Family of Origin (FOO) Support Thread Part 2

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
This is a continuation of the FOO thread why now thread that has been so big and is gaining more posters. It is for those who want to explosre their FOO and why we landed where we are. It is not just about our adult kids, but they are mentioned. It is really for anyone who wants to help heal by talking about their lives and by getting loving, kind and constructive feedback by some very smart ladies I know :)

This is kind of a CD blog!!!

Feel free to start where the other long thread left off. The other one was becoming slow because of all the content.

Welcome to new users and readers.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Perhaps the way to begin this thread is to recap where we have been, and what we've learned through having one another to share with and to witness for and to be held up by.

The gist of what I have learned is that when we are intentionally hurt by another person, we teach ourselves that we are responsible for the abuser's moods as a means of establishing some predictability or some illusion of control in an essentially powerless situation. In severely abusive situations, or in situations where we see sibs abused, issues of facing our own or someone else's mortality arise. (And I think it matters, as the child tries to make sense of their horrible situation, whether the sib witnessing the abuse is an older or a younger sib. Older sibs will feel guilt. Younger sibs I think, identify with the abuser and blame and secretly (?) hate the older one. I think the oldest sib (which I am) is seen as an appropriate target for the hatred and resentment and etc that the younger sibs cannot focus onto the mother.)

I think that, but I don't know whether that is true.

This kind of twisted rationalization of why what is happening to us is happening happens to prisoners of war, too. It happened to those in concentration camps. A version of this same dynamic, in my opinion, is at the root of all the isms ~ of racism, of fanaticism of every kind, of the justification of poverty. It begins with the need to blame, to find a victim. It begins with ridicule and progresses, along a continuum, to hatred and a kind of blind belief that all those things we once suspected were not true (just as babies do not judge by race) must be true because everywhere we look, that seems to be the true thing we see.

So, the dynamic is the same in a dysfunctional family.

SWOT posted an article once in which the contention was that dysfunctional role playing in families was a matter of role flexibility versus role rigidity.

That rings true for me.

My intention is to revisit those places in me where I am not thinking about myself in healthy ways in my life, today. What I know for sure is that if we think it to ourselves, we recondemn ourselves because we cannot see ourselves differently than we were hurt into believing ourselves to be. With witnesses, we can tell the scary or shaming things and receive feedback about the abuser, and about how to see ourselves, about how to see that little girl or that little boy we were then, through our own eyes and not through the hatred in the abuser's eyes as they were abusing us.

Though we have never met, I think we can empathize with one another here because we do post elsewhere. Our natures are reflected in our posts.

So, we know and are able to trust one another, though we have never met.

That is the value in the FOO Chronicles, for me.

It is working beautifully for me. I have major trust issues. It is a real act of courage for me to allow true vulnerability in my real life. I am working on that. I have drawn strength from Brene Brown's concept of leaning in, from Joel Osteen's and Maya Angelou's contentions that we are here ~ we, each of us individually and personally ~ are here on exquisite and detailed purpose. When I got too deep to see remembered traumatic incidents through my own eyes, it was helpful to me to choose witnesses and believe they witnessed for me.

It worked.

For the most traumatic scars, it worked to do it that way.

Again, the danger in doing this is getting stuck and retraumatizing ourselves because we believe the abuser's take on our purpose and identity and value. Whatever evil thing we were caught in, those of us abused as children, it left real scars. Those broken places weaken us today in our ~ in every aspect of our lives, but especially in our ability to hold faith with ourselves and our kids when the kids are so deeply troubled.

Each of us went on to create full, triumphant lives, despite what happened in our childhoods. We may have come through it kinder than most ~ that seems to be a common thread for each of us. For me, the extended trauma and retraumatizatin and increasing vulnerability and decreasing sense of efficacy that happened over the years when my kids were just so darn in trouble no matter what I did...I don't know. Popped me into a nervous breakdown, in a way. SWOT has given us the term "emotional flashback". That is where I lived from, during the worst of it.

I am coming through it well. As things would continue to just go so wrong with my kids, I came to accept it, and to detach for their sakes and all those things we post about on the Parent Emeritus thread.

But I want to address those broken places in me, now. I want to be strong and whole. I don't want the cheapness or filthiness or obscenity of my abuser(s) to go unchallenged. I don't want to hate anyone either, though. So, I am just having a look, and realizing the abuse never stopped, and that it is a family of origin pattern and it probably never will stop.

My mother is in her eighties. If I continue not to go there and accept my role, I will not see her again before she dies. Or before I do. Or before one of my sibs does.

Cedar
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I'm going to just tell what this is about.

Many of us have struggled with abusive childhoods. We often still have issues with being pushed around and belittled by our families yet we don't know what to do. After all, this is family, right? We HAVE to love and be loved by our family or we are bad people who deserve to be kicked to the curb.

We are sharing ideas of how to overcome these feelings of NEEDING to have the approval of our mothers, our fathers, our aunts, our kissing cousins, our siblngs, etc. We DON'T have to, but some times we feel like we do. We can even blow abusive relatives up to be gigantic so that they are bogeymen who make us cower in fear with just a cross look. We feel we have to make them love us, which often will never happen and has never been.

A brief history on my FOO to start it off and we'll see if it flies.

I had an absent dad, who I love very much, and believe was absent because my mother was so abusive to him. I have a grandmother who kind of took up for me, but she had a rather iffy relationship with her own daughter, my mother, and my mother always told her that she favored my uncle (her brother) which was blatant and true, however uncle caused me some angst too.Very horrible, narcissistic man who juggled girlfriends and hurt them and laughed about it. He heard one girlfriend so much that when she found he as cheating, she left the city and he could never find out where shse went.LUCKY HER. I admire her. My uncle was also always tied to his mother's umbilical cord until she died. No exaggeration. I have one disturbing memory of him when I was under four and it always makes me wonder if this memory is just because he called me "the brat" and scared me or if there was more. I don't think there was sexual abuse. But he sure has a lot of space rented in my head for the little I knew him. I never did like him. He made me feel like nothing.

My mother told me that when she first held me in her arms in the hospital she felt "nothing, absolutely nothing." And she wouldn't hold me because I "stiffened" in her arms. I was put in my crib where I drank chocolate (yes chocolate) milk for years. I didn't live in my crib. I was let out, of course. But there was no hugging and loving and it was all my fault because I didn't like to cuddle. So she didn't try. It's always an infant's fault, right?

I was allowed to drink chocolate milk in a bottle until age five. She didn't want to deal with me since I cried a lot. She was very lazy. As long as I can remember, she mocked me, called me abusive names and made me think I was a bad girl. This continued into adulthood. In the very end she disowned and disinherited me. Although much happened between us, I am puzzled. Nothing happened that was so bad it would have come to that in a normal family, but we were more like the Addams Family. Hey, I like that! YES!!!! The Addams family!!!!! My mother took her dislike of me out on my kids and never sent them birthday cards or talked to them and she never even saw my youngest two kids. Of course, that was my fault too or so she once said when I had my first child.

I tried hard to make amends while she was alive, calling her and sending her nice cards and apologizing for all the horrible things I thought I'd done, although, truthfully, I did not know what they were and did not feel she was innocent. I just wanted her to love me. It never happened. But she wanted me to think it might so she never hung up on me, although she never called me. I always did the calling, 100% of the time. So in a way I knew.But I held out hope because she didn't hang up. I would have been better off if she had told me she hated me, because she did, and had stopped any hope I had. But she liked to drag it out knowing how she really felt without spselling it out to me. Trust me, had she told me, Iwould had left her alone forever. I wish I had.

That she disinherited me hurt a lot, but was not the money...she didn't have much. It was the total rejection. So, after years of therapy, I don't love her memory. I think after realizing she did not consider me her daughter, that's when the love halted. Even a bonehead like me finally saw the light and I refuse to love somebody who not only doesn't love me back, but loathes me. So I really don't. I even threw out my family picture book. I'm not sorry. I don't want to see pictures of her holding me when I was little, although she claimed she couldn't hold me because I wouldn't let her. I don't want to see my childhood. It was too hurtful. I don't miss not having a family picture book.

I see her clearly now without the pictures. I only wish I'd seen her clearly way before I was older. I suffered a lot, of my own making, by wanting somebody who truly haed me to love me. Folks, it doesn't work. I wish I had better news.


My two siblings I call Thing 1 (brother) and Thing 2 (Sis).

Thing 1 is brilliant, but damaged. He has never had a live in relationship in his entire life. When he writes on his FB about our mom, it sounds as if he is writing her love letters. She adored him. He was her Golden Child, which often happens in a dysfunctional family...there is a good child who can do no wrong and a scapegoat who is blamed for everything and is the outsider and ostracized. Well, he was GC (Golden Child). Although he has lived in the East for thirty years and I live in Wisconsin and never see him, he once wrote me a long letter out of the blue (we had not been talking) listing all the things about me that bother him. I'm sure they were "mother" oriented, but I'll never know.. For once I was smart and tore it up and never read it. He also has had iffy relationships with some clients. He has a picture of a client who was sixteen at the time and he sent it to everyone and talked about the kid like he loved him. I do not and never will believe he did anything inappropriate with this child. I am NOT accusing him. But I do believe he was in love with him. Romantically. He is definitely different, as am I, as are all adults from the kinds of family I come from.

Thing 2 was very damaged by our upbringing and had eating disorders (still does), cut off every family member except our mother at least once in her life and liked to play that cut off game with me. It's over now. I'm done. I wish I'd been done the first time she did it. She liked to call the cops if I called to try to find out what I did wrong. Can't tell you how many times she called the cops on me. The cops started to kind of act embarrassed when they had to visit. I'm angry that she ever got back in touch with me. The first time she did it, it lasted three years. It would have been better for both of us if sh e had let it last forever.

She did not invite my brother to her wedding because he was too ugly and her frat sisters, well, he would embarrass her. Yet now they (Thing 1 and 2) are best buddies. I wonder how she got out of that one. She used to make fun of his appearance non-stop. I'm sure he heard her. She wasn't quiet about it.

Recently she got divorced and turned to me to tell her boyfriend problems too and maybe she didn't like what I told her so she got mad again. She dated married man and has been in a bad relationship with an abusive man for five years and never cut him off once. In fact, we'd talk about how she should do it, but she said "I can't. I can't." Hah. But she could cut me off because I said something she didn't like or posted sometimes she personally didn't like on her FB.Which brings me to the FOO issue...the cuts off were for my grandma and my brother early on, but later, after she hung out with my mother who had abused her as a kid, the cut offs were just for me.

I've come to realize that this is simply familial in nature and that it's not that she cuts me off because she thinks I abuse her. If s he was taking a strong stand for herself, her boyfriend would have been gone. Plus I don't abuse her. She may not like my opinion, but I don't abuse her. But that's another issue.

Both of these siblings say I was not abused by my mother. I was the abuser. I had to make peace with that so I could move on. I no longer care what they talk about or think. I have no contact with them, which means I try very hard not to check their facebooks or any other sort of social media on top of not talking to either and my father knows not to talk about them to me. It has been a freeing experience.

I am fortunate in my life that I have a wonderful husband of twenty years and four nice adult children and two grands. I had a good life in spite of fighting (on top of FOO), a severe mood disorder and neurological differences. I am stronger because of having to come to grips with my FOO and who they are to me. And I have to accept that if they think I have not been abused, then that is their prerogative. I know that most of the time Mother did her worst while I was alone. They couldn't have known what they didn't see. Whatever.

It is time to have a wonderful rest-of-our-lives, all of us. We are not bad. We are good hearted people who survived bad situations, many much worse than mine. I was never hit or sexually abused.

But those tapes with my mother's voice on it are there when I have to see FOO. Fortunately, I will only have to see them them one more time and I hope it's in the far future and I will not speak to them. They can't hurt me anymore.

I have been feeling great since going Operation Oblivion (not seeing or peaking at FOO). Ok, I cheated twice, but not really...I checked to see what Sis was writing, but controlled myself from reading the words and left first. So that's a victory. She was stalking me here. I have no idea if she still is.

That's my story in a very short version. And, of course, if you talked to them they'd have their own version. What I've learned is that our perception, unless we are hallucinating, is our reality and nobody has a right to tell us that our reality isn't real. I also learned that it is common for siblings to deny that abusive parents were abusive.

A sibling of David Pelzer, the favored one, claims it wasn't "that bad" for David, even though he was found in a state of starvation when finally taken away by social services.

In dysfunctional families we learn divide/conquer. We don't learn that a family means loyalty and love.

And that just makes it so hard to do everything, especially parent.

I am lucky I had an angel who was my parenting mentor, my ex-husbands mother. She was my mother in my heart and I thank God for her teaching every single day.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I am going to say hi as a member of this FOO group and respond to a few quotes.
Younger sibs I think, identify with the abuser and blame and secretly (?) hate the older one.
Yes, Cedar. I do agree here. It seems though, another decision could have been made at this point, and some children might have made it.

My sister did choose when she was about 8 to identify with the aggressor, although my love for her before that had set the tone of our relationship.
I think the oldest sib (which I am) is seen as an appropriate target for the hatred and resentment and etc that the younger sibs cannot focus onto the mother.
This is very brilliant Cedar. I think this is true, as well.

Actually, they could focus resentment on the parent, I did. But I understand, it is more rewarding in the short run to not do so.

I was as much of a mother to my sister as was my Mother. My sister could have sustained me in that role.

By that time my step-father had arrived. He was quite sadistic and abusive, what little child in their right mind would line up behind their elder sister for that? I have compassion for her that she chose not to.

The choice she made though as a small child came to define and limit her. It is very sad.
I have major trust issues. It is a real act of courage for me to allow true vulnerability in my real life.
Me too. If I may ask, how did you have the courage to trust your D H Cedar? Or did you not trust him until much later?
Whatever evil thing we were caught in, those of us abused as children, it left real scars. Those broken places weaken us today in our ~ in every aspect of our lives,
And now we are converting them into strengths.
especially in our ability to hold faith with ourselves and our kids when the kids are so deeply troubled.
Yes,to me this is the aim of this thread.
My mother is in her eighties. If I continue not to go there and accept my role, I will not see her again before she dies. Or before I do. Or before one of my sibs does.
You know something odd Cedar? Before my Mother had her final illness I had seen her only twice for perhaps an hour each time in the previous 3 or 4 years. I was busy working in a far away city. It was inconvenient. I felt guilty, but nothing more. I saw my sister no more than that, either.

I did not worry about what could be, even though my Mother was then in her mid eighties. We spoke all the time on the phone. Maybe that is the difference. Because neither of us that I am aware of had the sense of estrangement. My Mother may have wanted more but she did not let her resentment disrupt what we did have.

The thing that strikes me is that I did not anticipate at all what would hit me: That my mother would die and I would have regret.

That omission we know became a train wreck.

Cedar, I do not know how you can do it. How you might initiate and sustain some sort of a relationship with your mother.

I did it. I can honestly say that my relationship with my mother which was mainly by phone in the final years was not hurtful to either of us.

We had learned and largely avoided difficult themes. One of us would err, (her), but we righted ourselves quickly.

The difference in our mothers, I think, is the nature of the win. My mother I think wanted power to take care of herself. She did not care how she hurt others to take and sustain that power. That said, she took as much power over others as she was allowed. My sister never learned how to disengage from a power relationship. I guess it is because my sister wanted power over too, and they fought each other.

I never needed or wanted power over anybody. Maybe I was less of a threat. My mother knew I would just leave the game when she started something. That was a price she did not want to pay. I had already done it many times and for many years.

So our relationship was about something other than power. We really became friends more than anything else.

I do not know if your mother could have a relationship with you with changed rules. A sort of friendship without conditions.

I just do not know if she could do it or would.

Can somebody tell me how to print out a thread?
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Me too. If I may ask, how did you have the courage to trust your D H Cedar? Or did you not trust him until much later?

I did not trust D H with my core self until we had been through what happened with the kids. I hadn't breathed more than a breath of what my childhood was like, for instance. He knew I did not want to see my parents, but no details as to why until daughter went into her first treatment. Even after that, I shared only what was required for D H to understand what was happening when I went into therapy myself.

***

I don't know how to do a thread either, Copa.

I know it can be done.

I am impressed that you can do quotes from one thread to another. I like that idea. It would be a perfect way to continue as we were.

I think this will work too though, Copa.

Happy Hour here, everyone.

:O)

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I did it. I can honestly say that my relationship with my mother which was mainly by phone in the final years was not hurtful to either of us.
Cedar, as I reread this, I see that even with this relationship I did have with my mother, I could not avoid the FOO madness after her death.

Had I done this FOO-work before, would I have been spared? I do not think so.

The piper must be paid. These things that lie dormant within us must have their say. While it might have killed me, I am a better person and will have a fuller rest of my life (I hope) as a consequence.

Thinking about it, I do not think there is one thing YOU can do to change the course of events or should do. You did not cause it, you cannot control it or cure it.

Your mother determined every piece of this. You for most of your life reacted and now you are consciously responding based upon your conscious interpreting of a set of facts.

I suffer for you because I do not want you to suffer.But that still does not mean you should do something or not do something. The ball is in your mother's court.

Does she call you? Does she write you? Has she shown you in any way that she is ready to show you a new face, take a new direction? At least keep her fangs in her mouth or her knives in her purse? No.
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I am impressed that you can do quotes from one thread to another.
Cedar, that is simple. All you do is this: On the thread you want to copy from you do a multiquote or as many multiquotes as you want to transfer. Then you do as normal, you go to the reply and you push insert quotes. Then you push quote these messages.

The quotes will then show up in the reply composition area with all the necessary programming information (the quote stuff, member ID).

Then all you do is copy all of that stuff by doing a control c. You push control and c at the same time.

Then you go to the new thread and open up a reply. You do a control V. A control V pastes the content you have copied onto the reply box on the other thread.

The rest is just like a regular post.

It is not difficult.

I wonder if SWOT or Insane knows how to print out a thread. If they do not comment I will ask RunawayBunny. She will know.

I want the opportunity to really look at where we have gone these past couple of months, I think it has been. We covered a lot of ground. I for one feels there has been change.

Thank you everybody, for everything.

COPA
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Being a techie but not a site admin... Sorry. I'm not aware of any way to do that directly. Other than one "page" at a time. It might be useful to have a "print" option on the site, for printing out threads, although there may be some privacy and security issues with that, I'm not sure.
 

SeekingStrength

Well-Known Member
Happy hour here, too.

I attended an in-service today and one thing we were asked to do : Write down the name of the biggest influence on your youth.

uh, that would be my mother - who is not presently speaking to me - AGAIN.

My parents are also in their 80's. That bothers me. How can i fake/make a "relationship" with them all these years and then bow out when they are elderly? Well, I cannot....because they are not speaking to me, not answering the phone. That should simplify things.

I think of this every day. It feels wrong that I worked so hard to hold on to any semblance of a relationship for decades.... until now. Right now, I have had enough, but they are beginning to need more help. And, my mother told me two weeks ago that she does not want to talk to me. My brother lives in the same town, so he is there to help. While they complain about his wife, how he raises his child, he is hanging in. So, do I just leave it all with him? well, right now, i have no choice, because i am odd man out. Again.

It feels wrong to me, yet I have no desire to beg to be part of it again.

Another comment made in today's in-service...As adults, we make our own decisions, have our own beliefs, our own value systems.....
I was tempted to raise my hand and ask if they would tell my parents this; can you give me a note to give them? lol & ack.

not funny
 

allusedup

Member
Hi Everyone! Glad for the new thread, SWOT. :)
My FOO stuff, makes me giggle reading that phrase sometimes, lol. Seriously, my history has recently been told since I amstill new here but in case of newcomers, I will share again.
I am the oldest of three kids and had the responsibility of taking care of the younger two. My father had the personality and disposition of an alcoholic but never drank or did drugs. He was horrible to our mother and us and I could never figure out why. Mother was too good to him and we really were good kids. And then still searching for answers as an adult, I found out that power can be an addiction. And you might know I eloped with a man worse than my father. My 20 year marriage left deep scars on me and my son. My divorce was 15 years ago and he died 7 years ago but the collection of abusive tapes in my head and my sons are still there.
But with the help of my wonderful new friends, I am working on that.
 

nerfherder

Active Member
I wonder if the best way to avoid the long laggy post threads is to ask RB to please start a FOO Forum on the website?

(And my FOO issues are there, but they're not terrible like some of y'alls. Composed of frustration, not anger and damage. Well, not anymore. :) Now back to my scotch and salt&pepper pork rinds!)
 

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
Nerf, I think that is a great idea. It IS relevant to our adult children...our early lives and how we are so sensitive if our adult children act in certain ways toward us. Perhaps it could help us learn to both detach (if abuse is an issue and substance abuse) and learn to not take everything our grown kids say innocently with such seriousness.

Cheryl, what do you think as t he Queen of our wonderful forum?

Nerf, you are one smart lady.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
At least keep her fangs in her mouth or her knives in her purse? No.

Ha! That will be what we are looking for here, then. Fangs in her mouth, knife in her purse. Cedar's Rules of Engagement!

:O)

Here is a secret thing that is true. I don't mind my mom's snarkiness. Not really. I do love my mom and I don't care about the inappropriate or hateful things she does enough to stop seeing her. The betrayal, the utter lack of support from my mother and the shockingly hurtful things my sister did when my daughter was hurt and crazy and homeless ~ those are the things too disturbing to go along with. That they attack me like that in such stupidly and pointlessly hurtful ways is unbelievable. I am coming back from that time three years ago? But a homeless daughter, addicted and beat up and addled and grandchildren endangered and what then happened next with the male who beat and left her for dead ~ I do not know how I made it through that.

I don't know.

I cannot forgive or let go or just let that sit in the past or ~ there is nothing I can do with those feelings. To have been treated so badly when I was so broken....

WTF

***

It is possible to go there any time I want to, or to call her. I think about doing it sometimes, to rock my sister's world.

I really do.

roar

But then, like always, it could be their truth that they are the ones horrified at the way I am behaving and who knows what is really true and when I think about the way everything has been, especially in these past years, I understand separate is best. I do wonder sometimes whether I should be fighting what is happening and what that would look and feel like. I am in a middle place on it. Between my sister and my brother, my mom is well cared for, and that is the deciding factor.

I miss my mom. Fangs and all, I do miss her. Fangs and all, I will be very sad when she is gone and this time is lost.

But her behavior toward me has become increasingly inappropriate and everything to do with my mom and my sister is seriously way out of balance, and I will never forgive my sister for that.

Family ties going into the future...I think about that, sometimes. If my kids were doing well, I would have a different take on that. As things stand, my FOO has been anything but compassionate or supportive.

Just the opposite.

It is what it is.

I don't have to like it.

I am sad about it, though.

Here is the thing about that last phone call, when my mother was rude to D H and I called her on that and she hung up on me: She had called to tell us that my sister was in the hospital due to an allergic response.

And it was so incongruous.

My daughter had been in and out of Neuro Intensive and plain old Intensive and treatment centers and homeless and for heaven's sake!

And they had done what they had done.

I don't want to think about them, anymore. I understand it may be difficult to be supportive, or to know how to approach someone whose life has devolved the way mine has and whose children are suffering.

I don't have to be sane or kind or forgiving around those issues.

But as I have posted before, if my mom were not being well cared for, I would take that on.

I had not been aware there was such unresolved pain still, around the way my mom and my sister responded during those hellish years.

But there is.

Betrayal is always such a sudden, shocking thing. That is a component of betrayal, I suppose.

I am okay with my decision to turn away from them. It is right to do that. I will concentrate on healing the hurt of it. When I made the decision not to go to my mother's last summer I was still angry and scared and confused about so many things ~ about everything really, as we do get when we have been through something terrible. I have been curious about them ~ I have been cheating, as SWOT would say.

I will have to begin taking far better care of myself around these issues. I am glad I revisited the trauma of those years, Copa. I was beginning to wonder, like I always do, what was the matter with me that I was not seeing my mother and that I was believing and posting such nasty things about my own family.

I really am very angry.

I don't know just how to address the way this feels in a good and healing way.

Cedar

So...is it my sister feeding on my mom's dysfunction? My mom and my sister...it is just unbelievable, what this all looks like.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Well, I cannot....because they are not speaking to me, not answering the phone. That should simplify things.

This is very wrong of them, Seeking.

Decency forbids it now, in this time when you need their strength to be strong enough, to make sense of things, to know what to do.

You are right. It does simplify things, but it hurts us in our hearts very much. As we have done our sharing here on the Foo Chronicles, it has been like, an iota of comfort to me to know the things that happen in my family, to me, are patterns that happen in every dysfunctional family. It is like when we first learned that our kids' behaviors were similar to the behaviors of other addicted kids, and let ourselves off the hook about that a little bit.

But it still is so hurtful to know they ~ to know. It is so hurtful a thing to see their behaviors, and know what that means, and to know they did it when our children were outrageously endangered and dangerous and we are so upset.

I could scream and cry for you Seeking. This is just what happened to me.

I think of this every day. It feels wrong that I worked so hard to hold on to any semblance of a relationship for decades.... until now. Right now, I have had enough, but they are beginning to need more help. And, my mother told me two weeks ago that she does not want to talk to me. My brother lives in the same town, so he is there to help. While they complain about his wife, how he raises his child, he is hanging in. So, do I just leave it all with him? well, right now, i have no choice, because i am odd man out. Again.

Well, I don't know what the answer is there Seeking or how to heal ourselves and come through it healthy and free of the hurt of it. But I do know each of us has the other's back, here on this thread. I am sorry this is happening to you, and I am glad you posted in; and somehow, we will get ourselves and one another through it.

:mcsmiley1:

This is the Conduct Disorders motorcycle I used while I was still not so sure what had happened to me or what it meant or what I wanted to do about it. It represents determination to move to a place of my choosing, to me.

In the saddlebag is a needlepoint "F You, Mom".

:O)

There is also an English country club library with good scotch and deep leather chairs and leaded glass windows in the saddlebag.

That is where we keep our criminal parents until we decide what to do with them.

Because we do love them after all, but we need to figure this out.

Cedar

:starplucker:

We will get through this, Seeking.
 
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