ScentofCedar
New Member
This is a quote (Anne Rice) that helped me understand why I could not just turn my feelings off (detach): "Those we love are simply...those we love." Adding guilt to the mix because we are not able to respond in a way we haven't learned yet is not helpful.
That is my son out there, living the nightmare cycle of addiction and recovery and addiction ~ the self-same boy I birthed and celebrated and nursed and cherished.
It was impossible for me to accept his situation with equanimity.
Detaching is a tool.
It is a learned skill.
It takes time, and effort, and none of us gets it right every time.
************
I am not sure I like the term "codependent". Are the parents we see all around us, those whose children are successful and reflect so well on them ~ are these parents codependent when they tell us "so and so took his doctorate, or married a wonderful person, or is building a new home in our neighborhood"?
Or the ever-popular "Want to see pictures of the grandchildren?"
For parents like us, reviewing the situations our lives have presented us with is less a celebration than a challenge. Our children are not likely to have taken any doctorates lately, their mates tend to be as dysfunctional as the children are, themselves ~ and for them to be living anywhere near us would mean they were living in our houses WITH us.
And if WE have grandchildren, we are likely to be raising them ourselves.
But we can't just turn away from our adult children who are sick, or addicted or imprisoned.
Whatever has happened between our children and ourselves, we love them every bit as much as those so fortunate other parents whose children have just taken their doctorates.
Or...we wish we could love them that same way.
Naming the strength and commitment it takes to learn to balance our realities with our dreams and expectations for our children "codependent" smacks of brushing the pain we all live with, every day, under the nearest rug.
So, that's all I have to say about that, this morning.
There is true codependence. That is an illness having to do with locus of control. Loving someone whose life is a living nightmare ~ particularly if that someone is a child you have raised and cherished ~ I don't know. There should be another term for the skills we have all had to learn, to survive what has happened to our children.
For one, when was the last Mother's Day when any of us received a beautiful bouquet of roses from our successful, financially independent, happily married children?
That is a commonplace, for other parents.
Birthday cards, dinners out together with grown children appropriately dressed and healthy, grandchildren who have been to Disney World on their own parents' dimes ~ very few of us here on the site will ever know those pleasures.
Our children may never be altogether independent, financially or any other way.
Our children are frightened, sick, dirty, and poor.
They are, for the most part, uneducated.
Their prospects grow dimmer with each passing year.
And yet, somehow, we are supposed to accept that, call ourselves codependent (or worse) when we cannot accept what has happened to our families, and go on with our lives as though none of these things matter.
They do matter.
They matter very much.
We need to learn to function, to take joy in our lives, despite what has happened to our children and extended families.
Other parents are enabled to find joy IN their children.
So codependent is not a term I feel applies to us.
Warrior mom, yes.
Codependent ~especially as that term is used to describe a parent struggling to come to terms with the nightmare lives so many of our children are living ~ no.
Witz, I know you have had to learn to be stronger even than most of us ~ and that you had to learn quickly, almost between one breath and the next, how to survive what was happening to you.
I am very sure I would never have recovered at all, had I been presented with your situation.
Your advice is good advice, Witz. It will help Stands to survive what is happening to her son.
But it isn't helpful to berate us for not getting it. (It took me so long to understand too, Witz ~ you remember that, don't you?) As many times as I needed to come back here, right back into the same old soup everyone had just pulled me out of, you all were here for me.
And I made it.
Still a little shaky some days, but I did make it through.
Stands will too, Witz.
Your advice is good advice ~ it just comes across harshly because you expect others of us to be as strong as you had to be, as quickly as you had to be, to survive what happened in your family.
I never realized before what a blessing I had been given in that I had time to adjust to my situation.
You must be a very strong woman, Witz.
Barbara
That is my son out there, living the nightmare cycle of addiction and recovery and addiction ~ the self-same boy I birthed and celebrated and nursed and cherished.
It was impossible for me to accept his situation with equanimity.
Detaching is a tool.
It is a learned skill.
It takes time, and effort, and none of us gets it right every time.
************
I am not sure I like the term "codependent". Are the parents we see all around us, those whose children are successful and reflect so well on them ~ are these parents codependent when they tell us "so and so took his doctorate, or married a wonderful person, or is building a new home in our neighborhood"?
Or the ever-popular "Want to see pictures of the grandchildren?"
For parents like us, reviewing the situations our lives have presented us with is less a celebration than a challenge. Our children are not likely to have taken any doctorates lately, their mates tend to be as dysfunctional as the children are, themselves ~ and for them to be living anywhere near us would mean they were living in our houses WITH us.
And if WE have grandchildren, we are likely to be raising them ourselves.
But we can't just turn away from our adult children who are sick, or addicted or imprisoned.
Whatever has happened between our children and ourselves, we love them every bit as much as those so fortunate other parents whose children have just taken their doctorates.
Or...we wish we could love them that same way.
Naming the strength and commitment it takes to learn to balance our realities with our dreams and expectations for our children "codependent" smacks of brushing the pain we all live with, every day, under the nearest rug.
So, that's all I have to say about that, this morning.
There is true codependence. That is an illness having to do with locus of control. Loving someone whose life is a living nightmare ~ particularly if that someone is a child you have raised and cherished ~ I don't know. There should be another term for the skills we have all had to learn, to survive what has happened to our children.
For one, when was the last Mother's Day when any of us received a beautiful bouquet of roses from our successful, financially independent, happily married children?
That is a commonplace, for other parents.
Birthday cards, dinners out together with grown children appropriately dressed and healthy, grandchildren who have been to Disney World on their own parents' dimes ~ very few of us here on the site will ever know those pleasures.
Our children may never be altogether independent, financially or any other way.
Our children are frightened, sick, dirty, and poor.
They are, for the most part, uneducated.
Their prospects grow dimmer with each passing year.
And yet, somehow, we are supposed to accept that, call ourselves codependent (or worse) when we cannot accept what has happened to our families, and go on with our lives as though none of these things matter.
They do matter.
They matter very much.
We need to learn to function, to take joy in our lives, despite what has happened to our children and extended families.
Other parents are enabled to find joy IN their children.
So codependent is not a term I feel applies to us.
Warrior mom, yes.
Codependent ~especially as that term is used to describe a parent struggling to come to terms with the nightmare lives so many of our children are living ~ no.
Witz, I know you have had to learn to be stronger even than most of us ~ and that you had to learn quickly, almost between one breath and the next, how to survive what was happening to you.
I am very sure I would never have recovered at all, had I been presented with your situation.
Your advice is good advice, Witz. It will help Stands to survive what is happening to her son.
But it isn't helpful to berate us for not getting it. (It took me so long to understand too, Witz ~ you remember that, don't you?) As many times as I needed to come back here, right back into the same old soup everyone had just pulled me out of, you all were here for me.
And I made it.
Still a little shaky some days, but I did make it through.
Stands will too, Witz.
Your advice is good advice ~ it just comes across harshly because you expect others of us to be as strong as you had to be, as quickly as you had to be, to survive what happened in your family.
I never realized before what a blessing I had been given in that I had time to adjust to my situation.
You must be a very strong woman, Witz.
Barbara
