Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
great Carolyn Hax moments
Hopalong:
Sometimes people who comment on a Hax column are amazing. Here's a reply to today's [LW = letter writer]:
My father and my sisters will be disappointed and may even disown me if I meet the other man. [A man her mother got involved with near the end of a miserable marriage to LW's angry father.]
LW, it might seem hard to believe, but there are worse things than being disapproved of and disowned. Being "owned" by family members based on their conditional approval of your false self comes to mind.
I get it. Authenticity is so hard. Authenticity that threatens to sever familial connections as the price of admission is so hard, it's a wonder anybody ever chooses it.
But people are remarkably brave when need be, and I hope you were brave too. Differentiating yourself from familial beliefs and being willing to shoulder disapproval for your own beliefs is very brave.
Many people, when given a choice between authenticity and connection, choose to sacrifice their authenticity to maintain connection. It's a particular kind of slow torture to abandon yourself and your beliefs to keep the approval of others.
Overall, I hope this settled and resolved with time, but I really hope you chose your own even-handed authenticity over threats to your sense of connection. It will have served you over the years, I hope you are at peace with how things played out.
Twoapenny:
Thanks, Hops, that is an interesting way to look at it and, like you, the rejection goes back such a long way and really echoes for me when it happens over and over. I think part of it with me as well has been the number of people who vanished when I started putting in boundaries. Just saying to people that I didn't have time to talk right now and could we catch up at the weekend or that we weren't able to attend their party/wedding/house warming but that we'd love to meet up another time and people just seemed to fritter away. I think the sense of people not bothering with son really bothers me and I think part of that is tied up with my mum's outright refusal to accept his disabilities. Such a huge rejection of him as a person and it mirrored what she did to me as a child - you have to be a certain way or you won't be accepted. I suppose that stays with you.
Unfortunately the people I know who are close enough to visit in the evening have young children so it's not practical for them, plus I'm only seeing those who are also shielding so that cuts the numbers right down as well. I do think being tired (which I am today) makes me much more prone to feeling depressed and alone. That along with winter approaching is problematic, I think. I think I'm just going to have to focus very much on keeping healthy and busy wherever possible. I am going to see my sister next week which I'm looking forward to; she's been shielding all this time as well so we decided to do it before the kids go back to school in case the numbers rocket again. We're both in relatively low number areas so assuming that stays the same son and I can start taking bus rides to different places to go for walks and I think that will help a bit. Plus I can start getting on with my re-designing the house stuff from next month and that will be good as well. We'll all get through it, won't we :) x
bean2:
Hops,
I seriously thought I was reading a story about my own parents...except, there are no trees we are in a desert (so no gutters to clean)....but ya, my parents are in their 70's and this is their life. They live on a 20 acre ranch in the Middle of Nowhere.
I am always talking my husband into helping them (no they don't live with us- yet).
I do think it's a lot like taking care of a toddler. My mom is an N my Dad is just a flying monkey co-dep. Ever wonder what happens when the Narcissistic gets old???? I wonder this every day of my life.
I mean...who will SAVE THEM?? (not me not me not me..I hope)
bean
Hopalong:
Save yourself, Bean!
I walked right into the propellers (10 yrs f/t caring for Nmom).
I regret it genuinely in my lifetime "regrets" column.
BUT. On a spurchul inner-peace level, it took all 10 years to figure out many layers I didn't understand before...and ultimately (very ultimately) I realized that learning more about her childhood and my own personal work about compassion, etc. -- added up to me completely forgiving her. I found peace.
That has lasted, and I think in the long run (for me) -- it's been worth it. ALL our "unfinished business" was done with on my end (no full understanding from her of course, but I had also learned she couldn't help it). So I grieved while she was still alive for the mother she wasn't, accepted the mother she was, and was released.
YMMV!
hugs
Hops
Hopalong:
Just realized how cognitively dissonant what I wrote above was.
I both regret the decade caring for Nmom and don't regret it because at the end I had peace?
Pondered then realized...this is true.
I regret it.
I don't regret it.
And I imagine it'll always be that way.
WHO SEZ life isn't paradox?
hugs
Hops
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