GS,
I admire you SO much for your forthright blah-blah.
I wish you could ask your Dad for help. It would take a StarTrek kind of shields up so you don't look at his face and feel shamed, though. That's a good goal. Vaccinating yourself. Or...asking for what you want and letting go of the outcome.
I am so glad you shared the realities of the money game and the money fear.
There is terrible stigma attached to having had (or still having) abundance, and yet feeling angry and afraid and needy around money. Great guilt when clearly other people are in need. Though on a much smaller scale, my issues with my mother were so parallel in many ways. And it wasn't until she agreed it was "fair" for me to inherit her house that I actually examined 'what is the worst that can happen, and what choices would I have then?'
I was very surprised to realize that, actually, I probably COULD go live in a crumbling townhouse and fling beautiful color everywhere and invite in my blessed friends and be happy anyway. I doggone well know she's leaving me the piano! But I could also buy myself a harmonica and become a late-life virtuoso. There's a "class:
For me, the vital difference (everyone must be so sick of hearing this, but I'm an extrovert)...has been in deliberately creating community for myself. (Two initials repeated, right after T.) Hah! That's an accidental almost-pun! But I kid you not one iota, I built it. It has been the work of years to find a space where I could walk in every week (and midweek for other things) and discover that my failureis life do not stain me. It isn't that everyone there is a buddha, it's just that the cumulative welcome I feel has had, over several years now, a cumulative effect of safety.
I think you are so incisive. So eloquent and clear as you describe yourself and what you struggle with. I can't imagine a more valuable member of a ftf support group. Have you given any thought to finding one?
much love to you, GS, my friend,
Hops
