Mothering Again, con't.

[Hopalong]

No worries, PR! Head in sunshine!

I just notice (not meaning to blast you) how many people suggest I "do" or "acquire" or "achieve" things re. D that essentially add up to taking charge of her in a way this momma just can't do with a 31 y/o as stubborn as she is strong (and weak). If that makes any sense.

It's been a high-wire act to get her as much help/info as I've done so far, and those were received because she really asked for them. IOW, books, money,lnks to resources where she's going to wind up, in-person support for the move. In terms of actual medical involvement, though, which a new evaluation/2nd-opinion workup would be, that is an adulthood/privacy thing. If she became so far gone that she were needing medical care against her will, I'd take those steps. Short of that, though, she is still a free adult.

I've noticed she's pretty quiet and calm in the last couple days, seems deeply tired but peaceably resting. From the shambles of her old apt. to the calm and relative order here...I hope it helps her. Soon, missing the kitty will overpower the yearning to rest and she'll be off again. For now, though, I'm glad she's sheltered here.

(That may change at any moment if her mood turns!)

Thanks for listening, and for thinking.

I'm off for more Mr. Rogers coaching from T this morning.  

love,
Hops

[Hopalong]

Hi everyone,
Been hard to mention this. This month marks 3 years since my D has spoken to me. Has broken my heart, and I'm still trying to recover, find my own health. I did decide that despite her rejection, I should aim for happiness (or as much as I can).

But I am a changed human being by this loss.

One other thing, apart from your generous hearts and amazing minds, helped: Dr. Joshua Coleman, his book When Parents Hurt and his webinars--I took one series, and corresponded with him some. We even talked about co-authoring a book about this "silent epidemic" but I'm not sure I could bear it. I sent him a poem I wrote and he published it in his newsletter to that community (parents rejected by adult children).

love,
Hops

[sea storm]

Dearest Hops,

I read this whole thread of yours.  I gasped at the pain of what you have been going through and it is so difficult and no black and white solutions. One thing I have learned is that being lost in empathy doesn't help.   My sister has bipolar disorder complete with psychosis and many of the behaviours that you describe. Right now she is relatively stable as far as I know. I talk to her everyday nearly.

Because she is dead set against medication of any kind i am left holding the bag. She has NO idea the impact of her illness has on either her son or me. She continues to be in denial or to seek out professional help because professionals are all disappointing and inept. She doesn't have a diagnosis either.  She believes that friends can help her through the downs and the rages with love. Except the friends have been used and hurt too much and there is no one left. Since she has alienated them she needs to lash out at someone and that has been me. I tried to be sister Theresa and it was not helpful for her or me.

She lives in the kind of jumble jungle you describe your daughter living in. Ankle deep in dust bunnies, newspapers, old flowers etc. She can't initiate a clean up as this is part of her illness.On the other hand she does work from home and mobilizes for that. She is able to be nice to our rich nasty aunt who has helped her financially big time. What I am saying is that she has learned some behaviours such as helplessness. She has learned that it is ok to vent her anger with some people who love her.  She believes that she is entitled to her anger. There things are not part of the illness. It is just bad behaviour.

I know about listening on the phone for hours.  Listening until the bone marrow is sucked out of your bones. And I HAVE to agree or she will go ballistic. Everything that happens to her is someone else's fault. She has no insight into how difficult, demanding and angry she is.  Ok.  So I was just fed up with her denial about medication. We are in our sixties and she is still making excuses. i know she loves the highs and does not want to trade them for anything. Anyway I knew she was going delusional and had a crush on a famous composer and was insinuating herself into his life and I thought oh no not again.  Imagining internet intrigues and romance. She was reading the riot act to her friends and then emailing them incessantly about how cruel and useless they are  for rejecting her.  ehe started to do this to me and I said no more. I blocked her. I said I couldn't stand it anymore. Just simple.  I can't take it. Go ahead and take care of your illness any way you want but leave me out of it.

I thought she might jump off a bridge or something worse. But I am too tired to care anymore. She is in denial.  Until she gets treatment I can't be there for her.  For HER sake as well as mine. I am part of the pattern of denial.   I think she milks this too. Who wouldn't. Anyone in denial has to have hostages.

I am telling you this because your daughter is torturing you.  Torture by not getting medical help.  I have read about Manic depression until I am blue in the face.  Yes, it can take time to find the perfect dose.  However, that sounds fishy to me.  I take medication for depression and there is some tweaking.  That is different than not taking medication. Having a doctor give out meds is not so great an idea. I wonder if she takes the SSRI s.

It is a lot like loving an alcoholic who keeps drinking. Even if they stop they are still disordered in their thinking and need intensive intervention. No one can make an alcoholic stop drinking and many have gone insane trying. No one can make someone with Bipolar admit they have a problem. All the planning, organization, prioritizing, networking etc that you are doing for her is not making her stronger or helping even though you have to do it to save your own life.  Your daughter's illness is killing you faster than it is killing her. I feel like a rat saying this but this is what I have learned.

My mother loved my sister and stood by her through several psychotic episodes: going to stay for weeks to look afer sister's son and trying with everything she has to help.  Part of my sister's illness is the belief that my mother was a MONSTER. I have since learned that women who are manic often have this passionate hatred for their mothers.  God that hurt my mom. I saw it happen where my mom would try to make it work and one tiny piece was out of place and my sister would go on for HOURS about how evil my mom was. I hope you are not the recipient of this kind of poison. Now I know that NO ONE deserves this. It is not like the PEOPle of the LIE.  You know,where some parents are undermining their child to the point of driving them mad or wanting to kill themselves.
If you have a mentally ill child that is what is going on. It is DISORDERED thinking and they can't be un disordered unless they have medication. All else is for naught.

My concern is for you, Hops. This is way too demanding of you and no one can take this much. Something isn't right about this. And that something is denial. \

I think too much of you not to be honest with you.  I am so happy that you took some time to take care of yourself.

Lot and lots of light and love to you dear Hops.

Sea storm

[sea storm]

Dearest Hops,

You have shared you experience of being banished by your daughter and said that it was like being rent in two and how unbearably painful it was and still is. Listening to the lengths you go to to understand and deeply care for your daughter, I have rarely heard a more of a more committed and loving parent. It seems such a cruel twist of fate that you have a daughter who is determined to scorn you. Walking over shards of broken glass is not enough to assuage her contempt. This has taken years off your life I am sure.

This is not your fault. You are a very good mother. You can't fix this one unless she wants help. So far she will bite your hand down to the bone if you try to help too much. Maybe you can't do it. Maybe it can't be done. She still thinks she can join her friends in Miami and have a great life. This is really reaching ....... She makes decisions on what is best for her cat. Try to stand back a little while you put more energy into yourself. This is all very amped up, frantic and desperate. She needs professional help. There is just no way around that. If she won't go, you will end up getting sucked down the bunny hole trying to do patch up on a very leaky ship that has left the dock. She has a right to be free. Free to make decisions and have the consequences. You are afraid she will kill herself but something tells me that she is very good at mobilizing the kind of help she wants.

Mr Rogers: " Get help, sometimes we need experts"

Keep writing please.  I think you need support for this hell you are going through

Lots of love,
Sea storm

[Hopalong]

Sea, thank you so much. You are right on all counts and it's affirming to read.

I must apologize to you, though, for doing something so confusing as reviving this thread from 2011.
So much of the acute crisis that I described earlier in this thread is long over.

The current status is that she now lives in NC, she hasn't spoken to me for three years.
As far as I understand (a few crumbs of info shared by her stepmom, until my D walled her off too)--
she has some medication, and some treatment. As far as we can tell she's living in an old friend's
basement. She is, or has been for a very long time, unemployed, and was on food stamps.

She is obsessed with a violent sport and tweets about being it's "biggest fan" and has gotten
a few hundred people to follow her on Twitter. (It's such a clear and heartbreaking reference
to missing her dead father, who loved wrestling/boxing, etc--but this sport is way worse.) But
that's one place she's getting attention.

In her real day to day life, I think she's managing to just...not drown. But I can't say she's
not taking medication or seeing a counselor. Far as I know, she DOES want help and did
seek it. No way to know how effective or consistent it is--but I can't conclude anything,
since she's been completely no-contact with me for three years.

I'm so sorry for the confusion but I soaked up your support anyway, which is very healing.

My poem was about my grief over her estrangement. I had another big wave of it last
week and it took me a while to recognize the anniversary reaction. It was June, three
years ago, that she last communicated with me.

Love and thanks,
Hops

[sea storm]

That's ok Hops. Seems time isn't linear anyway. Just goes in loops and spirals sometimes.

Heaven only knows why you posted that but it helped me so much. Clarifying my thoughts on what to do when the sun stops shining and the bottom falls out of my sister's world or mine. They are closely linked. Her bottom falls out and down I go. So that needs to stop.

stones stones stone .  Oh Hoppy. You are just not a stone. Stones are inanimate and deader than dead. IF that is what you need to be to survive your daughter cutting you off I understand.
A few years ago due to a collision of the planets or some other unforseen event and her wedding that brought together people who had banished each other my daughter banished me.  It was like nothing I have ever experienced pain wise. It was like being killed off and there was no inner or outer resource to cope. It was so big. The mother daughter bond is so powerful and I know you know. You would pilot a helicopter to bail her out of trouble, carry a three hundred pound pallet of bricks 500 miles, brazen yourself to any who would harm her. You raised her in difficult circumstances and actually deserved a reward. 

That bond is not to be broken. But it has been broken.  Sharper than a serpent's tongue. 

If you had not included the background your poem would not have been as accessible.

I am busy chipping away at your stone. I will gently break it up. Daily give it nudges and little knocks. I see your stone not as you but as your refuge.  This stone is ok for now though. What a good idea.

Stones break up and can be transformed.  I hope you can go there. To see the stone evolve and transform into smaller and smaller pieces until it becomes clay that can be put in a crucible and made into a tea cup for sharing tea.

words are just a part of it all and I can't find the right ones.  Just know that I know the pain of being rejected by your child. For me it nearly killed me. Literally, after the final blow I ended up in the hospital with pancreatitis and nearly died.
It felt like I had been poisoned.

So kindest hugs and warm wishes for you.
Loads of love,

Sea

[Hopalong]

My gosh. Sea, you get it. I didn't know you had this happen too.

I did think I might die of the heartbreak.
I know it aged and hurt and flattened me.

Not only my only child, but she is my only family.
I don't know that she'll ever be back, or be fully well.
There's so much co-morbidity, as the shrinks say.

She has bipolar depression + mild Asperger's + ADD +
massive complicated grief. Starting with her father, all
the way to cats (grandparents, stepparent, a friend, etc.)--
all that death, plus the dissolution of the rest of her family
as my Nbrother attacked me and my Nmother (who did love
my D) betrayed me in her will...all of it. It was too much for
her psyche and she became someone very very dark and
rageful.

Until she forgives: herself, life itself, her father...and hopefully
one day me...I don't know how she can be whole.

It's all I hope for, that she'll find her own wholeness one day.

Years ago, she was funny, quirky, and though emotionally a
bit stiff, had very kind impulses (always befriended the "loner"
or "ugly" kids--had a huge heart for the underdog).

I love her still. I hold those memories close. I LOVED raising
her (well, engulfing her, since we were too enmeshed and
that's the model I had) ... and her core distinct nature.

It's just that adulthood was too much for her. She began
lying, posing, pretending, spinning...until she spun all the
way out of control. She is a very long way from being able to
be authentic, just herself, and not keep grandstanding on the
internet (punctuated with heartrending pleas for help--and
money--from strangers). But she rejected my last text and letter
in which I offered to pay (a big sum) for her urgent dental work.

I offer love and help and support AND respect for her space
and boundaries. But she's built a fiction, and at one point, was
almost suggesting that both her parents were dead.

For now, I'm dead to her. And you're right, it pulled the plug
out of my sense of myself, the meaning of life. I couldn't and
can't understand how the person I loved and cared about most
in this life...could wind up hating me. But I think she really hates
herself worse than anything, and projected it all my way.

I was the surviving one. Nobody else left to take it out on.

Thank you, Sea--for sharing the pain you felt about your own
daughter. I can't tell you how priceless it is to hear from someone
who knows what that particular agony feels like.

Gratefully,
Hops
PS--Are you still banished from her life? I hesitate to pry.

[lighter]

I'm so sorry, Hops.

I didn't realize it's been three years.

I'm so sorry.

Lighter

[sea storm]

Hi Hops,

You are right. What you have experienced is unbearable. I don't bear it either. I have to put the pain somewhere else so it doesn't consume me or kill me. I continue to try to order it and make sense of it. I can't understand how I could have gone so wrong or been so bad.  Finally, I realize that I wasn't so bad. I played a role in a family where relentless gears were way more powerful than me and I bow to the overwhelming unfairness of it.  And I know the story isn't over.

Its been seven years. The first three years of banishment came at a very bad time when I was breaking up with narcissistic husband and I blamed myself for that too. LIke you my daughter is my only family besides my sister.  We had been really close I thought.  A very big wedding revealed a lot of dynamics that I had been unaware of. I was not allowed to speak at the wedding.

It is seven years later and gradually my daughter sees things differently.  I learned in therapy that my daughter is trauma bonded with rich alcoholic father  and step mother.  The only thing I could have done was to go underground and disappear with her.  At the time I was told that a child needs her father and that I should honour this. Also I had no money or education.

I just kept loving her and calling and keeping the calls simple and non triggering.  This was not possible at first but got better. She did like to hear from me a little at first. Now she is a mother too and that changed things. She has seen me with her child and knows the kind of mom I am. Her little girl loves me and I love her too.
She had severe post partum depression  after the birth of her child and went back to hating me. I don't seem to have power over her feelings that is for sure.  I wonder if she will plunge down again after the birth of her second child. She does too and is a little scared. Having that sword of damocles hanging over your head isn't good. She can get very depressed and has been bulimic.
I keep watch from a distance and will help if asked.

I hope this helps you, Hops.  You were a good mom but sometimes that is not enough and it is out of your control. I sure know it is not in my control either.  Peace be with you.

Love,
SEa

[Twoapenny]

Hi Hops,

I'd never read this thread before.  Although I knew some of the things between you and your daughter, I think I joined the forum some time after it had all come to a head so I'd not read all of this.  It was heartbreaking to read.  I know how much you love and miss her, and equally know how the various conditions and illnesses you mention - Bi-Polar, ADD Asperger's - along with unresolved grief and so on - can make life, not only much more difficult for people to manage, but also mean they often see and/or experience the world in a different way.  The brain is wired differently, I think, so people see and respond in ways that, for others with different 'wiring', appear hard to fathom out.

The things you wrote about reminded me so much of a Carer's forum that I use, particularly the sections for people who care for those with mental health problems and other neurological conditions.  It is so much of a rock and a hard place situation - care and/or medication can't be forced unless there's a significant risk of harm and so people are forced to watch the people they love self-destruct.  It's a soul destroying experience, as you know.  I wish very much I had some words of wisdom or a magic wand to make it all better but sadly I don't.  All I can say is that you are truly loved and cherished here (and I'm sure in other places as well) and I will think of your D as I look at the stars tonight and hope that something in her life clicks into place to help get her to a better place, and will be thinking fondly of you, too.  I truly wish I could do more, though.

Love,

Tupp

[Hopalong]

Lighter-- thanks to you, too.
Those simple words, you got it. Thank you.

Tupp, I can't imagine anything better than
you sending her love and light. Thank you.

Sea, I am so so glad you are in her life again
and able to love your grandchild...one day
maybe (I doubt my D will have kids) my
D will allow me back in, a little. A little
would be plenty--I have no more dreams
of anything cozy or regular.

Thank you ALL for the comfort. It's real,
and it sank in...and I just bought flowers
to plant!

I'll put this thread back to rest until I need
it again.

love
Hops

[Hopalong]

This is very weird, ADD-ish, as well as embarrassing.
I looked back through old email, and it turns out that my D stopped communication with me in February of 2012,
not June of 2011. How senile can I get....(don't want to know).

I don't quite understand why I fixated on June.
My bday is late April, then there's Mother's Day...
just doesn't make sense.

I have always been just terrible with dates (my brain just sees them as more math)
but this is a strange thing. Doesn't mean anything one way or another with regard
to the estrangement, but the whole depression I was positive was an "anniversary
reaction" must instead have been my atypical SAD (there's a variant that hits people
in spring, for me though usually around the start of June)...

What an idiot.

xo
Hops

[lighter]

Oh dear, Hops.

Not senile, just.......

like you said......

more like math for the creative types, IMO.

I'm guessing something, important or traumatic, happened in June of 2011, connections in the brain are funny.

I know nothing about the SAD variant, but I'm curious how you're doing.

What's helping, what you're learning about it.

Lighter

[Gaining Strength]

I agree with Lighter Hops. The brain is powerful that way. You might find it will come to you if you sit quietly holding June 2011 in your mind. But then you might just let it go.

[Hopalong]

thanks, Lighter. And GS, I figured I don't really care about the ghost anniversary of whatever...
more I remind myself, more I read...the subvariant of SAD that kicks in late spring/early summer--
I think it was just that. Arriving.

Still has its teeth in me some right now, but as with so many things, naming it (again)--reminding
myself this is a short-term seasonal struggle and if the pattern holds, by mid-summer I'll be
feeling much better...keeps the "xiety" part of the "depziety" at bay.

AND I NEED TO REMEMBER TO LITERALLY ADD IT TO MY ANNUAL CALENDAR SO I
CAN MAN (WOMAN) THE BATTLEMENTS IN ADVANCE NEXT YEAR.

Lighter, it's the same treatment as for the usual winter SAD, oddly. More light. Earlier in the
day, and more exercise likewise. (I quit the walks for a week after a mild falling-out with
my walkmate. Then began BINGEING on carbohydrates, absurdly. Bleaaahhh. Both classic
symptoms.) Took to my bed to binge-watch TV, during some incredibly gorgeous weather.

Fish oil also. I've upped that. And if all those are tried and fail, then SSRIs. But I've been
off those for years now and prefer to manage it otherwise. I've stepped up a bit of social
connecting too. That's key...since isolation feeds it.

Knowing it's a "normal" way to go through this thing, though, is calming. So instead of
hating myself, I'm trying to do self-compassion and be patient. My dog still loves me.

Anyway, I'm getting a grip again, one finger at a time. Thanks for the interest.

love
Hops