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This is me, too.


When difficult child daughter began acting out though, I wondered whether I had done things I could not remember.  SOMETHING was wrong.  I mean, no one is a perfect parent, but I just could not see what husband and I could have done that could account for what was happening to us.


Still, there had to be something.


And I was the mom at home.


And we've all seen the Three Faces of Eve, right?  Where the mother was so awful and the daughter had a thousand personalities.


And my mom was pretty awful.


Then, difficult child son brought addiction into the picture, which I refused to believe in either.


I could not let go of that sense of responsibility.  Something was wrong, and though I had sworn with my whole heart, with everything I knew or had or would ever have, not to be my mother...I could never be sure, until I had been here on this site long enough to explore it all, that I hadn't slipped up somewhere and caused all this.


It is a strange thing to say, but I was freed from that when one of us ~ maybe you, MWM? ~ began posting about the genetic component to difficult child behavior.


And oh, hello, look at my family of origin.


And then, poor difficult child daughter diagnosis after diagnosis came in.


I cannot figure out today whether I should just be happy I ever put all these pieces together, or whether I should waste yet more time trying to be all self pitying about all these years, and about all the different ways I might have been stronger, and might have turned the tide for all of us that way, had I not been so focused on trying to figure out what I did.


Grrr.


Oh, well.


Cedar


P.S.  Oh, excuse me.  What I meant to say was:  "My sister is like that."


Darn auto correct.



:O)


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