Mothering Again...

[sKePTiKal]

Hopsy,

just another stray thought that might or might not help... but offering anyway.

About losing all her friends and having to "start over from scratch" again:

I'd question that assumption. If they are truly her friends - they'll still be there if she is able to go back. And from personal experience (and my own D's) there are many worse things than starting over, somewhere new. She's spending too much time thinking about what's gone, what she doesn't/didn't have and bemoaning that loss - without hanging anything on the positive side of the scale: she's still got all the skills she used to have, still the same dreams and goals... and her current situation is, admittedly a detour - but she doesn't have to flat-out give up! Just catch her breath, regroup, and try again. She hasn't lost her own resources... but she may have lost or is questioning her own confidence in herself, and is swimming in bleakness instead hoping someone comes to rescue her. But the water's not deep: all she has to do is stand up...

and she may need lots of reassurance; lots of encouragement. Your gym card was exactly on target, too. Inspired! Physical energy might help blow those dark cobwebs away... and she can't help but meet new people.

The other thing I heard, which I've only learned I did all time in the past year or so, is that she's making conditions for being happy and satisfied, and getting on with her life. You're not in her way... not really. You are trying to help the best way you know how, within your understanding of boundaries. If the conditions she sets herself are too high, too optimistic, it only fuels the "all or nothing" desperation and despair. When I could see myself or my D doing this, we'd remind each other:

"you can't always get what you want - but sometimes, you get what you need".

(((hops))) Hang in there, girlfriend! Hope you meet your deadlines and get some needed R&R for Hops, too.

[ann3]

I'm going to go out on a limb & be simplistic:  There are periods in our lives when we go thru hard times.  An astrologer would say "this will be a difficult year/cycle (or number of years) for you, but, you will come out of it."  Perhaps it's our fate, written in our charts & there's nothing we can do to avoid it:  we must make the painful journey thru the desert & in doing so, we learn what kind of stuff we are made of; it's the challenges of life.  We just always need to believe that we WILL get thru it & we will emerge stronger, better & wiser.  The next time a painful life challenge arises, we can look back at our prior challenge & tell ourselves "I made it thru that, I'll make it thru this."

[Hopalong]

PR, you understand exactly where she is.
And you're right, love and encouragement is my job #1 now.
That's all. Boundaries sure, but I will still keep my focus on love.
I love her with all my heart. She knows. And at some point she'll
know about being only a human being, too. I really do believe at
some point she'll be able to forgive me if she has forgiven herself.

Either way my job is: take care of myself responsibly, do everything
I can to support and encourage her without risking my life or security,
and release the outcome. (Over and over). Find the balance and
preserve my own health in the process. That's proving difficult because
when she shares how she's feeling, I become frightened, can't sleep
or focus to do my work, begin to feel I'm losing my own balance.
But tough. I have to stand in the wind of reality too.

Ann, hi, you're right...that's the gift w/in the problem, the only
redemption of suffering. The strength that comes from surviving it.
My focus really is on her survival. It may take more financial sacrifice
than I wanted to make but I am going to work through those choices
privately with my counselor. So when I do give something, it is in
balance with my progress toward my own right life. It may be small
or it may be larger, but there are ways to get it into a constructive
balance. Like, help her with this, but not that. Or maybe not. Maybe it
will be to help her with a lump sum. That one feels wrong to me right
now, as I don't think she's well enough to do more than blow it all
to get to Miami without any resources she needs to be safe there.
That's a big cycle in my head, and I should step back. Trust my T.
He's very pragmatic and supportive of making plans, choices. And
at some point, as CB said, I may have to also let go of controlling
her safety. Face the risk of losing her in order to let her separate.

I know she needs to believe she'll get through it. That's what I'm
trying to encourage. Severe depression eats that belief. I hope
she'll reconsider Rx because right now I believe she needs them.

Thanks for listening,

Hops

[Hopalong]

Wanted to pop in and say Hello...I'll be traveling on business for a week and may get online only now and then or not at all. Oy, I feel anticipatory Board withdrawal!

Things are cool, distant, and calm with my D. Not fun.

When I took our dog, alone...that was a moment when I felt it most. I didn't guilt-trip her one bit. Later, a close workmate listened to my story of the morning, in which I said only how glad I was that D. had come to the car to say goodbye to the dog...and he had tears, and said, I am so sorry you had to go through that alone.

I asked her yesterday after I fetched the ashes if she'd like to scatter Pooch's ashes with me and she suggested they instead should be returned to park in another city we lived in, when we first got her. But I am not going to do that. I feel strongly, personally, about not letting remains sit around in a can, and I'd like to return B. to nature at the nearby park she so loved, and where I spend so many happy hours with her. (I can also commune with her there no matter what house I wind up in, so don't feel attached to sprinkling her in the yard here.) I took care of B. most all her life, so I guess in this instance I don't feel like letting my D dictate what I do with her remains. Especially since my D redefined her as "your dog."

I dislike this relationship now, honestly. I feel D. circles me looking for money, is interested in me only for that, and is utterly indifferent to me in any other way. It's a really sad feeling but I am maintaining a new detachment. She never did follow through with our new family counselor appointment, and I guess that's that. She will have things her way and have the last word. Her father did the same thing...quit counseling when he was challenged. He wrote me years later to say he was sorry, and saw that as the moment that really ended our marriage.

I am trying not to make the comparison but I do see it as so familiar. Of course, I'm her mother for life, but she did tell the first counselor that she wanted to "divorce me." Perhaps she's succeeding.

It's horrible. Sorry to keep moaning about it, but now and then I just need to say it again. It's horrible.

But on the surface I'm calm and adult around her, and mostly pretty well defended. I don't know what else to do, so we just go our separate ways and barely intereact. She was nice to me on my birthday and immediately afterward reverted to her cold, distant thing. If I need to speak to her the response is always, "What do you want?" So I speak to her as little as I can.

Yuck. Dunno why I go off on all this again just now, but it's partly because I just signed a new will that will protect her in case anything should happen to me before Nmom's estate is settled--and shields her completely from any interaction with my brother.

I do know what it is. It's me feeling her profound ingratitude and entitlement, and having inner angry thoughts that I don't like having.

Confessing them here.

Hops

[Izzy_*now*]

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am the logical type and she is the emotional type. She cried when she left, but I smiled and waved, thinking she was going back to her own life, but not 'leaving me'. It could be she was feeling sorry to see me sitting inside the lobby in a wheelchair in pain, or that she might never see me again, or that '_____________________?  Who knows with the emotional thinkers?

I must have decided a long time ago, that emotions get in the way of thinking, because I deal better with the facts and putting things into action, or not! Sounds cold? I don't think so....just sensible/productive? Dunno the word!

I feel betrayal, it goes to its compartment, then I only think betrayal, and I no longer hurt!

love Izzy

From my EFT post

Thoughts re your Daughter?

Mine sent a birthday card, then a chatty letter asking what I wanted, as 'the woman who has all she needs'. She sounds happy and fulfilled and is renovating her partner's house, while she rents out hers, as well as delivering babies on the side....or maybe that is vice versa, and considering going for her MFA  as a career change option. She's helping straighten out her partner's 3 young children who began to rule the household.

I replied with common sense and no betrayal 'feelings' while writing. As long as there are no more 'digs', all will be copasetic between us, and we will have Contact. Otherwise, back to No Contact! That's my logical thinking!

That has been my survival mode, and all toxicity is out of my life!

Love
Izzy

[Hopalong]

You ARE logical, Izzy...and I envy that sometimes!

Thanks for the reminder that one can have matter-of-fact contact and bugger the dreams.

Really.

I need to blow off the fantasies of "how it should be."

It just is what it is and my goal (more days than not, I'm doing better with this) -- is to accept what it is.

Thanks, Izz.

love,
Hops

[lighter]

Izz, you are very logical.

Hops: Your  daughter will come out of this, stronger for having survived it, as you and Ann said.

That's the nature of entering the abyss.

We learn the biggest lessons by dragging ourselves out.

If someone else drags us, we learn nothing. 

Well, nothing useful.

Mo2

[sKePTiKal]

I hope that very soon you will be allowed to turn in your chief-fixer hat and just enjoy the simplicity of your own life and no one else's for awhile.

Yes! I hope this for you too, Hopsy...

The day will come soon, Hops, when your daughter will wake up, look around her, and decide she needs to get moving.  Her independence and resolve will make her feel better about herself, and when that happens, your relationship with her will be much better. 

It does happen, Hops; it does. Each kid has their own inner timetable, though. It's not to fair to ourselves, to hover around them, trying to help, encourage or enlighten... until they're truly ready to accept the help. That's the one thing that just stands out to me, in all this - she hasn't accepted the idea that she really NEEDED help and you GAVE it. But one day, it will.

Hugs....

[Gaining Strength]

My heart is with you Hops.
I ache just reading about the pain in that relationship with your daughter.

I believe that her vulture like behavior, circling waiting for money to scavenge has more to do with her utter sense of helplessness. I suspect she feels utterly incompetentt to provide for herself and in her inability to deal with this iincompetense and her fear about this, she, rather than deal with it, had elected to bundle it up and project it all onto you.  this saves her from being responsible for herself - you are the target and perhaps willl be until she finds the will and the strength and the courage to become responsible for herself.  I suspect she is living in horrific fear.

thinking of you and sending you muuch love - GS