without my thinking I know better
Very hard to do this. Another indication of how differently we need to think, just to get through
the days and the nights, with a difficult child child.
Even if she is 40, and he turns 39 in a few days.
Example: The value inherent in old family cookbooks, or old family Bibles. There is a sense of history in most families, a sense of "this is who we are, this is how we see it, how we respond". At this phase of life, I should be the living representative of those kinds of values. There should be a feeling of fruition, of tradition, of "we did good".
Not that an adult child should rely on a mother or a grandfather for day to day advice...but there should be a sense of joy in who we are as a family; there should be a sense of moral touchstone for the values we raised our children with.
Very hard to be reviled or manipulated, instead.
I know I have to give that up, Recovering. You are right. It is part of judging, to want that.
But I do. Just as I wanted to be a television perfect mom...I want to be Aunt Bea, now.
Or...wait. I want to be someone cuter than Aunt Bea, but still wise.
that I have a right to judge her
I am trying really hard to be aware of where I give advice and stop doing that.
Again though,
we are supposed to be older, wiser people than the younger generations. Our children and grandchildren are supposed to be able to come to us to talk about the good old days, and we are supposed to be proud of them and happy for them and for us.
But again Recovering, for the situations we all find ourselves in, you are right. Giving advice turns out to be paying for whatever we have been fool enough to suggest, or into a child and all the grandchildren, too, moving home.
It does at my house, anyway.
I'm afraid we are going to have to shoot Aunt Bea.
hen however she moves around the planet is not indicative of something I can change or heal or shift into something I want.
This is strengthening.
Even for looking at family of origin stuff, this is strengthening.
This is the secret to not judging.
This is the envisionment for letting go.
I put this in my quote book.
It took me some real time to be able to see my daughter for who she really is, the positive and the negative and accept those without needing to do something about any of it.
I feel pretty guilty still, for not being Aunt Bea.
Andy and Opie did live with her, you know.
Some days it is very hard for me to know that I have said "no" to the moving home thing.
Of course, Andy was a Sheriff. Not a drug addict.
And now that I think about it...they were living with Aunt Bea to help
her, not the other way around.
Hmmm....
allows the love and releases the rest of it as truth I can't do anything about.
Truth I can't do anything about.
This is good, Recovering.
I think we really have to let go of them in so many different ways until they are separate human beings whom we can see standing before us without our own image being reflected back
Let go, stop judging, stop taking our value from that mother role, altogether. Eventually, getting real enough to stop taking our identities from any role, at all.
We need (I do, anyway) to become aware of the Aunt Bea within. That is a beautiful role model, and that would be such a beautiful life to have...but it is not my life.
And it never was.
Still, it's a beautiful dream to hold.
On rereading: As I went through the part about Andy being a Sheriff, not a drug addict, I got my position in life a little more clearly. I can still be Aunt Bea. (For those who have not read the threads on family of origin stuff, I have no acceptable role model in real life.)
Anyway.
I can still be Aunt Bea, but I need to be who Aunt Bea would be if Andy were drug addicted.
This reads as facetious. It is not. We are going through our lives as parents of addicted or mentally ill adults without a way to know how to hold our heads above water. When others discuss their doctorate-holding sons and daughters. When others discuss their grandchildren. When others have what they have, and we do not.
We need positive imagery to counter what has happened to us, so we can figure out how to claim and cherish ourselves and our lives without being ashamed or disgusted or condemning or judging ourselves.
It's a tall order.
I have a feeling that in letting them go in that way we also release them and us, in some cases, from an unhealthy bond.
It certainly is a painful bond, Recovering. When I think about how my son is handling my changing the rules of interaction...you probably are right about the unhealthy nature of the bond.
I could not see the lack of respect for my son in my excusing and accepting whatever he said, whatever he did.
I think ~ I was going to say I think there is a time for that, when they are young. But I think there is never a time for encouraging our children to be less than honest with themselves about what they are doing and who they are becoming.
I imagine how differently everything would look today if I had been stronger, had seen the truth sooner.
And I realized none of it has anything to do with me. Addiction is addiction. I was a good mom. This is what addiction looks like.
You are right, Recovering.
Perhaps the television mom I need to model myself after is Roseanne.
:O)
Until I let go of that whole mom role.
Or, I would have to be Cher.
Excellent points, Recovering.
Thank you.
I have a ways to go, until I can let go of the hurt of what is. I am giving myself credit for what I see, today; for where I am, today.
And that is a good beginning.
Cedar
This is addiction.
This is what it looks like.
***************
Regarding the accepting of excuses and the toxic nature of the bond formed with our addicted or mentally ill children because we don't know what the right thing to do is and so, choose polite in the face of obscenities: This is the same dynamic at work in teaching ourselves to accept what goes on in our dysfunctional families of origin. That tendency to define abnormal situations as normal.
So that is where I learned to change everything up so I could be Aunt Bea. Or Donna Reed.
I mean, it's a little bit funny, to understand that I did that, that I do that?
What I have learned through this thread (thank you, Recovering) is that the question I need to ask, when there is a sadness around all of this, is not: "How can I learn to look at this without turning into someone who justifies hating her own children?", but "How can I learn to let go of what it is all supposed to look like without judging my children or myself?"
I heard a an "addiction psychiatrist" being interviewed yesterday. Current theory is that addiction is genetic, and that the addict is addicted from the first dose of whatever it is.
So it is what it is.
This is what addiction (or a mental illness) looks like.
Cedar
