Feel like I wrote a book here, but this has helped so very much... just thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
Dear ((((((((
Hops)))))))) You have helped me so much... always.
Thank you!
You could combine cards...
Wanted to say on this birthday that I hope you'll be feeling much better.
Here's to more birthdays, and happy ones...
Just something very simple, it's good enough.
Here, you have nailed it.
It's good enough.
I am rarely convinced that anything I do is good enough...
not at the heart level.
That is changing!!
You're sending it out of a bigger place than emotion.
A bigger place... not smaller.
Yes.
Thank you for spelling this out... I get it.
This is from a deeper place... compassion.
I have needed to make sure...
still haven't sent anything.
Now I can - - - from the "right" place. It's the right place because it's where I am, not because it matches someone else's criteria.
So glad somebody said compassion, not love.
We get so mixed up about what love is.
I love YOU though!
Thank you for hearing my heart, Hops.
I've been very mixed up, but the jumbled pieces are settling into place.
I love YOU, too!
((((((((
Sela)))))))) thank you.
The scars from neglect and abandonment trouble me most when I consider how the crud my mother taught me (and, even more, the reams of
good stuff which she
failed to teach me) wound up impacting my own kids.
In many, many, many ways, I feel that I have done far better - by instinct! - at mothering, than she did with me. Still, I have carried parts of her in me which I want purged out. I want to know that those parts are gone.
It seems so silly, really...
but I think that's why her note impacted me so strongly - - -
it was her suggestion that I might end up just like her.
That is a tremendous fear of mine... not related to physical issues, but mental/emotional ones.
That fear is also the source of my own disgust toward her.
I don't want to be like her in any way, shape, form, or fashion.
In fact, I've spent a good portion of my life going out of my way to show that I'm NOT like her.
In effect, by making such a point of it to myself, I've increased her impact on me by doing so.
argh - I so so so soooo want her to be a non-factor in my life... and I know that is, to her, the absolute worst thing for which I could wish.
She hates me for that.
This is my problem.... and it's one I have not been able to forget.
She can't be sending you even sweet little weekly notes, never mind guilt stuffed/assumptive/game playing ones......without dredging up some of these old.........experiences.
Exactly. I was GLAD when her notes stopped. Not glad that she's sick, just glad that she finally cut the crap.
And then...do you feel torn between acknowledging how you really feel and acting how it might be expected.....
Yes!!!! And other than one lengthy letter, last year, I've opted to not respond to her at all, in any way.
Sending that letter (which she ignored) has allowed me to not pile up their weekly envelopes in dread. Now I open them as they arrive... well, mostly. Sometimes I let two pile up, but never a mountain, as before.
.....or how it will feel least disturbing?
I don't know. I don't want anything bad to happen to them, but I don't want to hear from them all the time, either.
It seems so weird to me that they're still acting so bound to me...
they don't do my brother this way.
Why do they continue this, after all this time of my not responding???
Why me????
I think you hit the nail there......about it being a big point (this forgiving/forgetting stuff). If you decide to forgive and do your best to forget.......do you imagine how you might feel differently then? Will her notes be easier to respond to, I wonder?
Alot easier said than done too eh?
I don't know... I'm not there, Sela. Maybe it's a pipe dream. It's definitely alot easier said than done.
I don't want my life tainted by even a drop of this stuff anymore.
It's been enough. So, so, so terribly enough.
Does it help to think that your mother simply cannot mother? Is incapable of mothering properly? Like she has a birth defect.......somehow.....her mothering genes got all messed up or eliminated?
Yes, that actually does help.
Sela, I was praying the other night, silently... and it came out of my mind, first time ever, to ask God to take care of ______ (her first name).
I have never, ever thought of her by her first name, but there it was, straight out of my head.
I can have compassion for her only in that way, as another human being... but not as "mother".
Maybe God was showing me that's okay.
Thanks, Sela.
Love,
Carolyn
Carolyn,
Just got to this posting. My mother does this too. She will tell me what diseases/sicknesses run in the family to warn me, or even worse, to warn me about the kids. I don't know what the heck it is about. Maybe they do it to have some sort of strange bond with us - that if we fear ofr our health together we are somehow connected. I have been puzzling over this one for a long time too.
I guess we are going through the same phases since you said you felt "snotty." That is kind of how I feel now. Maybe we feel that way because they assign us that role. I know my NM has. She thinks I have a "better than you" attitude, but it is just her projections.
I really keep cards and correspondence simple with NM now. I buy a card with cats or a funny line. I avoid any false sentiments, because I don't need any more lies in my life - even white lies, as it were...
I like Sela's thoughts and believe she is right on many of the points.
((((((((((((Carolyn)))))))))))))
What are you feeling now?
Love, Beth
Dear
Beth,
I think you make a great point about this strange bond of fear which N mothers try to forge.
Your M is really looking down the line to be warning you about your kids!
Somehow I think that is still more about you, than about them.
I know that my own children are nothing but objects to my mother.
They are potential sources of pride and bragging rights.
Other than that, they are useless to her.
She has not once sent one of them an individual note.
Even their birthday cards, she inserts into that one large weekly envelope mailed by dad.
In my case, Beth... I feel that my mother has washed her hands of my children because she sees them as tainted by the genes of their father.
She despises men.
Already, she has absolutely zero interest in my son. He's the wrong gender.
Last time she even commented on him was a couple years ago... some obscure remark, like: "C_____ is what he is."
What the heck is that?
Yes, I felt snotty while writing a letter to her.
The tone of it, in my heart, was a wish to set her straight.
Even to the point of commenting that I certainly hoped she'd asked her church family there to keep her in prayer... because that is the greatest help of all.
Well, I do actually believe that, but what was in my heart as I wrote it was: "too bad you think you're too good to ask for help!!"
I have avoided the false sentiments in cards, too, Beth. Buying mother's day cards has been the toughest. This past year, the only one I found that was generic enough to not feel like a big lie, was to "Mom". She has never been known as "mom". Ever. I am sure she hated it. It was not a bit mushy or worship-ful.
I felt snotty about that, too, but it was the best I could manage.
Like you said,
I don't need any more lies in my life - even white lies, as it were...
Exactly!!!!!
((((((((Beth)))))))) Thank you for asking what I'm feeling now. You are so sweet and thoughtful! I feel stirred up and annoyed, just from considering all these things... but mostly relieved. It is so good to be understood.... despite my rambling, babbling style here. Often, still, I really don't know, off the top of my head, just how I feel, other than "upset". It's wonderful to be asked. Helps me to remember to consider... and gives me permission, to feel, which I still neglect to give myself, at times.
I feel more human than ever, Beth... more human and less robotic, less "other". More "me" and less like her.
And I feel very full. Satisfied. Completed, without having done or achieved anything, outwardly, with regard to my mother.
And just now I realized...
I am still so susceptible to her siren song, that I really must be cautious.
Instead of beating myself up for being so weak, I will picture - like Izzy says - her on the other side of a very sturdy fence. Electrified fence, even. With barbed wire.
That I can deal with.
Thanks so much!!
Love,
Carolyn
