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Twoapenny:
Things are shifting a lot for me at the moment; it's good but it hurts and sometimes it's really hard.  The more I grow the more layers come off, the deeper the pain gets sometimes, but sometimes there is joy there as well and those moments are amazing.  My son's health really seems to be improving at the moment; this is a really good thing but I always find as he goes through a good spell my own issues start to surface again so I have this funny dual life where I'm happy because he's doing better but feel moments of real pain and loss for other things, some to do with him, some to do with me.  Fortunately he is sleeping pretty well at the minute so I am getting quiet time where I can just sit and think, or cry, or write, or dance around the kitchen, depending on how I feel.

I cried this morning because I miss my mum.  Not my actual mum, the drunk, crazy lady who never stops complaining or lying or manipulating the people around her to do what she wants, but the mum I think I have wanted all my life, the one that just loves me and accepts me, picks me up in her arms and hugs me.  I think there are emotional connections between parents and children - good or bad - that you pick up on without words or actions.  For a long time now I have felt like my mum is stopping me from being happy; it's like she exerts a force field that stops other people getting to me and rescuing me from her.  I felt it when I was younger and I was being abused; so many people could have noticed and stopped him, or even just been there for me to have some support but no-one ever did.  And that feeling has never really gone away; I feel like I'm always invisible in a crowd of people who don't notice how much it hurts or even that I'm there.  Grief, I suppose, for a life that never got lived and a hard one that had to be endured.  I feel so lonely at the minute; I think there are times when you just need someone who can hold you and 'get' you without you needing to speak or explain yourself.  I wonder how much of my life I have made harder for myself by putting up walls to keep people out and keep the pain away - necessary walls, but walls that held out good people as well as bad.  I don't seem to attract new people into my life; I feel cut off and distanced from people.  The thought of being intimate really scares me.  Too vulnerable, too much possibility of pain, not enough possibility of it being anything else, perhaps?

I am trying to focus on good things, positive things, and they are there, there's no doubt about that.  But sometimes they just highlight the pain and the loss even more strongly, I get a glimpse of what life could be like, could have been like and I feel so sad that it wasn't and it isn't.  I am trying to do without my distractions and my fixing behaviour of always being busy, drinking coffee, eating more than I need to and so on and I am doing pretty well but obviously that means the pain comes up instead.  Which I know is a good thing, it needs to come out.  But sometimes I just wish I could get to a point where there wasn't any more to come out, where I didn't have to dig any deeper to try and figure out what was going on.

Anyway, just needed to spill.  Lots of love xx

Hopalong:
What a huge amount of insight, (((((((((((Tupp)))))))))).

I'm really sorry for all the sorrow. I can so understand why you isolate.
I have a friend, almost 70, who's been alone in a country house for ages.
Recently she connected with a first-love...and they just spent the night holding each other.
Too tired and "rusty" to have sex (yet)--but they are so happy to have that comfort.

Her inner girl is still there and still feeling hope. His weary boy is getting excited about
taking her to football games. (Which she doesn't enjoy but will enjoy with him, she says.)
It's a sweet and hopeful thing to hear about.

I have another friend in her 60s who is obsessed with her hatred and hurt she feels
for her abusive, Nmother. She is struggling so hard to make breakthroughs and stop feeling
as though her psyche circles her mother all the time. Very much as you describe, she feels
actively hated by her mother and now it just struggling to understand why. (Her mother's
own damage from her own childhood, carrying down the generations.)

It is so sad to see the hurt inner children in women my age and yet such a relief to see
how one by one, they begin to have insights and find peace.

Another friend of mine has very severe clinical depression. I have nagged her for ages to
try an SAD light and now, finally, she has. I had to go over and help her set it up and get
the angle right and she was in that mix of horribly depressed and anxious at the same time.
I went there before work yesterday and got a call last evening and she was
nearly giddy with relief. Laughing, lightness in her voice. She'd sat there for an hour and
for the first time in many many weeks she could feel a change. Her depression lifted.

It sounded like a miracle to me. The light treatment is amazing. I wonder if it's dark-ish
where you live? She is in a townhouse (others on each side) so her place only has natural
light coming in at the front and back. The interior's fairly dark. Doesn't help depression,
especially in winter.

There's a whole lot of letting go to do, and healing. It sounds to me as though you're grieving
so honestly now. Not deflecting it. And recognizing the consequences of different choices you've
made and had to make.

There are POSITIVE consequences too, to having insights, and grieving freely, and making
other choices. Experiment and allow mistakes. Self-love, self-forgiveness, self-compassion.

I think your post shows a lot of that and this is very encouraging.

love to you
Hops

Twoapenny:
Hi Hops,

Thanks for that.  I love the story of your friend and her first love finding each other again and just enjoying that closeness.  What a wonderful way to be, and to be able to really enjoy and appreciate it after all those years of living alone.  I can identify very much!  I hope your other friend works her way through it all, there's so much, isn't there?  And I understand what you say about carrying it on through the generations.  I know my mum was abused; I know how badly she's been treated by men, how much she's abused herself with alcohol over the years and I think in her own way her behaviour is how she pushes people away so that she controls the situation instead of having to deal with them abandoning her.  I'm in contact with my younger sister again, after a ten year separation, and my mum is still behaving exactly as she always did, despite the fact that she's lost so many people now.  I suppose if we find something that works - however destructive it is - we stick to it.  Which is probably why I'm trying so hard now to get rid of my own self destructive behaviour, even though it's much less and much less obvious than it used to be.  I do need to deal with my tendency toward passive aggressive behaviour, which is something I find very difficult to admit I engage in, but I know I do and I know I need to find ways to deal with things differently.  I have got better at being more relaxed towards friends and accepting that they don't need to be perfect in order to be my friend.  I am finding it harder to accept I don't need to be perfect in order to be my own friend :)  Easier to work on other people than it is on ourselves.  I do wonder sometimes if the anger and the pain and dealing with my whole family situation gave me something to anchor onto sometimes, and an excuse for not doing things at others.  I want to work on that a bit more, deal with my procrastination, get on with enjoying life more easily.  I still feel scared that if things get good someone will stop it again so I need to work on that.  So many opportunities out there.  I was reading about the bombings in Paris and I read your post about that as well and I thought to myself, do you know, the best way to make sense of this crazy world that we live in, that carries so much hate and hurt and anger, might just be to squeeze every last drop of joy and happiness out of life it it's at all possible that I can?  I can't change the mindset of people who want to kill, or protect everyone from that, but I can work on changing myself.  Making my life count, I suppose.

Anyway.  Enough thinking for today.  Time for a coffee and some cloud watching.  Love to you.  I hope your Parisian friends are all safe xx

Meh:
:)

Hopalong:
To me it is soooo impressive when someone who knows they engage in passive-aggressive
behavior owns that. And tries to change it.

Seriously. I think that is a wickedly subtle little pattern that shames us when we spot it in
ourselves so there's much more motivation to NOT see it, much less own it.

Respect!

hugs
Hops

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