again.

We are not given to know the other path.

This was comforting, Echo. I don't know that the other path would have been perfect.

But given what I know now...oh, given what happened!

our guilt and grief...they are conjured from air, from stories you have told yourself to make sense of all this awfulness. Because if it is your fault, then youcould have prevented it, then you have some
control, maybe you can prevent it next time.

You are very wise, Echolette.

For the most part, I am getting it that difficult child kids, or addicted people of any age, are going to do what they do. They get hurt, they hurt others.

I can't BE angry at an injured difficult child or a broken man who wanted what he destroyed with all his heart.

If something so terrible happened to gfg32, guilt
would be the first thing I'd feel...and most likely
blaming husband because he has always been tougher
toward gfg32. And, it would have been misplaced

I've been thinking so much about guilt, Strength. How much guilt there has been over the years, how much drama, how much anger.

How much helplessness.

We did talk, here on the site, about the stress dealing with these kinds of issues puts on our marriages, didn't we? Intellectually, I get it that husband was right in sticking to his guns in so many ways.

Maybe, instead of blaming husband, I should feel gratitude to husband for protecting me, for steering my life in this other, beautiful direction it has taken....

Maybe that is where this will end for me, Strength. Maybe, I am working toward acknowledging that what I posted about husband protecting me, protecting us, is true.

It must be a hard thing, to be the husband when the mother is in such pain. When you know that no matter which way you jump, the one constant is going to be pain.

Maybe that is where my husband gets the strength to be so determined about what is going to happen next around here relative to the kids.

He already knows the other way isn't going to be any better.

But, the other stuff you are piling on yourself and husband....no, you did not get to the decision quickly. It was NEVER, difficult child ticked me off...not taking her to FL. It was much more than that.

This is true, Strength. The other piece for husband had to do with this house being the last place of refuge, the one place difficult child chaos and pain have never ruined for us.
It is a safe refuge, the one place we can go where no one knows about our kids. The one place that doesn't feel too dark, too weighted down with sadness, yet.

Is the correctional system beholden to let your difficult child know the abuser's whereabouts?

Yes, Strength. Because of the severity of the beating, and because it occurred on sovereign territory, the FBI is involved.
Even they did not know, had not been notified.

You have been hijacked by the old and familiar 'shame' that states that you have the irrational yet powerful ability to control what happens to your loved ones

that part of you that has always felt responsible for the kids, for your siblings, for the feelings of all of those whom you've loved..

When you can't control what happens to others, when you can't protect them, then you can experience guilt...........guilt requires punishment Cedar, PUNISHMENT.

It's a perpetual cycle of guilt and self punishment.

You punish yourself by eliminating joy, or laughter, fulfillment, abundance, prosperity

This is your daughter's destiny, you are a bit player, she and the ex have been the main players.

Someone else makes a choice, they may suffer in that choice, but no one will suffer like you Cedar...........that terrible guilt will bring you down that road every single time.

...you are a victim of your own self cruelty............you cannot distance yourself from yourself.

THAT is the reason, in my humble opinion, that this came up now.............for you to see

This guilt and this fear are not real as you said. This is an old pathway. Create a new one with kindness for yourself. With compassion for yourself. With love for yourself. With tender, warm, nurturing, generous care for YOU. That will change everything.

am pleading with you here to throw that guilt overboard........it is old stuff, it is not real, it is what you were taught to believe, by a wounded and cruel mother who needed you to take on all the responsibilities for the life she created and felt stuck in. Stop it now.

Recovering.... Holy cow, Recovering. I think these observations are true.

These are things to savor. I don't think I ever connected guilt and punishment and childhood patterns of abuse and guilt and punishing myself ~ maybe in some magical way protecting us from the chaotic unpredictable patterns of the abuser?

Recovering, you are astounding.

I feel blessed beyond fortune to have seen what you see, Recovering.

But you know...you are right.

I will come back to this post again and again.

This is amazing stuff.

Thank you, Recovering.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I also understand the resentment and even anger
toward your husband. Tony and I have so much anger
towards each other over Cory. I have no idea when,if ever, that will change.

Janet, when I first responded to Strength and Echo and Recovering this morning, it turned out my post was too many words (!) so I had to trim it way back before I could post it. As I was responding though, I began remembering the gorier details of the times we have helped the kids. That whatever we have done for the kids, however many times...somehow, things happen that could never be predicted. Weird things, things that you cannot believe even happened.

Maybe because the kids are difficult child kids?

I don't know, Janet. But all at once, I started to see husband's determination not to be put in that position in his own home ever again in a different way. Maybe Janet, our husbands are protecting us in spite of ourselves. It probably would have been easier for them to just up and leave...but they didn't. It could be that our husbands are standing their ground and protecting their wives. We can't even see it though. The only thing we can see clearly is that our kids are in trouble or in danger.

I am thinking about that.

Whenever husband gets me away from the kids for awhile, I do start to feel better. More like a person.

And now that I think about it?

He's taken me away from the kids alot.

I only began thinking this way this morning, so it's all pretty new to me. But I know you your husband have moved away from the kids. You have your own place to be and create a home of your own now, without anyone there but yourselves and those guests you choose.

I think that, like it is for me and my husband, your and Tony's relationship will begin taking on its own special feeling, again. I see that all around me down here, where no one has their kids with them, now that I think about it.

You just start having fun together doing the most mundane things....

Cedar

Oh, brother. I wonder whether I will have to admit this new insight to husband? If you see it that way (and add my crazy family :O) husband has behaved extraordinarily. All by himself, taking flak from every side.

Well, huh.

o you work/volunteer in an art gallery? Is it relaxing? Are you an art collector ?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

While wallowing in guilt and regret does nothing
good to anyone, denying those feelings,
natural consequences of making choices that turn
out to cause harm, is robbing something of our ownhumanity and making us hard.

This is true, SuZir. Consequences are implicit in our choices. And we do need to own up to the part we play in the outcome of our children's stories.

You make a valid point.

This is the basis of the conflict I feel at this point, as we are again (imminently) presented with that same choice.

Last night, difficult child told us she and granddaughter will be going to stay with the ex-husband and their sons. In my heart, I think two ways about this. If she does that, she may be able to pull her life together. She did so with him, once before. I also know the exDH is hoping and expecting that difficult child is coming back for him, eventually to marry, again. At the same time, he is angry, conflicted, and judgmental about what happened. (Not the beating. The drugs, the homelessness, the things his sons saw while she had custody.)

Maybe the two of them will work things out. (Which is what one would expect from adults.)

Which is what we thought when difficult child daughter put her life together with the father of her 14 year old.

And you know how that worked out.

But trying to rationalize that guilt away may harm us deep into our souls.

True. Rationalize the guilt away.... I think that when a child has been a child too long ~ well into their thirties, say ~ a kind of maturation that should occur around that time does not happen for the child. It is almost absurdly ridiculous to think about seventy and eighty year old parents taking care of fifty and sixty year old "kids". Often, those kids will have children and grandchildren of their own.

Yet, it happens.

The relationship between adults who have not met the challenges of adulthood successfully and their parents is one of a love comprised more of nostalgia and a sort of formless, unnamed regret topped off by guilt over where the parent went wrong than the kind of love I see for their children in successful families. For the child, the parental relationship seems to become one of trying to salvage the self-respect that should have been earned out in the world through dominating the parents to make their continuing support of, and focus on, him, less humiliating.

To take away the sting of the wasted life, of the wasted opportunities, the difficult child hates and resents the parents who did not, when all else failed, deconstruct the nest.

Maybe you did not read that thread, SuZir. There is a mated pair of eagles here, where I live. Everyone watches for them to return each year. We watch the eaglets, and we know and talk about it the nest is empty again. (It's a small, isolated community.) One year, so I was told, the eaglets seemed not to want to leave the nest. The parents deconstructed it from under them.

It was time.

I agree that turning away from a very young difficult child is different. I think every parent here on Parent Emeritus has done all the right things so many times. Somewhere in that mix, that vital time of maturation passes, and the relationship becomes almost (or outright) toxic.

How much retirement income do you sacrifice? Do you just keep working, though your adult child will not work?

Do you stop helping once the troubled child's inheritance is gone, or do you go ahead and devote the other child's inheritance to the troubled child?

These become real questions as we retire, as we age.

What will happen if one of the parents becomes ill?

Do you mortgage everything to set them up in business? That is what our son expected. A friend of his worked in a pizza place from high school on. He knew every aspect of the business by the time an opportunity came up for him to buy the into the franchise of the restaurant he now managed. His parents mortgaged their house to help him do that. Our son, with no such experience or work ethic ~ or even, a business plan in mind ~ hates us to this day because we would not give him the okay to go ahead and look for a business that we would then buy for him. The topper? He wanted us to buy him a duplex first, so he could live in one half rent free and pay the mortgage on it with the rent brought in by the other half. This actually might have worked?

But our son was addicted to drugs, at the time.

And yes, we offered treatment. And he refused. He did come home to clean up, more than once.
Water (and oh, the money!) under the bridge, with nothing, not one blessed thing, to show for it.

The other, and perhaps more important concern, has to do with the troubled child, himself. How would we, you and me and any of us here, be able to hold ourselves in high regard, were it not for the challenges we have met successfully? For the losses that taught us to be wise. And even more importantly, for the losses that taught us we could survive things we did not know we had the strength or intelligence to do? Anyone who has created a successful business has taken risks, has made mistakes, has learned from them and gone on, gutting out a place in the world.

That is what we take from our difficult child kids, when we refuse to allow them to learn from their first mistakes. The mistakes get bigger, become insurmountable...and the troubled young adult continues to make the same, bad choices.
We have paid for the consequences of our children's choices ~ things we warned them against or outright forbid ~ many, many times, SuZir.

And not only, or even mostly for them, but for our own good.

I do agree with your feelings to a point, SuZir. The question for me, and for so many of us here on P.E., has to do with that point at which we can no longer see where our own good lies. Retirement postponed; a child who beats us in a fit of rage; a child who, with malice aforethought, willfully destroys our reputations in public or blackmails us in private to get us to continue to pay; a grown child who outright steals from us, hating us and themselves all the while.... A child who brings strangers into his mother's home, prostituting himself there for extra money while she is at work.
I have read all these things here on this site, SuZir.
You are very right. There are consequences to every choice we make.

No. I think "deconstructing the nest" so that even our most troubled children can fly is the right thing to do. Lest you believe we turned our daughter away while she begged us to take her in, that was not the case. We paid close to $2000 to clear her license, pay her fines, clear the title. Something went wrong with the vehicle. Another thousand to get her set up in the apartment she and her child's father lived in, with the intention of raising their child together.

It's just that none of those good things, those goals and dreams we thought we were giving them a hand with, happened. None of that ever happens. It may have been before you joined us here SuZir, but the year before that, we lost something $8000 helping our daughter. And that is not the first time, or the only time, that we have watched that kind of money disappear.

So, though I do see your point, and would agree wholeheartedly that every parent must help their kids, troubled or not, I say there is also a point when helping stops being helping and becomes enabling. And enabling makes us as guilty as our children for what then happens to our kids.

I appreciate your comments, SuZir. As is the purpose of this thread, you've given me an opportunity to clarify the why behind the decision I made not to stop difficult child when she chose to try to put her life together again with the father of her child. I wish so desperately, now that I know what happened, that I had moved heaven and earth to bring them both here with us, instead.

On a thread I answered just prior to this one (Dammit Janet, I think) I began to see where maybe, just may be...husband is correct to fight so determinedly that this house too, and the life we have created here, not be made dark and sad.

I think there is no right answer, for me. I did choose. These so terrible things did happen.

Thank you, SuZir, for posting to me as you did. Your post was sincere, and you were honest. It is true; there are deeply painful,real life consequences to our choices.

But there are consequences whatever choice we make. I have to try to help my kids stand up. This
(detachment) is the only thing I have not tried.

I have to try.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Do you work/volunteer in an art gallery? Is it relaxing? Are you an art collector ?

Far from an art collector, Strength! :O) I do volunteer in an art gallery here. A friend knew the artist. She needed a little more help during her high season. (The artist ~ a woman ~ is attaining celebrity status around here ~ very cool to be affiliated!) Anyway, the friend and I are like, splitting a position to help out. It's been alot of fun. I am hoping to do it next year, too.

You are right about the brilliant colors, about the beautiful things the gallery and the garden contain, and about the sun, Strength. So many different kinds of people from all over the country (and the world ~ mostly Germany, Norway, England).

This is something very different for me. It was part of this whole thing, really. There were so many bad things happening in our family. I decided to do what I could, whatever little things I could do, to make the world better.

Sort of like tying a knot.

All at once, people started asking me to do things. It is quite extraordinary that this should be so, really. So, I've helped feed rescued cats (and fallen in love with them), I've taken a Bible study (first time, for me), finally joined the Book Club down here and gone to lunch with the ladies, and...started volunteering at the gallery.

It must be true what they say, Strength. When we say "yes", our worlds change.

Cedar

Oh, and I got to help with a political "Meet & Greet for one of the local political candidates.

And all this happened Strength, after difficult child daughter was hurt at the end of November.

Strange, huh?

:O)

 

[recoveringenabler]

I'm so pleased that you see what I see. I see it Cedar because I too have lived with that guilt/punishment born out of my mother's wounding which made me responsible for her choices. And, therein lies the beginning of my own enabling/rescuing patterns. That is learned so young, it is pre-verbal, so getting to it takes some serious looking.

Responding to you about this is HUGELY beneficial for me too Cedar, for what I cannot see in myself, I can see in you, I can respond to it to you and help to heal it in me. It is a win/win of epic proportions........

It's called parentification. There are no breaks for us kids in that family system, we get stuck in the inability to fail or make mistakes. Perfectionism is born. Enabling. Guilt. Shame. Blame. Judgement.

The problem with the guilt is that it is not guilt for anything that YOU did, it is immediate and pervasive guilt for something someone else did that you take on.............and the person who actually made the choice, doesn't take it on. They walk away free. The burden is on you. And, since we're taught that so young, we simply take it on as real, as "of course it's mine" ..................perfection lives here. For if you were truly omnipotent as you've come to believe you are, you would have known this, could have prevented this, could fix this...........you didn't so therefore there has to be punishment. Someone is to blame, it has to be you. Someone has to pay, it has to be you. Someone has to be punished, it has to be you.

I think dysfunctional folks either blame someone else or blame themselves, or both, but blame will be placed somewhere. Blame takes us out of the moment, out of that uncertainty and chaos and the ground moving from underneath us..........it keeps us in perpetual pain, but that seems better then uncertainty/chaos and unknowing.

We can proclaim certainty when we point fingers at ourselves or someone else. He did it! She did it! I did it! What if no one did it, what if 'it' happened in each of our separate lives for us to learn something, for us to work through something, for us to grow............what if we throw the right and wrong of it out the window and stay in that middle ground and forgive ourselves, forgive the other? What if we had compassion for ourselves and others and offered kindness in the midst of all the trauma? I am not saying I do this, I ask myself all the same questions as I emerge from the relentless world of someone being right and someone being wrong. (All those Pema Chodron books are sinking in at least to the point where I can intellectualize the concepts.) Staying in the middle and not proclaiming one way or the other is a big practice right now. I am practicing asking myself, how can I learn from this, how can I awaken from this, how can I grow from this. Rather then, who is to blame for this. It is the middle way, the path of compassion and kindness.

Many of the relationships that I had to remove myself from Cedar, were where I was the guy who blamed myself and the other was the guy who blamed someone else. The shame ball being thrown back and forth. "Harmonious neurosis." Once I began feeling compassion and more kindness for myself, it became apparent when that blame, judgment, criticism, some "make wrong" was coming my way. When I was the guilty party, I took that on. Once I stopped feeling guilty and I woke up, I could see that! And, then I had to make some hard choices about whether I wanted to stay in relationship with people who blamed me and judged me. It was pretty hard to let some people go. It can be subtle too, a critical look, a judgmental comment, a superior smile...........but if you really look you can see the anger bubbling right under the surface. There is always anger in the 'blame game', on both sides.

I responded to my daughter in the same way I had with my mother........ She got to do whatever she wanted while I felt guilty and wrong. I didn't know how to put the responsibility for her actions onto her. I had to learn that much later.

Simply put, if the 'other' always takes on the position of being 'right' then the only position left to take is..............being 'wrong.' After awhile, not only are you being wrong, you ARE wrong. That's where shame enters the game.

When compassion for ME began, then everything changed. Now the onus of my daughter's life is on her, not me. I still struggle some with all of it, but once the guilt for imagined wrongdoings subsided, I could SEE, Cedar, I could SEE beyond the guilt, beyond the perception I had always held that I was pronounced guilty as charged for ALL OF IT.

Kindness and compassion for YOU is the key, it is the way out.

This morning I was thinking about you and I thought, "I feel so bad for Cedar, her daughter has the gift of memory loss about the whole incident, but poor Cedar has to relive it and blame herself." So herein, once again, your daughter has no memory, no responsibility for placing herself in harms way by the lifestyle she has chosen............ and you get to punish yourself for it.

Put the whole incident in a place of light, a place of compassion for everyone, it doesn't exonerate the guilty party, it opens the door for you to forgive him, but more importantly, for you to forgive yourself.
When I first came onto this realization it was very profound for me...........I kept repeating to myself, almost spontaneously, "I didn't do anything wrong." At first I said it with surprise, as if there was a question at the end of the statement. "I didn't do anything wrong??" Then I was angry. Then it just was what it was. I had always believed I must have done something wrong, somewhere..............and of course in the scheme of a life, I've done plenty wrong, but I mean, I didn't do that one bad thing that meant I would be punished forever for. There is no stain on me which says I don't deserve happiness because somewhere, sometime I did something which eliminates me from the running. You didn't do anything wrong Cedar. You, like all of us made mistakes because we're human, you didn't do anything which warrants punishment.

Take this off your shoulders Cedar, take the old barbs out of your heart..........commute your sentence to innocent. You are innocent. Go celebrate. Allow yourself the joy or the acceptance or the fulfillment or whatever you denied yourself in order to pay the price..........no more price, just enjoyment. The path of joy. Turn away from the path of guilt and onto the path of joy.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Something bad could have happened even if she did
come back to live with you.

Thanks, In. In my imagination, everything worked perfectly for them when they came here. In reality, it would have been awkward with the neighbor situation. (And the neighborhood ~ seems like every single one of them heard all about the neighbor and difficult child). Which means they learned about the homelessness and drug use and blah, blah.

Oh, brother.

That is the part it is so hard to remember, do difficult to find comfort in.

In my secret heart though, In? I still go into the FOG when I think about the outcome, about what happened....

You are right. This understanding (and it is a true one) is a weapon I need to employ to keep myself stable as I work through this.

Thank you, In.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I was so sorry to learn you and your child went through something like that, MWM. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), that's every mother's worst nightmare. You must have wanted to kill him. It makes me very happy to know Julie was able to move past that ~ and you too, MWM.

I had no idea.

I'm so sorry.

I believe everything happens for a reason

I believe that, too. I know it is true. I read somewhere that "at the touch of death upon our eyes" we will understand. I will find that quote for you if I can. It was beautiful.

He told them that if they ever told anyone at all hewould burn the house down and kill us all and that he was the Devil and he meant his threat. They, at age four and six, believed that he was THAT
powerful. They had seen him do some horrible,
scary things. They thought HE could hurt US and
that WE couldn't stop him. Our faults? You be the
judge.

Oh, MWM ~ you have been through so much. I wonder how it is you are still so generous, so patient, so invariably kind, and without an arrogant bone in your body. Even to 36 you are kind.

It seems that our lives truly do bring the challenges, the very worst challenges, we can stand up under.

A special prayer for you, for your peace and strength, MWM.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

husband and I are already arguing a little because when he retires, he is adament that we will be moving about
four hours away from difficult child. I would like to help set her up about an hour away so that we can check up on
her now and then.
He says he doesn't care the potential outcome and he really means it.

Nomad :O)

It's so nice to see you, again.

If you have time Nomad, Dammit Janet had responded with something similar about herself and her husband's relationship. As I responded to Janet's post...I started remembering little details of the way it is, when the kids are around. And I realized something, Nomad.

Our husbands ~ yours, mine, Janet's ~ probably all of the husbands here and certainly those who have posted to us about their difficult children...they're protecting us, Nomad. I talked to husband about that idea, and about how alone he must have felt, all these years with me so angry about his decision to move to the cabin away from a house big enough for the kids and grandkids and then, to move across the whole country away from all the kids.

And then, not want to go to see them so often as I want to.

About his perceived selfishness in wanting our lives to be as they are.

He was protecting me from myself, Nomad.

It probably would have been easier to just leave me there.

WITH the kids.

Oy.

husband acted like he knew that, all along.

It was disconcerting.

Ahem.

So, I feel a little foolish, but...it is true. We, the mothers, can become so focused on our difficult child kids that we forget all about our own lives.

That is what your husband is protecting you from.

I say?

Four hours is good.

You can get there if you need to, but be private and begin your own lives.

I am happy for you.

Your husband cherishes you enough to hear you and hold you and do what is best for both of you without complaint.

That is a very special thing.

Cedar

 

[SuZir]

Cedar, I'm sorry I think I didn't get my thoughts cross clearly. I feel need to add, that my intention was not in any way criticize your earlier or current decisions with this. There is no way I could do that. First I certainly don't have an information of your situation to make any kind of an assessment. Second I see into the future and what ifs just as much as the next person, which is nil. Third there simply isn't any way of knowing if the different choice had made any difference or if it had changed things to worse. And fourth, and most importantly, I certainly don't have any leg to stand on critisizing other peoples choices. I have my own hefty share of guilt in my back bag from my choices. And neither am I particularly wise or profound person.

However, I was talking more about feelings of guilt, not the actions. In fact I do believe that actions and choices based mainly on guilt have higher than average probability to turn bad. I was talking more about how we think, our self-talk, not what we should or should not do with or for our children or any other person.

I believe, that if person rationalizes, talks themselves out from the guilt, they will be able to suppress the guilt, but often shame takes that place somewhere deep in our hearts. And whilde guilt can lead to something positive and is something we humans need to feel, shame tends to poison everything it touches.

Maybe you did not read that thread, SuZir. There is a mated pair of eagles here, where I live. Everyone watches for them to return each year. We watch the eaglets, and we know and talk about it the nest is empty again. (It's a small, isolated community.) One year, so I was told, the eaglets seemed not to want to leave the nest. The parents deconstructed it from under them.

Yes, I read that thread. very poignant and very good metaphor for sometimes needing to get our children that kick that forces them to fly, if they don't have a drive on themselves.

How much retirement income do you sacrifice? Do you just keep working, though your adult child will not work?
Do you stop helping once the troubled child's inheritance is gone, or do you go ahead and devote the other child's inheritance to the troubled child?
These become real questions as we retire, as we age.

These would be choices made based on guilt or maybe other feelings. We again would not know how they would turn out. But it is very true, that we can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. And at times only thing we can even try to do, is save our selves.

My troubled kid is indeed still young, even young for his chronological age both biologically and even more emotionally and socially. He is still very much in process of growing up and needs more hands on parenting than more adult children. And our sacrifices for his treatment and so on have been very modest. I think it is enough to say, that there were years we put more money in his sport hobby than what we are now putting into his therapy etc. costs. But even these choices - when we make them with husband, we purposefully try to leave our guilt out of that decision making process and go for what would give him best opportunities and what is doable for us. Till now, I can't say we would had scarified anything to make those efforts to help him (now that he is an adult, as a child it was a different story) and if there will be a day, we actually have to sacrifice something worthwhile, we have to cross those bridges then.

But all that was not really what I tried to say. I wasn't trying to comment how I think you should act making your new choices (and again, I absolutely have no competence to have an opinion of that), I was talking about being careful with our own self talk and trying to get rid of guilty feelings in that. And in the end that has very little to do with our children per se, even very simply telling them, that we now hindsight feel bad we didn't try to do another choice and maybe things would have turned differently and that we feel very bad for what happened, may be plenty to their direction. But accepting guilt and dealing and living with it inside of us, is what I was trying to comment on.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

For if you were truly omnipotent as you've come to
believe you are, you would have known this, could
have prevented this, could fix this...........
you didn't
so therefore there has to be punishment. Someone
is to blame, it has to be you. Someone has to pay,
it
has to be you. Someone has to be punished, it has
to be you.

This is true, Recovering. The gist of this thing is that I either did not see clearly enough...or that I did see, that somehow I did know...and did not insist difficult child and granddaughter come here, whatever husband wanted to do about that.

Parentification.

So, these feelings too are what I name a "valence". The abuser's valence, her will; the force she used to crush my will, to create a receptacle for her pain.

Though I don't much like it, and am not through this layer yet...good for both of us, Recovering. I am happy you can see these things for me, too.

This is true. You are correct. How fortunate we have been to see these valences, these core values we have functioned through and beneath, all of our lives.

And in a way, it is these valences, this parentification, that fueled the unremitting drive to put things back together, to figure out what went wrong....

?

Maybe.

I am still working through this one.

Happily. With that sure sense of discovery, of rightness. Something there, alright.

I love that you post to me as you do.

We were talking about this very thing in Tai Chi one day. I said something about taking the blame for everything, automatically. It was funny, when I said it, and I said it to be funny. But the Tai Chi instructor seemed to believe that was not very funny.

He is strangely wise, but you don't realize how much he sees for years and years.

I have been in his class for six years, now.

********************

Strange that you should mention forgiveness, Recovering. With the male's release, that sense of time, of safety for now, has been shaken. The same panicky feelings, the what do I do, the immediacy of the result of the last bad decision. Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I had to start thinking of him. Of the man I know him to be. Of the things he said as, over the years, I have written him, in prison or out. About the communication we exchanged when he told me he was planning to get difficult child out of where she was. About the trust I had developed in him, in his spiritual path.

Last summer, he taught me a Native drum song, taught me how to drum it and how to sing it.

We talked about the Red Road.

A Native belief, something like the Tao or the Way, in Buddhism.

And I realized something, Recovering. He did not see this coming, either. I talked to difficult child daughter about that, last night. About realizing that, as you posted to me today...there was no intentional, premeditated evil person who should be imprisoned forever, who should be viewed with contempt or hatred.

There is only a person I am certain, certain...is as horrified at what he did, at what he destroyed, at who he might have become, at everything, everything he had, given into his hand against all odds. And at what he did with that gift, with that life, with that person he might have become.

And I couldn't do anything else but let that stuff I was feeling go, Recovering.

And when I did? When I whispered, "You're forgiven." I felt the most strange kind of release. I realized I was exhausted, down deep where rest cannot touch it.

Hatred, lack of forgiveness, the inability to forgive, the desire to not forgive, ever ~ takes alot of energy.

It was an amazing thing.

Happy Hour here Recovering. I need to go. Thank you so much for your postings to me. They mean more than I can tell you. More than I know, I suppose....

:O)

Cedar

 

[Childofmine]

I think there is a lot of great thinking and writing on this thread. We are unpacking a lot of things, due to Cedar's story. Following a line of thinking to its very end is good for us, I believe, at times, instead of just stopping because it's too hard.

I am thinking now about this thing we are talking about called consequences.

Here is how I understand it:

I make decisions for myself and those decisions have consequences.

My difficult child makes decisions for himself and those decisions have consequences.

My decisions are not his consequences.

If I make a decision that affects him---you can't come to live at my house---and then he is homeless and something bad happens to him on the street one night---are those my consequences?

Those are his consequences. Not mine.

He takes in my decision about him---he can't stay here. That door is closed. But there are lots of other open doors he can walk through.

If he chooses none of those and something bad happens when he is on the street one night, there is no straight line back to my decision. My decision did not allow/cause the bad thing to happen.

Do I revisit that decision? Of course. That is human. I love him. I want nothing bad ever to happen to him. If only I had allowed him to stay here that night---THIS would not have happened. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps it would have happened during the daytime or the next night or two weeks or two years from now. I cannot know or control that.

We cannot anticipate or know or prevent or control the millions of variables that are involved in any decision that ANOTHER PERSON MAKES FOR HIMSELF OR HERSELF.

All of us have many, many choices in life. When one door is closed to us, we have to find another door or a window to crawl through to solve our problem. If we don't, and something bad happens, we must accept the consequences and the many events and decisions that led us to this moment. We alone are responsible for what we do. There are accidents of course, and of course, your precious daughter and this man, may never have even had a hint that something like this would ever have happened.

Cedar, after reading more here, I am seeing the vast betrayal of this man not just of your daughter but of you personally and of your whole family. I can see the many layers of pain and regret you must have about so many things. How could you possibly know he would do this?

How could he even know he would?

I am reminded of the oft-repeated phrase: My, you sure are a powerful person if you are responsible for all of the problems of this world? I've never met anybody as powerful as you are. Said tongue in cheek, I think it gets the point across very well.

I am powerless over all people, places and things. I am powerless over my difficult child and this man and the people who do bad things to other people. Sadly, very unfortunately, if my son puts himself repeatedly in dangerous situations, the odds are not good that he will remain safe over time. I believe that is a mathematical equation, even.

I hope you are better today, Cedar. I hope you and husband have a nice dinner somewhere and just breathe and relax and enjoy the sunset for an hour or more.

Thanks for all of the good thinking here on this thread.

 

[Nomad]

Cedar, I think my husband is protecting both of us. For a variety of reasons a number of years ago, he took over the bulk of the overseeing of difficult child " stuff." I thought it would be handed back to me, but it wasn't. My health recently has gotten concerning.mso, right this moment, I can understand why he insists on taking her phone calls,etc. But, I don't think he ever realized how truly stressful all of her crxp is. He actually had back pain yesterday after she called. So, yes, he is protecting me, but also himself. After 20+'years, even with detaching and drastically cutting back, it has taken its toll on both of us and it has to change, he sees moving as a way out and I hope he is right. Sometimes I think we can never fully escape. But, a move might bring us closer to it.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

it has taken its toll on both of us and it has to
change, he sees moving as a way out and I hope he is right.

He is right, Nomad. An hour would not do it, but four hours will. The move will change the energy surrounding your marriage. (At least, it does that for us.) Before we settled here, we looked into other areas. We would stay for one month at a time. Even just that, just getting away for a month (or even, a week to ten days) changes the energy surrounding a marriage. Since it is just the two of you in a strange new place, you actually "see" one another. Because you are seeing one another in this new way, you begin to interact differently. With care, with thoughtfulness, we can recreate our marriages. That basis for intimacy that comes from sharing the grief of a difficult child child can be a wall between you or the walls of a rich and beautiful garden where only the two of you really live, because no one who has not been through it, who has not survived it exactly as you have, could ever understand life as the two of you know it to be.

I think this is true.

If our marriages survive the difficult child? We are "fireproof." It's like we're more than married, on some level where it doesn't show. I would think that even for those whose marriages did not survive the stress, there is a special connection with that mate. There is so much pain, so much raw intimacy between the parents of a difficult child child.

I wish you and husband happiness and outright joy, Nomad.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But accepting guilt and dealing and living with it
inside of us, is what I was trying to comment on.

Thank you, SuZir. I love it that we all are here, thinking and wondering and sharing what we know, what we have learned. I am so happy you posted to me. Answering, thinking about what I wanted to say, helped me to clarify, to shine light on, places where I wasn't sure myself how I felt, what I believed.

These kinds of discussions are so good for all of us, SuZir. We need to keep thinking, keep trying to see a better way. If we all said the same things, that would never happen.

I'm very glad you are here, SuZir. Your points are well thought out, and valid. Your heart is good.

We are all winning, learning, sharing...by our choice, SuZir. You are, we all are, an amazing group of people.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We are unpacking a lot of things, due to Cedar's
story.

Following a line of thinking to its very end is good for us

I think so too, Child. How does that saying go? We are only as strong as our secrets? We are learning, and telling, our secrets here. I think that is why we are able to effect change in ourselves that years of therapy may not have been able to accomplish. That is the true value of this site. We support and heal one another as we come in, and we determine to change and risk and grow and heal as we are here long enough to learn to trust ourselves and each other with those things we have repressed.

"Right needs no defense. Just good witness."

I don't know who said that, but it rings true for us, here. What we are willing to risk of our own stories, of our own selves, helps us. In helping ourselves, as it turns out, we are helping others.

A win for the white, Child.

:O)

am thinking now about this thing we are talking
about called consequences.

I think the consequences part is a twofold thing, Child. There are the kinds of consequences that might happen, that surely will happen, to the difficult child because we've set a limit they have disregarded. The other kind of consequence is what happens ~ to us, to our kids, to our extended families and even our neighbors ~ when we do not stick to that limit our difficult child's behaviors required us to make.

In the first case, bad things can happen to the difficult child who is now homeless. Or maybe, the difficult child will come awake, and change the direction he or she is taking the life they've been blessed with.

Bad things will certainly happen to the difficult child and the parents living in a home where the parents talk and talk, but never impose a consequence for breaking the agreement on limits, for breaking the agreement on what fringe behaviors will be tolerated in the homes the parents have created and are responsible for. What atmosphere, what ambiance, will we live with? The chaos, the pointless hatred and seething resentment over nothing real that is the difficult child lifestyle? Or the
sweetwater feel of a well run home?

Two layers of consequences. When you raise a difficult child child, there will always be consequences. Those consequences will always have real, irrevocable costs in the real world, in our own lives, in the lives of our difficult child kids.

One way or the other way, there will be consequences.

We don't get to ignore it. These problems are not going away. They are only getting bigger. We are going to have to stand up one day. There have been more moms than one here who have been hospitalized as a result of difficult child violence. That did not happen overnight. It happened one excused rudeness, one ignored curfew, one issue of disrespect, at a time.

hope you are better today, Cedar. I hope you and
husband have a nice dinner somewhere and just breathe and relax and enjoy the sunset for an hour or more.
Thanks for all of the good thinking here on this
thread.

Thank you, COM. We did have a good, good night. The sunrise was a blaze, all at once, against the clouds. Fresh coffee, and the character, the feel of every sunrise entirely different, every single one unique.

So the morning was pretty good, too.

:O)

The quality of thought, the willing exploration of nuance, the determination to cherish and heal, to learn how to survive what has happened to all of us, and to our kids...that is why I am here, why I keep coming back, why I feel so fortunate to have found this site, and all of you.

We are in the presence of a living miracle, if you think about it, Child.

This stuff does not happen anywhere else in the world, what we are doing, here.

How cool is that?

:O)

 

[recoveringenabler]

Cedar, you're sounding better today, I am glad. Happy Sunday!

I sent you a Private message a couple of days ago, however, there were a few different name changes on your profile, so perhaps you didn't get it. Would you check under your Inbox and conversations and see if you received it? Thank you.

The following is a short article on Parentification which you might find useful.

Parentified children are assigned a full-time job on the day they are born — parent their dysfunctional parents.
Children enter the world with countless needs. Until they are old enough to take care of themselves, children are supposed to be relatively free from the demands and concerns of the adult world. Ideally, a child’s parents place their children’s emotional, physical, and developmental needs before their own.

But when a parent has not been parented well themselves, the combination of unaddressed needs and parental power often lead to an unfortunate consequence for their own child — a type of role-reversal called parentification. Parentification is responsible for causing many mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and workaholism in the adults who experienced it as children.

There are two kinds of parentification:
.

Emotional Parentification
The child is expected to take care of and fulfill the emotional needs of the adult. Some examples of emotional parentification are: reassuring the parent that they will be all right when upset, shielding the parent from the emotional consequences of their actions and adjusting behavior to suit the parent’s emotional interests.

Instrumental Parentification
The child is expected to take care of physical needs, such as housework, care of younger siblings and management of parental affairs.

.
The effects and consequences of parentification are profound. Parentified children must continually struggle to meet needs they are not able to fulfill, and consequently, they develop deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. The pressure of having to constantly meet unrealistic demands instills a sense of hopelessness in the child that they will ever be able to handle the challenges life presents to them.

.
Adults parentified as children experience the following things:

• Fear that they cannot adequately meet their own expectations and demands

• Poor self-esteem

• A feeling of disconnection from their real self

• Feelings of incompetence

• Underestimation of their own intelligence

• Overestimation of the importance of others

• Shame, guilt, anxiety and depression

• Feeling like they’re still children, who can’t cope with being adults

• Taking on the role of caretaker

• Work addiction

• Codependency/Acceptance of too much responsibility

Parentification is extremely common in dysfunctional families with toxic parents. These parents may have substance abuse disorders and other addictions, personality disorders (particularly Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder and Dependent Personality Disorder) and other mental issues and disorders. Children of single parents and families experiencing high levels of stress are more likely to experience parentification.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am posting in response to Suzir's post on sandboxes and censorship.

It was on this thread that SuZir suggested that I consider the shame, guilt, and regret I felt at my difficult child's near murder at the hands of her daughter's father to be appropriate.

As SuZir reminded me, there are real life consequences to the choices we make...and I had chosen to detach. While I was surprised at SuZir's response...I had to admit that in a way, she was correct. As I answered her post, I began remembering all the times we had taken one or another child in, all the failures, all the money and pain and hopelessness and etc. So, I was able to answer SuZir in an acceptable way, and considered the incident closed. I believed it to have been an opportunity to clarify my own thinking, and had found the experience valuable.

SuZir has again posted about detachment and censorship and responsibility and judging.

I am posting a peek into what it is like, loving a difficult child child turned adult.

Within the week following these postings, we would learn of difficult child's multiple organ failure, come to expect an imminent ending, and experience a miraculous reprieve.

This week?

difficult child granddaughter is being sent to her half brother. On a bus. To another state. Alone. To her third school for this year.

difficult child daughter "will not have" granddaughter's truancy. Nor will she put up with granddaughter's attitude toward her. difficult child daughter told me last night that she considers granddaughter to be very much like she was, at that age. difficult child daughter says granddaughter's life will get better when granddaughter decides to choose to make it better and not a minute sooner, and that sending her to her half-brother will be the best thing for her.

Something she wishes we had done, difficult child daughter tossed out, instead of therapy and more therapy, instead of treatment center after treatment center, each more intense.

Maybe difficult child daughter is right. None of that helped her. None of this was a big enough deal to post about.

Except for SuZir's post.

There are times when, though we believe we understand a situation, we do not. I would not have agreed with detachment while my adult difficult children were younger. Detachment is something I do for my sanity, for my life.

I am adding this information to this thread because the things that have happened to all of us just in the past few weeks would be abnormal in a normal family. For a family loving a difficult child adult, this is normal. And that is the other piece we forgot to address during our discussion on
guilt/detachment/responsibility.

A difficult child's life changes rapidly and completely. That is the norm. The one thing that stays the same is the unending expectation of money, cars, I.D.s, license re-instatements, fines. Late night calls from jail. Multiple court dates. So many that I barely remember the acute shame I felt the first time difficult child daughter had court, the first time I saw her in handcuffs.

Whatever.

Old stuff.

Granddaughter is scheduled to leave this week. Yes, we sent money. (The ticket will be paid for by the Women's Shelter.) This was money so granddaughter will have some money BECAUSE difficult child, WHO CLAIMS SHE LOST HER PURSE WITH BETWEEN $800 AND $1200 IN IT BUT PROBABLY REALLY BLEW HER TAX RETURN AT THE CASINO, has no money.

And, for the upteenth time, no I.D.

Which was lost when her purse was lost.

If her purse was lost.

So, husband and I have about two days to claim granddaughter, or let her go to the step brother.
husband is leaning (heavily) toward the step brother, of course. But he did agree that we could take her if I thought that was best.

So, like always, I am thinking what to do. I will be blamed (and will probably blame myself) whatever the outcome, here.

These are things the parents of a younger difficult child could not know (yet). These are the chaotic kinds of things parents of normal children will never understand. Lest there be someone reading who condemns me for not taking both difficult child daughter and granddaughter in when the beating happened and difficult child granddaughter ran away from her aunt? (Who had, because I faced down my daughter and went to bat for the aunt with Social Services, just attained legal custody.) difficult child daughter was too badly injured to leave the state where she had medical care. The Shelter provided counseling for difficult child to heal from having been beaten, and it provided counseling for difficult child daughter and granddaughter to restore their relationship after difficult child daughter's betrayal of her own children over drugs and alcohol ~ and over the people, the nasty, violent people, who used drugs and alcohol in the house where difficult child daughter was living with her children.

Was living with my grandchildren.

For those still inclined to judge: difficult child daughter and all four kids lived with husband and I for three months the summer difficult child decided to move back North. Then? I lived with difficult child daughter to help with the kids, to get the apartment set up, to see it furnished and the kids appropriately clothed for the Winter before we went South. That was six weeks more. I slept on the floor. On the weekends when difficult child was off, I would go home so she and her family could come into balance in their new environment. At one point, we received a call from the male who would, some year and a half later, first save difficult child from the streets and then, beat her half to death. He told us difficult child daughter had moved homeless meth heads into the apartment during the three days I had been gone.

We kicked them out.

Blah, blah, blah on the rest of it.

Those of you into judging, into believing that those parents who have tried every single thing haven't done quite enough, or haven't done all that you would have...I hope you get the picture.

difficult child granddaughter's chief complaint re: living with her mother? That difficult child daughter is running with the same druggie, counter-culture people she ran with when this all started (and she is), and is dragging granddaughter to the places they live with her. One of difficult child daughter's complaints? That she has to be back at the Shelter by 8 p.m. because granddaughter is with her.

She could stay out until 11 p.m. if granddaughter were not there.

How do I feel, knowing my daughter is thinking like this?

Numb. No judging. Trying to stay emotionally detached for the sake of my own sanity.

I have spent the past two years intensely focused on difficult child issues.

And this is the chaotic upshot.

So, for those parents who wish to judge those of us making the decision to detach? We have been where you are, now. By this point in my own journey, I understand all too well that other parents will judge me harshly. Though I would like to be respected, held up as a good mother, cherished by my children...I am not.

I get that.

I get it, that I am judged by those who managed to raise their children well, and are reaping the rewards of close and healthy families. Know how I know that, know how I know the taste of that?

Because there was a time when I was a judger, too. I was smug, sanctimonious, self righteous.

Then, the bottom fell out of the world.

It is somewhat hurtful to be reminded of the very things I whisper to myself sometimes, in the deep of the night.

But...if you are judging me, then you literally have no idea. I hope you never find yourself here, in our ranks. I hope you never come to know what I know. There is no pain quite like this.

It's like a kaliedescope of pain. Ever-changing, almost mesmerizing in its intensity and its intricacy.

Cedar

 

[recoveringenabler]

Well done Cedar, beautifully stated.

 

[pasajes4]

So many valid points made by the respondents to this point. Suzir talks about parenting out of guilt and the pitfalls of doing so. I don't think that there is really anyway of knowing in advance what our choices are going to bring about. We are dealing with another human who has their own way of thinking and feeling. Two people can be involved in the same exact situation and when questioned later, their recall of the event can be totally different.

Our children are not our clones. Even identical twins do not see or feel things exactly the same way 100% of the time.

Guilt is worthless and eats at the soul. Every decision we make does have a consequence. The consequence for each person is dependent on their perception of that particular event. It takes two to tango.