All you Dear People,
One of the things I looked forward to most was catching up with you!
Seriously. I found myself telling two close friends out of town how very, very much difference this board has meant in my life. I just wound up saying, it is truly a support group and I am amazed by the wisdom, compassion, intelligence, generosity and inspirational courage of so many people here.
Glad to be back!
My week away had many, many wonderful things about it. GS's powerful healing support must have come with me. I took the Dreaded Bag of Paperwork and just pounded through it during an hour when I was waiting for a friend at her doctor's appt. It was a great joy. I think so much of it had to do with not being here, home, tugged on psychically by so many things. I was away, I was relaxed, I could focus. So thanks again, GS. I will keep it up for you too. And there are many additional areas I want to make the very same growth in. Dealing With Things, simplest way to put it.
One thing on the trip that was difficult to deal with was my daughter...she came with a chip on her shoulder, was irritated at every hum, word, thought, gesture...everything I did. Her irritation mounted and then she had a spectacular rage at me. She said she hates me, and her grandmother, and feels I have put my mother before her. She began suggesting that I owed it to her to support her financially now because her childhood and early adulthood were made so difficult. She raged about not having a "normal" family or normal role models, and on and on. I did say to her, I do not owe you. (Because what I give and do for her is voluntary.) But ... it was very hard. Good that she got so much anger out (I waited until 55 to explode at my mother)...but incredibly painful to hear her say what she said. It also made me sad that the minute I handed her money (I had committed to her GRE application fee and some $$ toward her gas)...she turned charming. It hurt my heart to hear her so bitter about life. Before she attacked me she had been venting for a day or two in many directions: I hate this, I hate that...it dawned on me I've heard a person say "hate" so many times.
I do feel good that I was underreactive. Honestly emtional at times but not dramatic, and held my own center. It was draining and punishing but I have not gotten lost in it. I know D needs some therapy, and I know a lot of what she expressed was projecting things about herself onto me. Need more time to process it all. But I'm still glad she came.
She can't apologize. But she called the next night after she'd gotten home to tell me she has a cold virus and thinks I should be taking echincea and Vit. C and swabbing everything she touched with alcohol. Then, "I don't want to talk but just wanted to tell you that." I was glad...it sounded like "I care about you even though I blew up at you." And at one point that night she had said it would be good if we do could do some family counseling, and I said I'd be glad to. We'd have to work out meeting in a halfway point town...but I will let her take the lead. Hope she follows up.
In other respects the trip was lovely. Lots of sleep and reading and time with friends who love to just sit and talk togther. And best of all, the night before I arrived, my D spent hours and hours talking with my friend's husband, who is a college teacher and one of the kindest, best people I know. She is so father hungry and he was a friend of her father's and he does care about her. That made me very glad.
And glad to be home and tucked in. Mom fell over my dog and hurt her foot, but she's okay. And she and my brother had a good visit.
Hops
