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I need help .......with my husband died

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Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi Bettyanne,

One of my dear long-term patients who lost his adult son some eight years ago found this book to be the most accurate and compelling:

It's OK That You're Not OK--Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine

https://smile.amazon.com/Its-That-Youre-Not-Understand/dp/1622039076/ref=sr_1_1?crid=39PC6C8SG5HGB&dchild=1&keywords=it%27s+ok+that+you%27re+not+ok&qid=1630012113&sprefix=it%27s+ok+that%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-1

He gave me a copy, and I very much appreciated it.  Early in her marriage, the author lost her husband in a drowning accident, so she knows firsthand about grief and aloneness.

Thinking of you,

Richard

Bettyanne:
Thank you so so much for your reply and I did get the book you mentioned. 
So grateful for be back here again.......I have been having a hard time with the loss of my Bill.....
Bettyanne

Bettyanne:
Here I go again.........when I was 20 my dad died.......my mother said to me I am so glad he s dead.......my dad was a sweet nice person......but she wasn't .......I would look at her and say OMG this woman never gets anything.
I may have said this before........I had a brother 3 years older then me who never walked or talked and took convulsions weekly.  Omg it was pathetic and she left him to the care of her elderly mother.......I remember my grandmother falling trying to carry him outside.  She ended up in the hospital......but she wasn't all together either.  My mother and her were not the loving type at all......my grandmother yelled a lot too......
My mother was going to work 5 days in a office and Saturdays in a department store office.......
I feel she did anything not to be at home.
My dad made a good income but that didn't matter, she was escaping no matter what.
My dad lived to 51 and my mother almost made 101......how sick was that.
Life was crazy in my home as a kid........my dad sleeping with me and my brother
my mother sleeping in sofa bed??? and my grandmother had her own room, omg
I am older now myself 78 and all these memories have come back.......
I don't know what you call it but I feel it was awful what was gong on......sick to be exact.
My dad died, 4 months later my brother died and her mother/grandmother died in September.....'
My mother was free at last ........
It was sickening to me always......oh I forgot to mention, I was put in an ballgirls school for ten years I hated it....my mother wouldn't let me out of it.......get going she would say.......yuck

Hopalong:
Those are such sad memories, (((Bettyanne))).
I'm so sorry they haunt you -- I'd be haunted too, remembering that. You deserved love and a warm, peaceful home. I'm so sorry you had an unhappy one.

I wonder what might help you most so you can sit with your happiest memories of Bill, or your children when they were little? Or your favorite pets?

We can't always order our minds what to do, though. I can't always control my thoughts either. I do argue with my darker thoughts sometimes. I'll try to tell myself stuff like: This is today, Monday, just today and now. Or, I'll tell myself -- change the subject. Or, I'm here right now and I'm alive.

Do you have those debates inside sometimes? Can't always win, but sometimes (for me anyway) it feels like it's worth a try and it helps. Other times, it feels pointless.

You're grieving your very long-time dear one, Bill, and as Doc G says, rushing grief or trying to express it in a culture that doesn't understand, makes you feel lonelier still. I've worked through a lot of grief about my D I couldn't express fully anywhere other than here, for a very long time. So I hope you'll write about your loss here all you want to. This place and these patient people absolutely saved me.

I hear how sad you are about your brother especially, and how your childhood was. How your mother was not there for you at all. What is a ballgirls' school?

I'd be interested in any stories you have to tell, Bettyanne. Good to hear your voice.

hugs,
Hops

lighter:
((((Bettyanne))) Hugs and hot tea and compassion..... all I can carry to your heart, dear one.

Your Mother was broken and disordered and she couldn't do better, bc she would have if she could.  What happened to you and your brother and father was unfair and toxic and harmful....... it will never make any sense, bc it makes zero sense.  It's disordered behavior and your mother couldn't do better.

It will never be fair or OK and you were robbed, as was your brother. 

Grieve and feel the sadness...... it belongs, just as the joy you've created belong.

My hope is you feel the warmth of happiness more often than you feel the curse your mother left behind. It IS behind you, but it's  imposed over your present moments.... so unfair, once again.  A good trauma informed therapist might be able to help leave it in the past, bc you're so deserving, ((((Bettyanne.))))

Lighter

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