Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[BusynMember]

SWOT, he IS kind and he may be doing the best he can. YOU decide. Don't sit around being said because perhaps he isn't college material and seems unable to organize his life. I can't either. What saved me from being your son (minus t he delusions and pot) was that I got married so I was, in a way, rescued. If my parents would have thrown me out,l I would have fared no better because of my learning disabilities and neurological differences.

the only reason I wasn't thrown out was that I was engaged. I did not think the marriage woulds be good, but I knew it would save me from being homeless. My mean mother thought I was lazy instead of impaired and as determined to get me a profession and decided it would be as a secretary so I got to go to business school.

Nothing could be worse for somebody with spatial orientation problems and organizational issues than a secretary, but I had no choice if I didn't want the streets. I did learn to type fast, after I flunked typing the first time. The second time it clicked in and I took off. But you can't get a job just typing. I couldn't multi-task and made so many mistakes at work I'd get fired over and over again. I tried hard. My bosses always said so when they fired me and I was crying. Often they added, "You speak so well I figured you would do a good job." Yeah, my verbal skills are fantastic. IQ in superior range. But my performance level IQ, which is how you can put those verbal skills to work, was only 85.

I got fired rom places like a bagger at Jewel because I could not figure out the right and eassy way to bag groceries and nobody told me (they assumed I'd know), McDonalds, a file clerk, a receptionist at a busy doctor's office (this was a multitasking hello for me) and many other jbs, but I tried. I tried hard.

It was not my IQ at fault. It was my executive function skills/learning disabilities/non-verbal learning disability. I did find a few jobs that were not multi-tasking and mostly verbal that I could keep. This was the minority.

I understand my life better now and get why I had so much trouble keeping jobs most find simple and no longer beat myself up over what I couldn't help.

I don't know if your son is like this or not, but he did have challenges at birth and then a head injury. He may be like me in his own way. But again you know him best.

I hope my sharing did not offend you. And I hope you get a strong cuppa coffee (as Cedar says...ROAR) and take on the day. Think back to your son as a child and if he had any difficulties early on. That says vollumes.

Big hugs and a good morning. Kiss that bed good-bye until next night time and be the strong woman I know you are. Maybe access help for yourself as I had to do. You are not alone, no matter what YOU choose to do. It is your life. We all support you and accept you with open arms. I won't be home until 4 or so today (work plus psychology appointment) but cedar and AUP are here and I will definitely read anything you write after I get home.

BE GOOD TO YOURSELF!!!! Your son WILL call. He's probably just not looking forward to having to face the music when he walked out on rehab.

 

[nerfherder]

I am sure my brother loved my mother. I'm not sure in what way.

First, Harvard math professor Dr. T. Lehrer gave a presentation on the phenomenon:

Second, a serious note:

I could totally see (and hear) my mom and aunt writing at this level about my grandmother. (Frankly I'd place Sophie Tucker's "Yiddische Mama" in this category - and I HATE that song. You can find it on YouTube, I'm not even going there.) On the other hand, she was taken away and murdered somewhere in Latvia by the Nazis when my aunt was in her late teens. (I sometimes feel like I'm my grandparents' child, rather than my mother's, because they spoke of their parents so much - and I do have a lot of their characteristics. The "homebody-ness" and "mamale" quality earthiness of her, and the crazed bootlegging excitement-seeking <special F-word>-You attitude of my grandfather.

I guess if she rejected his need for mothering in exactly the right way, he'd be still fighting for her approval. The other behaviors - if I was a shrink, I'd say - thinking back on the no-bull<special S-word> approach of our old marriage counselor - "Look. You like men. That's fine. Stop trying to justify it by supporting boys and getting yourself into situations by trying to be their special friend instead of their teacher! Are you nuts? You're going to get in big trouble you can't get out of."

You, however, SWOT, if you want to get involved, bring this up to someone in his area who's a "Mandated Reporter." If you want to stay way the heck out of this, and I'm dead serious, write an anonymous note to the school guidance counselor, or school nurse where he works, then drop it. I've worked as a lunch lady, and even as that I had to sign off affirming that I had to report anything that made me suspicious (and had in fact done so on a couple of occasions.)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We seek to as the parents our children need, and who we deserve to be instead of acting as if we have been abused by our own children. Even when they have in fact abused us.

Immediately, my mind created ten thousand images of why this could not be so. My children would never in a million years abuse me, right?!? But they do, don't they, or they would never have done what they are doing. Part of who I want to be when I come through this is someone others ~ my children included ~ do not want ever to disappoint or cause pain.

I want to be someone they respect, and I want them to be able to respect themselves. I want them to be able to choose for themselves, and to believe in themselves. Which sounds pretty generic and self-justifying until you really do have a look at the nature of the toxicities roaring through the family line. They seem to devolve into the question, not of capability, but of sustained ability to hold faith with strength and rightness and all the things represented when we say the word love in the agape sense.

This is a major upswing. In the past, I have been the one who did not want to cause pain. In the past, I have assumed others would be disappointed with me. I apologize sincerely and immediately and I mean it and try to listen and do better and have been that way all of my life. I am often in that place where I am not exactly sure how this thing, whatever it is, happened. Writing and writing here as we all have, I see so many weird, hurtful patterns. So, all at once, toxic is not just a concept I read about in a story about a poisoned pond. Toxic, the kind of toxicity we all have been left with, is a living, breathing virulence, a miasma of rot and sickness with tendrils everywhere in our psyches.

Out it goes.

First, like always, we need to become aware of the shape of these things we wish to become aware of and change.
A mystery story, in a way. Track and confront the faulty or downright toxic belief systems. Joe Friday time, again.

I like Monty Python for this business of clearing the toxicities, too.

Yay.

***

I am examining professional life versus personal expectations, this morning. Tracking through there to find and expose FOO. Initially, I posted they did not seem to have affected my professional life.

This is so terribly not true.

The lady who came to see me yesterday was someone I graduated high school with. I learned that those in our class followed the paths set out for them ~ some, so horribly destructive.

Clearing this material in our psyches matters.

***

It was not until I had succeeded and then, failed so abysmally in "mother" that, finding myself with nothing to lose, I even allowed myself to have a professional life.

There is anger in this kind of thinking, and I am glad. In following anger, I have found and cleared many things. Here again, as in Copa's wondering about arrogance and the strength in it and the feeling of wrongness in it, anger may not be the correct term. So, we will watch as these parts come clear to us. Just as arrogance turned out to be reclamation of the right to boundaries, anger will have to do with something which was always ours, which was our right thing from the beginning, and which our toxic upbringings and belief systems have ensured that we will never access.

When we feel shame, that is where we must go.

Anger, arrogance, that feeling of fraudulence.

Here we go, then.

In the engine that drove where I would place myself in my professional life, I see the intense toxicity of my FOO. In having created and recreated myself, over and over again, I understand
my FOO had nothing whatsoever to do with those beginnings but everything in the world to do with what I did with what I attained so easily and well.

Again then, with a sense of legitimacy or fraudulence.

How extraordinary.

Those raised as we were are at a serious disadvantage in the arena. That set of belief systems regarding what we are capable of needs to be addressed, too. That will take us into the real world, and find us reporting on our successes or failures, here.

Here is a thing I did last year in the real world:

So, I am afraid to drive across bridges. Last summer, I committed to doing something that meant I would have to drive across a bridge.

I did it.

This summer?

I have not done it, yet.

Should I survive this summer's driving-across-the-bridge experience, successfully resolving whatever the real fear is there, I will post about it, here.

Crossing the great waters is a metaphor for transformation.

A fantasy: We are within an hour of the shores of the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. If I can overcome this fear of driving over bridges, I will climb onto the boulders that line the shore of this Great Lake and watch the sun rise and declare myself healed of this part of things.

These kinds of limits ~ fear of driving, fear of heights, fear of rising ~ I think they are all bound up in what our FOO taught us about who we were and what we dared consider ourselves capable of. They are in there, those old belief systems and toxicities, weakening us in our professional lives in ways we cannot help but acquiesce to.

It's almost like we are hypnotized; dangerous to challenge the chilling horror of what we were named when we are sickened by what rises into the night air, convincing us it is real. Copa, you have posted that one of your most puzzling questions is how you could have accomplished what you did away from your family and wound up in bed after coming to interact with them, again.

After coming to identify with them, and with who you are in their eyes.

This is true for me, too.

***

It will take time, I am sure. I am not going to push or traumatize myself over undoing the identity forged by my FOO, but I am going to begin becoming aware of where they live, of what they tell me about myself in the larger world. I think I have been engaged in this process already.

Here is another observation: It was while I was living away from this area, away from the area my FOO inhabits, that I was able to raise my family, survive its loss, recreate myself. Buying the cabin here was a mistake. D H insisted. It is beautiful, but it has been weakening me, setting me up in emotional flashback and I knew it and I did it anyway and I did my best and that took strength, too.

But I did not have SWOT's term: emotional flashback, then.

So, those are the kinds of things I am going to try to become aware enough of to address.

I am grateful we have undertaken this journey.

Thanks, you guys.

:O)

Cedar

So, here is the question I have been wondering about lately: As we learn to respect ourselves, as we face and free those caches of anger or resentment or fear of self-loathing...will that change the family dynamic we have created with our children?

Yes of course it will.

That is the reason, the why behind it and that matters for the generations to come.

***

Copa, if you are willing, I would like to hear more about your dancing. I hear regret when you speak of the loss of that Copa.

Driving, the fear of it, is a piece of what happened to you when you went home; when you chose to care for your mother and re-engage with the sister.

These things are true for me, as well.

Ballet taught me my body in a way that made it mine. For the first time Copa, I knew my body as an intricate instrument capable of creating a kind of breathtaking gift, a kind of beauty come of strength and choice.

Those are the feelings I would like to know about Copa, that came for you in your dancing.

When we moved here to this small town, ballet in the way I was meant to do it was possible only if I drove across the bridge.

That is when I began karate classes. Karate is not the same thing. Tai Chi is not the same thing. Though I was well along the path, before I created of myself a black belt, we moved, again. Then came Tai Chi.

I gave up writing too, before completing the try on that.

The question: Who do you think you are?

Hello there, mother.

Who I think I am is on you. Who I create of myself: that is where we are going, next.

Without you. Without my sister, though I am not sure how she would fit in here except that for each of us, these younger sisters do figure in somehow.

There is something here that matters, something we need to know about how our sisters fit in here, in our adult lives. Something having to do with hatred, with targeting us for...? Something to do with their feeling illegitimate unless we are crushed or discredited or usurped.

Something we are wound into again, when we interact in any way with our families of origin.

So...why would my sister have continued calling me once I'd decided, and acted on the decision, to turn away? Again, what I see here is a usurpation, is a taking over of, is a kind of I am the Cedar role, now.

Thoughts?

I see that in your sister's actions toward your mother, and toward the money aspect of things too, Copa.

So, none of this is unique. However outrageous, these have to be typical patterns in dysfunctional families. Here is the question: Does anyone know of a dysfunctional family that was ever able to develop the role flexibility described as the difference between a healthy and a dysfunctional family?

What it must be, for my sister in my FOO, is that until I am destroyed, she is not legitimately the Cedar role.

For me in this time, the role playing in the Cedar role is looking a little tattered around the edges. (Or, blasted apart would be a great analogy, too.)

That was a joke.

:O)

So...given that my father named me Cinderella; given that these changes in our family of origin occurred after my father's death; given that my sister hated the male who would swoop in and save my mother from her. Given that my sister seems somehow to need to see me ~ I don't know ~ humbled, I guess would be a good term. given that my sister seems to need to see me however it is she needs to see me ~ and it isn't good, not at all ~ before she can be the hero in my mother's life instead of me, instead of the man who would have taken my mother away from my sister's evil influence altogether.... But my sister is not the Cedar role because her true intent is to exclude and shame and be the legitimate provider of largesse, stealing the mother's authority and usurping the Cedar role to do it.

?

Given that you were the hero figure who swooped in and saved and cherished and found value in and deeply loved the mother your sister sucked dry and tossed aside, Copa...how do all these disparate pieces, each so eerily a part of some pattern, fit together.

You are the hero figure who saved the mother, Copa.

the man who wanted to marry my mother, the Greek Orthodox priest? Believed it was his purpose, believed he had come into my mother's life to save her. No one knew what that meant.

Not even him.

Now we see.

Well, isn't that something.

Cedar





:O)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You, however, SWOT, if you want to get involved, bring this up to someone in his area who's a "Mandated Reporter."

What did I miss?

Whatever it is, SWOT, we are here for you.

Now I need to go read through this thread.

Cedar

 

[SeekingStrength]

Hi,

Just started reading on this thread a few nights ago and have a lot of catching up to do, so forgive me if it is not cool to jump into the middle of a conversation wanting shoulders to cry on.

My mom is not talking to me right now and has not in a few weeks. That happens with some regularity since I was about 6 yo. She may go years without going silent and one time she went several years being silent. It usually last a few weeks/months.

After she got mad this last time (she was complaining on the phone that my dad won't listen to her directions in the car and I said something to the effect of, Well, Mom it is difficult because you give them about 2 feet before the driver is supposed to take the turn). And, she got furious. ---and, okay, i got furious right back. There was more to the convo, but that is it in a nutshell. And, i know there is your side, there is my side and there is the truth, lol. I probably did not come across as nicely as I remember.

ANYway, since then my dad told me that she sent Difficult Child money. Dad and I had a nice conversation on the phone. He has never, ever gone silent on me.

I have tried to reach him on their home phone at least ten times since then. He has not answered. I have tried mornings, afternoons and evenings.

Now, my brother has gone silent. He has not returned a phone call, an email and several texts. My brother has also never gone silent on me. In fact, my brother usually returns a text within 10 minutes. We are 13 months apart and are pretty close. We never argue about anything.

Last time I spoke with my brother, he told me there is a family get together with cousins this next Saturday and that I am invited. This is being planned by an aunt who lives in another town and will take place in a restaurant. I, now, have no intention of going. Things have just gone weird. and, i suspect that Difficult Child has something to do with all this.

As of Sunday about 9pm, I have stopped trying to reach anybody. This happened after I texted sister in law Sunday night just to make sure nothing was wrong and nobody was in the hospital. She texted back, No, all is fine with a smiley face. sister in law does not get along with my parents and I doubt she would take part in hiding anything from me.

I do not know that anybody IS hiding anything from me. Obviously, i do not know WTH is going on. Difficult Child is extremely vindictive and I can only imagine what he has told my parents to pay husband and me back for not helping him this last time. My mom almost always believes what Difficult Child tells her, but my dad and brother were the first two, years ago, to decide Difficult Child had major problems and could not be trusted.

Something just seems to be amiss.

My guess is it is best for 59yo me to lay low.

Your thoughts, if you have a moment?
Thanks.
SS

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And now Nerf is with is and sometimes Insane.

I know you meant Insane Canadian. It made me laugh though, to read this. Have you seen it, Nerf?!?

:O)

You, me, everybody. I guess you know from reading that I have stayed off work now for 2 and a half years. I have largely isolated myself, too.

Since reconnecting with FOO, Copa.

Like me; overwhelmed in the toxic of it, laid low by shattering geologic plates and hissing magma. Spewing, exploding, lighting the night skies; thundery and huge slabs of lightning.

Well alright. So now we know what that red stuff is.

Ahem.

She still insists I'm borderline and I don't care anymore

The thing about insisting on a diagnosis like borderline:

1) It names your sister, that she does this. Her choices were condemnation or compassion. She picked and fastened on and rides "condemnation" real hard, SWOT.

With spurs, she rides "condemantion".

So you know who she is.

I am sorry.

It is a sad truth for each of us that our sisters...I don't know what to say. I know ladies who love and are loved by their sisters. It seems a magical thing to me, that this could be so.

We have nothing to grieve; we never had those things we grieve.

We do not have sisters now anymore than we ever had sisters. We each had only one sister; we cannot know what life might have been either without that sister at all, or with a sister who was normal.

It just is what it is.

It's fine.

2) In insisting that you have a diagnosis ~ especially right smack in the face of professional assessments indicating you absolutely do not fit that diagnosis ~ your sister is trying to disempower, to delegitimize, you.

I don't know why. But I do know it is the same thing my sister is doing, and Copa's, too. We are looking at our situations with our sisters (and mothers) as though they were the normal ones and we somehow are not getting something important and so, have been excluded from that wonderful thing we have savored and dreamed about.

Family.

We never had sisters. We never had mothers.

We do not have them, now.

But we did most amazingly well with what we did have. That being the case, we will do amazingly, blazingly well once we allow ourselves to give up on this whole family thing. We never had it. We never will.

There is nothing to regret.

Cedar


It is what it is.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This is from a book entitled The Martial Arts by Ransom.

It is a beautiful book. It is this book and the belief systems espoused in it that fired my curiosity regarding martial arts philosophy and discipline.

I have no parents;
I make the earth and sky my parents.
I have no home;
In the depths of my soul (saika tenden) I make
my home.
I have no divine power;
I make integrity my power.
I have no means;
Humility is my means.
I have no magic power;
Internal force is my magic.
I have neither life, nor death;
I make the Eternal my life and my death.
I have no body;
I make courage my body.
I have no eyes;
The flash of light and there are my eyes.
I have no ears;
Sensitivity serves as my ears.
I have no limbs;
Instantaneous movement, there are my limbs.
I have no law;
I make my own protection my law.
I have no strategy;
Freedom to kill and freedom to give back life
(sakkatsu juzai), there is my strategy.
I have no purpose;
Opportunity is my purpose (kisan ~ I seize the
opportunity).
I have no miracle;
Just law is my miracle.
I have no principle;
Adaptability to all circumstances (rinkioken),
there is my principle.
I have no tactics;
I make existence and the void (kyojitsu) my
tactics.
I have no talent;
I make a quick mind (toi sokumyo) my talent.
I have no enemy;
I make irresponsibility my enemy.
I have no armour;
I make benevolence and uprightness my armour.
I have no castle;
The immutable spirit (fudoshin) is my castle.
I have no sword;
From the state which is above and beyond,
from thought (mushin) I make my sword.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And this, as well:

"For Thou didst form my inward parts;
Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb.
I will give thanks to thee, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Thy works,
And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from Thee,
when I was made in secret,
and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth.
Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Thy book they were all written,
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them."

Psalm 139:13-16

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

SeekingStrength I am going to tell you what I would do if I were strong, not what I would probably do.

If I were strong I would go to the party at the restaurant. I would let everybody have their feelings, and I would stroll in like Princess Grace (nobody anymore even knows who she is but I do.)

If there are nefarious things going on, it is their shame to carry. Not yours.

My son used to talk bad about me, and he probably still does. I have said on this forum before that the extent to which it caused me one bit of pain, anger or shame was a mistake. He let himself down, not me.

ANYway, since then my dad told me that she sent Difficult Child money. Dad and I had a nice conversation on the phone. He has never, ever gone silent on me.

If anybody wants to help out D C it is their right. If they want to do it to undermine you, fine and dandy.
What can you do about it? It's between them and Difficult Child. Stay out of it. You know where you stand and you love your child. What anybody thinks is their business.

So, counting up family members, you will go into the restaurant with at least 50 percent supporting you. Your Dad, a stalwart. Your sister in law an ally. Your brother, probably OK. You really do not know what is going on with him. It could have nothing to do with you.

Gone silent, only your Mom. Going silent is something that I do. Somebody does something that hurts me and I do not confront it directly. I protect myself by distance and at the same time give the offender the deep freeze. My Mother almost usually but not always called me, and turned the other cheek. I was always grateful when she did so, when she took the higher road when I could not.

With all of that said, you are dealing here with YOUR feelings. And if you feel too vulnerable to go and have a good time, don't. You have nothing you need to prove to anybody.

The thing is I typically do go by my feelings, and chicken out, and feel bad about myself. Everything I have read of you in your postings is that you are focused, purposeful and seeking strength, after all.

You decide, SeekingStrength. A case can be made either way.

Welcome to the FOO thread, Seeking.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Big victory for me. It means she no longer matters to me.

I think the difference is not that our sisters don't matter. It is that we no longer believe in them. We are putting together the true pieces of what has always been the case with our sisters. We are finding startling similarities in the nature's of these sisters that we loved, and we are realizing that the sisters we loved never existed anywhere but in our hearts. There, we love our sisters; there in that space in our hearts where there was room we created for them.

The sisters we love are not the sisters we have.

We never had those sisters.

We only had these strange, twisted versions of sisters.

It is better to know.

She used to able to cause depression and deep despair in me.

That, I think this is true ~ that is because we were seeing ourselves through the eyes of our abusers. We are clarifying our perspectives and points of view through the sharing we do here. We are beginning to savor the taste of ourselves through our own eyes. I think we are finding the truth in how everything has transpired with our sisters, with our mothers, in our families.

It...I am strangely without anger regarding this information. It is almost as though I could not see what I see through some proscription set down by my mother. Like in that movie Stargate. Those yet enslaved were forbidden to write. They could live only in the present because, having no way to share and validate information, they couldn't know what was true.

And the true things turned out to be incredible things, powerful things having to do with destiny and self determination.

And once again, love in the agape sense of that word.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Welcome to the FOO thread, Seeking.

Roar.

What am I missing.

Welcome, Seeking. I am going to stop posting and just get to reading.

For heaven's sake. Roar. Cedar pours more coffee and prepares to download.

:O)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I guess what I fear is that everybody is thinking POOR, POOR COPA, she is always so much a conciliator, like that prime minister of Britain that wanted to pacify the Nazis. Poor COPA she always protects her Mother and not herself. She always wants to take the high road and to minimize and forgive the harm done to her. Poor COPA, she will always be a victim, because she cannot or does not want to take a stand for herself. She keeps protecting others that hurt her.

So I have gotten to the point. Are you all mad at me? I am sorry.

This is how far I am in my reading.

You always do take the high road, Copa.

That's where we met, remember?

:O)

Back to my catching up with you guys.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar thinks I have courage. I think I am just stupid. That I do not think about the potential effects on me before I do something. I do not think what it will be like for me when I come out the other end.

You do have courage. Incredible courage. You chose love.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

Copa, part of the challenge is to find balance.
Empathy, and introspection. Seeing the future, and the present. Trying to help others move forward without sacrificing our own forward momentum.

It's about the biggest single learning curve in life, and I for one haven't really found the balance yet. Too easy to swing from one side to the other... when what is really called for is both.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And, she got furious. ---and, okay, i got furious right back.

Oh, good for you, Seeking. They hate being defied. It is scary to stand up to them and to the status quo until we have had to stand up to our kids.

After that, standing up to our families of origin, if that is what is required, becomes nothing more than a choice.

My family of origin has not taken these changes well, either.

:O)

I am learning that means I am on the exactly correct path. They, these people who abused and hurt me when I was defenseless, or when I believed in them or thought they at least were willing to try to love me, are so upset that I am saying true things right out loud instead of justifying things I should never have allowed.

And I am so happy about that.

roar

Cedar

Oh, Seeking. I am so pleased and happy you are here, too.

We are all healing at a remarkable pace.

Something just seems to be amiss.

My take on it is that you are correct. Something is badly amiss. Think of the timing, here. Difficult child is having a hey day. He is manipulative and well spoken and they love him, too. He will use them and you know this. He will destroy you to get to them.

My heart hurts for you, Seeking.

My son has done this.

I imagine he made these same accusations he does to me, justifying his failures through blaming us. Because we have each found understanding and compassion for ourselves and for the other parents on the site too, we forget how unique an experience it is to be understood.

Our families do not understand. In their secret hearts, they blame us for what has happened to our kids as surely as we would do the same if the situation were reversed.

It helped me survive it the kind of shunned feeling, to think like that, to remember that.

My heart does hurt for you, Seeking.

That was a hard time, for us.

Our son wanted to move home, too. We had said no, too. He went to D H extended family to visit. And the rumors spread. And I can taste the taste of that to this day in my interactions with them.

***

When things became so unbalanced in my family of origin (which had nothing to do with either child in the same way it did with our son and D H extended family), I emailed my brother with my reasoning regarding not meeting my mother to welcome her home or taking any responsibility for her loneliness. I expected no quarter and received none. In the email, I told my brother he would always have access to me.

There has been no response. This is the second summer.

I did the right thing.

Both in calling my mother on her behavior, and in refusing to continue with the staus quo, I did the right thing.

There are times when that is all we can do.

The right thing.

If you go to the gathering, there will be the feeling of vindictiveness, and there will be the feeling of some secret, some open secret.

So, don't go.

Like we tell ourselves regarding our kids, we have time. We have time to draw a deep breath. We have time to name our situations.

We have time to choose something strengthening instead of toxic.

Do that good thing instead.

I can only say what I did: Take the high road, and take it alone. all this will be clarified in time. It is a putrid mess, right now. Don't breathe that air.

Was it usual for sister-in-law not to ask for clarification regarding your request? To me, that response means: I'm on your side. As in, this is really bad, and I am on your side.

I am sorry this is happening. It was excruciating, when it happened to us.

It helped me to remember that it is my choice to choose love; my son (or my daughter) are adults who will choose as they will. Nothing to do with me, whether they love or accuse me. A further, deeper, more shaming still level of loving an addict. They forget, and they blame.

And they use other people, and you son will use them now if he can.

And that will shame you too, in the end.

And actually, none of what they are doing now is the extended family's fault. They are, as D H family did too, responding as though your son were himself. They are responding as best they know to "truths" told by someone desperately focused on getting their sympathy and then, their money.

I wish this never happened to you.

I am glad you posted here.

Together, we have been helping one another decipher and face terribly hurtful things. We are stronger, more centered; we are better mothers and wives and people from what we have shared and from how we have grown through sharing and witnessing for one another.

Welcome, Seeking, with all my heart.

Cedar

 

[allusedup]

Good morning everyone! I have a situation I need some major advice on. It is my son of course. But I know at the very heart of what is going on is foo stuff. My son keeps putting himself in abusive relationships because his fsther was abusive to us both. I stayed in in way too long. 20 years for me and my son was almost 13 when I left. I had custody and moved out of my house to put a little distance between us. Father cried and manipulated, bribed and told him I was crazy, that things were not that bad. Until he got him to come back and live with him. I lost is because I knew what he was going back to but in the face of bribing the kid with not only a new dirt bike but one for his dad too (ex's mother bought them of course) the kid didn't stand a chance an there was nothing I could do. To say he was verbally abusive doesn't do justice to the severity of it. My dad was verbally abusive enough to warp my mind growing up. Compared to my ex, my dad was an amateur. It was awful. As my son got older he started to rebel against him and on several occasions would call me to come get him. One time he called me crying saying they had been in a bad one and he had hit an antique hutch I had there and broke his hand to the degree that he had have surgery to fix it. His dad died when he was 20. And it continued until then. Now he seems hell bent on being with women who are also abusive in some way. I made a post under another user name in may (pjw) about this girls child being ODD and possibly autistic. After being around this girl more and more, she clearly shows ALL the earmarks of borderline personality disorder. She has already screwed one of his friends in my sons house while he was out of town working. The house was clean when she moved in. I can't stand to walk in there now. She wanted a puppy and my son finally gave in. Before they got it I told my son "she doesn't even take good care of her son or help take care of the pets you have now, for cryin out loud". I had to go over there yesterday and only meant to stay a minute and the puppy was crying, extremely. She had it in its box locked up in the utility room. I went to see about it because it sounded so distressed and it was hot and out of water and covered up in its own stuff. Of course nothing is her fault. Its her kids fault the house was totalled, the kids fault she wanted the puppy, the friends fault she screwed him, lol. She is the reason her son has such problems. I was talking to my son over the weekend, it was 11am, the kid had been up for hours and her a*s was piled up in the bed asleep. When I was there yesterday she told me the kid had been really bad last week (she has him every other week). Told me he ATE a whole bar of deodorant. Her fault of course but here she is blaming him, a 3y/o. I have told my son you can't possibly have kids with this girl and he wants kids. And they are planning a wedding for cryin out loud. This is not about me and some may say its none of my business but he is my only child and this is a disaster waiting to happen. I will love anyone who loves my son but she is using and abusing him. I have to do something. Right or wrong I can't let this go any longer. I have of course already talked about some of this with my son. He is not aware that I know for sure about her sleeping with the friend. I want to approach it from the foo standpoint but also not sure if my son can handle that. He went through a terrible depression after his dad died and is better but not sure he is ready for that. Please, please give me some feedback/advice. I am at my wits end.

 

[allusedup]

I know I should have put this elsewhere but knew you guys would really understand the foostuff. Sorry.

 

[Copabanana]

Part of who I want to be when I come through this is someone others ~ my children included ~ do not want ever to disappoint or cause pain.

I do know what you want here, Cedar. I am thinking of your friend with the Ivy League Professor son who adores his Mother who says she and her home were largely out of control. That there is no justice or equity when somebody who gave so much, and did it so right, would not get her Just Deserts as a mother. But to seek to be somebody who others cherish seems such a fragile and dangerous goal. So outside of our reach and our control. The expectation that what we are will in any way influence our value to others, especially our children.

I am thinking about the people in concentration camps after Nerfherder's post about her grandmother. To those killers, the worth of their victims was less than nothing. It is difficult to even think about the minutes, the days before their deaths. Were the strongest of them able to hold themselves as precious and worthy and rise above the definitions of their captors?

Our children are not our captors, of course. I mean they can be in a spiritual sense but we are trying to strive beyond this.

sustained ability to hold faith with strength and rightness

Now, this is in your control and attainable I think.

I want to be someone they respect, and I want them to be able to respect themselves.

This too, but I would want to phrase it, I want to be someone worthy of their respect, because you will never be able to ensure that they do the right thing or one hundred percent act towards you with respect.

I am examining professional life versus personal expectations, this morning. Tracking through there to find and expose FOO. Initially, I posted they did not seem to have affected my professional life.

This is so terribly not true.

Me too. I have been thinking about this too. About the way I must have held myself at work, that allowed disrespect by my colleagues even though I was far and above the most competent and respected of any of them, or of anybody they had ever worked with, I would go so far to say.

These kinds of limits ~ fear of driving, fear of heights, fear of rising ~ I think they are all bound up in what our FOO taught us about who we were and what we dared consider ourselves capable of.

Me too.

Copa, you have posted that one of your most puzzling questions is how you could have accomplished what you did away from your family and wound up in bed after coming to interact with them, again.

After coming to identify with them, and with who you are in their eyes.

This is true for me, too.

I am sorry, Cedar, for you and for me.

Copa, if you are willing, I would like to hear more about your dancing. I hear regret when you speak of the loss of that Copa.

I would love to tell you more about my dancing. Part of going to the New Big City is because within 20 minutes there are more Tango teachers than anywhere else in the United States.

Driving, the fear of it, is a piece of what happened to you when you went home; when you chose to care for your mother and re-engage with the sister.

No, it had started well before. It started curiously enough while I was in Latin America running around the whole Southern Hemisphere, and jetting back and forth like Jackie Kennedy. My Mother was horrified I chose to do this and cut me off completely, hanging up on me if I called her.

It is not hard to believe that there is a relationship between the defiant mobility and confidence I had on the one hand, and the need to take it away in the domestic sphere, on the other. Because until the fear started I had been the most confident and capable of drivers. Totally and completely without fear to drive anywhere under any conditions.

Ballet taught me my body in a way that made it mine. For the first time Copa, I knew my body as an intricate instrument capable of creating a kind of breathtaking gift, a kind of beauty come of strength and choice.

Yes, I know. I did not achieve that kind of competency, I think, but I came close. I feel a sense of frustration because I can't bring to mind what I want to.

What did it feel like? Eyes were on me. I looked lovely in movement. I felt command of my self. A mastery that was cumulative. I felt command in a physical sense that translated into a spiritual sense as soaring and limitless. Undefined by anything other than this gift. And that my development as a dancer potentially was limitless. Even though my body could be limited, my energy and creativity and commitment as a dancer could not and would not be bound.

But then it was, because my son accidentally broke my foot. The only time I ever felt anything close to this was when after my mother's death I started to do Art.

The question: Who do you think you are?

Hello there, mother.

Yes. I think this was my Mother's response, exactly, when I decided to leave the country and leave everything behind me, including her. But I did it anyway. And stopped driving.

Again, what I see here is a usurpation, is a taking over of, is a kind of I am the Cedar role, now.

Yes, I see this.

How this worked in my family really confuses me still. Because my sister always saw to it that she had more than me of legitimacy, and influence and more of every thing. From the beginning. She set out to conquer. The thing is while it worked, it did not work. Because even though I had nothing and nobody and was humbled and excluded, it never seemed to work for her. It was like OUT DAMNED SPOT and I was still there. Nothing ever seemed to work for my sister where I no longer existed. I just kept coming back. Still humbled, and maybe down and out, but still there.

So there is no Cedar role in my family, because I forfeited everything from the beginning. So it ends up: How do you fight and destroy "forfeiting everything?" It is a very hard enemy to fight and destroy.

for my sister in my FOO, is that until I am destroyed, she is not legitimately the Cedar role.

Cedar, what and who are you beyond the Cedar role? Because you must be something to yourself beyond this, and I know you to be. Do you know?

Given that you were the hero figure who swooped in and saved and cherished and found value in and deeply loved the mother your sister sucked dry and tossed aside, Copa...how do all these disparate pieces, each so eerily a part of some pattern, fit together.

You are the hero figure who saved the mother, Copa.

Well, I certainly did as good as I could do. And I sure would be grateful to save myself just about now.

the man who wanted to marry my mother, the Greek Orthodox priest? Believed it was his purpose, believed he had come into my mother's life to save her. No one knew what that meant.

Not even him.

Now we see.

This is so sad, Cedar. That your mother does not seem to know that she requires saving. She would be so angry I think that anybody felt her predicament to be a sad one. And I really cannot see what the Priest saw in her, because to me she sounds brittle and artificial and mean and shallow (sorry Cedar.) I wonder what the Priest saw and felt in response to her, it must have been deeper than smart, funny, confident, pretty and stylish.

Very, very sad story, Cedar. To not know that you may have lost your chance to be redeemed. To have it totally pass you by because you cannot see it. Or cannot value it enough to see it.

Many, many years ago (maybe 35 or more) I saw a TV drama about a woman who could not allow herself to be loved. And a wonderful man tries and tries to love her. And she cannot do it. She cannot see it. She keeps seeing him as limited and not herself. And he is perfectly wonderful. The audience sees it. But she cannot accept his love, allow him to love her. The viewer watches this train wreck happen, as if in slow motion, hoping she can do it. And she does not. I remember. It was sad.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My son used to talk bad about me, and he probably still does. I have said on this forum before that the extent to which it caused me one bit of pain, anger or shame was a mistake. He let himself down, not me.

YES. And compromised every value he was brought up with to do it, transforming himself into someone we hardly recognize. I am writing about my own son here too, Copa. Here is a piece of insight for all of us: This is probably why we see our sons as the children they were before they fell. There is no resemblance between the grown man we saw coming through in the face of that young boy who was our son and the man our sons went on to become.

I was thinking about that just the other day, after a particularly disturbing conversation with my own son.

Just the other day.

Seeking, Copa next quoted a paragraph in which you described your father's silence. My father betrayed me, as well. There was something nasty in the air re: my mother. My sister was visiting at the time but I did not know then what I know about my sister, today. I had said nothing to D H about the strangenesses I had noted regarding whatever was happening between myself and my mom. One day, D H said something about not having heard from my parents in a while, and why don't I call and invite them for dinner. So, I said that I didn't think that was a good idea. D H poo pooed the whole thing. I called to invite them. My mother refused and told me that she had told me she was going to "do this". Then, she put my father on the phone. And he said they were not coming for dinner.

I was shocked into shamed silence.

This had never happened before with my father, either.

And my own father said: "Is there anyone else here you would like to talk to."

And I said no.

And we did not speak for five years.

Other than a call from my mother, who said: "This is between your father and D H. We can and should have a relationship without your D H in it."

And I said no.

And that was that.

At some point during those five years, my father had a heart bypass. I learned of it from my sister, who had taken to playing the role of family peacekeeper ~ and we see in her behavior since my father's death what the true dynamic was there. Anyway, I called the hospital to learn whether my father had lived through the surgery. Which sounds dramatic, I know. But all those issues were brought up by the potential represented by that kind of surgery. And my mother called me later that day. And I told her I already knew he had lived.

And she was so angry, Seeking.

And directed that I be given no further information, if I should call to ask about my own father.

Ouch.

When I inadvertently stumbled into my mother one day in a place I would never have expected to find her, she pursued me. She said things like, "I am your mother. You need me."

I learned later ~ years later, that my mother had gotten all kinds of support for herself through presenting me as some heartless, misguided daughter married to an abusive husband who had destroyed her relationship to her child.

My mother.

What a piece of work.

***

Oh. I know where I was going with this. Your family may be kinder than mine. My mother was determined to isolate me, and enlisted my father to do it. My sister played her nefarious part.

So I don't know about that restaurant gathering. Copa is very strong. She could be right about attending. My D H would do as Copa suggested. It would break me to do that, to be there with them, with their contempt and their games that I don't understand but that they seem forever determined to win.

There should not be a win with family, should there?

If you do go, if I were going to do something like that, it would be well armed, and wearing my big girl panties.

What they are doing to you is wrong.

The part about your father going silent is chilling.

When I write about vulnerabilities to family of origin through the things that have happened to the children we love, these are the kinds of things that I mean.

None of this would ever have happened until the kids fell because I had long since left my Family of Origin behind and created my life very well. When the kids fell, when I could not help them no matter what I did, I came to live in what SWOT calls "emotional flashback". That is a horribly vulnerable place to be.

My family of origin moved right in on that weakness, on that hurt and confusion in me.

And I was without defense, because of my kids; because I could not know how to help my kids, and because I did not yet have this site.

I do not know why these things happen.

I do know you must find faith in yourself.

That is how you make it through.

Faith.

This is a betrayal none of us could be prepared for. If you were strong, if your son had not come home, none of this would be happening because you would be too strong for it to succeed.

We made it through, Seeking. We are here, and still standing.

You will, too.

But it is going to be a hard thing.

***

Oh for heaven's sake. I still have 44 messages to go to catch up with everyone.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

My son keeps putting himself in abusive relationships because his father was abusive to us both.

I have to do something. Right or wrong I can't let this go any longer.

The thing is Belle is what can you do? Except talk to him honestly, I mean. But even that, he does not have to listen to you.

If I had to summarize what I think your concern is it is this:

SON, I stayed with your Dad too long. It hurt me and it hurt you. Because I fear you came to believe that this is the way relationships are. They are not, at least, they should not be.
I worry that because you saw me mistreated by your father, and because he mistreated you, that you feel you do not deserve better. And that makes me sad. I know that your choices about relationships are yours to make. But I have to tell you that what I have seen of your relationship with xxx, I am concerned. I just want you to know that I value you and hope that you will find in marriage the respect and the care that I know you deserve, as do I.

Something like this is direct but not accusatory. I do not know if you should talk to him or if this would be the right tack to take. Others will chime in and I am curious what they will say.

I see that a lot of what you are feeling could be guilt. Guilt is only good if you learn from it to change directions. Wallowing and self-blame are not constructive. Your son is responsible for his own life now. What he does with it is his responsibility, his choice and his opportunity to learn through mistakes and successes. It would not be right on your part to get in the way. Your son sounds competent and able to decide on his own.

Like all of us you have to separate our what is FOO and what is the appropriate response of a mother of an adult child. Nobody can do this except you. Why not try to write a letter to him (do not send it) and go through it with two highlighters. One color is FOO and the other color marks the voice you choose.