Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: CB123 on November 06, 2010, 09:18:05 AM
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Hey Strength,
Its been too long! I miss you! Whats up?
CB
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YEAH! Whatcha been doing?
Miss you!
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Youooooooooo Hoooooooooooo
Where are you? You are missed.
Love,
Sea storm
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Hey guys - thanks. It feels so good to be missed.
I don't have internet any more and while I can access it at Starbucks or Whole Foods or my mother's, this place and what I would post here has a kind of intimacy that I can't quite gett into easily away from home. Sounds crazy I know but I had to ask myself the very same question.
Many things are going better for me. But my home is still messy and I still don't have a job but all of that will come together soon enough.
I think of you all often and on a rare ocassion take a peek but haven't taken the time to formulate the responses I want to send. Thanks for asking about me. It is just the kick start I have needed to get back involved with you all who have really helped me so much over the recent years.
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((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))
Very glad to hear your voice, hon.
Square feet. I know it's very hard but I know you've got it in you.
It's just not regular or habitual yet. (In me either.) But one day it will be.
So much life in you.
love,
Hops
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Hey Gaining Strength,
Sometimes even hearing what you are having for breakfast or where you are sitting is good. Enough to know you are still standing. Or sitting. It is a funny old world. Lots can happen. So good to know you are ok
Subtle rumblings of your psyche much appreciated.
Love,
Sea storm
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Last night was a late night. I don't know where the time goes - except raising an ADHD child eats up whole chunks.
We were at the library last night and when we got home I went through the list of things he needed to take in the house: "your binder, your book ...." "Where are they?" he asked, "Didn't you get them?" We had been at a table upstairs in the library where I was tutoring. He left for a chess program, leaving his books behind, wide open, askew. In my own mind, it never occurred to me to pick up his stuff - except for his fabulous hand me down leather jacket and that was more to avoid a problem with sticky fingers rather than to help him out. Soooo - back to the library we went and home again somewhere before 9, just in time to finish his reading and for me to prepare dinner. Suddenly it is 10 o'clock, an hour past bedtime and yada, yada yada.
I took him up and returned to do some cleaning, and more cleaning and more. I tackled piles that have been accumulating dust for months on end if not years. I cleaned out the freezer and more. And I thought of you all. how much a part of making this progress in my life you have all been. It sounds so odd that you, whom I have never met, could be so fundamental to my healing and growth but you are. What can I say other than thank you, oh and I'm still getting there. So far yet to go but incrementally closer none-the-less - to where? you might ask - to functionality - that's where.
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Well HUZZAH and HOORAY!
I've missed you. Be back soon as I rest.
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You ARE getting there, GS!
So good to hear from you, and such a calm message, too.
I am happy to hear you sounding more peaceful and full of perspective.
Whatever you've been doing/thinking, it's very visible.
Hope it's catching.
Missed you.
xo
Hops
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I so love this place and her peoples and her generator.
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GS! :D
I am glad you are still around. I hope you will share more when you have time and computer access. You are an inspiration.
Two of my kids (who had moved out) moved back in last month. It has been a flurry of too much stuff and too little room. I spent a month of free time figuring out the space situation and giving everyone the corner they needed. And feeling that my corner had gotten a lot smaller! :(
The clutter was truly immobilizing. I am almost to the bottom of it, but I will tell you...some days I could hardly get out of bed with the dread of looking at it. We had some hard conversations and some serious prioritizing and its better.
Much love,
cb
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oh my heavens CB - it sounds good that two are home for a while. Is it good? But I hear that the space issue is serious. Boy do I get that.
I hope your corner grows large for Thanksgiving.
I am currently in the mountains with my little boy and a friend and her 5 year old girl. I had really looked forward to this. But it is much harder than I had expected. We have differrent ways of dealing with our children and of doing kitchen and meal things and as it turns out only one way is going to prevail here. I have learned over the past 8 to 9 years that friendships are worth putting up with the baloney for but it is none-the-less difficult. My son is having a hard time with it as well.
As we drove up here on Saturday we (she and I) told the children who were bickering, "Stop." "Your hand is too close to me." "Mommy, he won't let me play with his toys." that we were going to learn to be more tolerant of each other and there would be no tattling, nor whining, nor incessant picking and complaining. As it turns out these rules only apply to my child. The mom knows that she tends to control things though she is unaware that she is doing it now but I am witnessing her give her own child the power to be in control. For instance - she has a rule that noone may be excused from the table until everyone is finished. Guess who is the last one finished each and every meal and not by a minute or two. After two days and 7 meals of this it is abundantly clear that the little girl and Richard and I are the only ones abundantly clear that the little girl is lording her power over everyone. her mother thinks she is teaching her daughter manners. My son and I both recognize that she is teaching her how to control those around her. Beginning at breakfast tomorrow I will excuse my son when all but princess are finished.
Tonight her daughter wanted to whisper to her mother while we were all eating dinner. After the third time my 9 year old said, "It's rude to whisper in front of others." Her mother laughed and said, "she is just being silly," and continued to listen to the whispers that went on throughout the meal.
It touches all of my old buttons - so it is an opportunity for me to work through some more stuff. But boy or boy is it difficult.
Feeling lonely and frustrated and irritable and irritated. I will work through it but I really hate these experiences.
Anyone relate?
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oh yes, I can relate!
Hubby has 8 nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 17 to 5. Bro's kids are mostly quiet, self-sufficient, intellectual sorts and interact well with adults. They have been a lot of fun to be around. The 17 yr old is just now reaching the rebellious stage, however and is mostly reacting to limits - and his mom. He has 15 yr old and 12 yr old sisters. The kids have been home schooled; the oldest is now in a private prep school.
SIL's got 4 boys; their personalities are all quite different and they are good boys. But they ARE boys and like a pack of puppies are in constant motion - and the effort to contain their "commotion" is constant.
When I was actively parenting, I guess my philosophy was closer to the bro's and my kids were more like that. Ex #2 had 2 boys, and for the duration of our blended family, there were times when the testosterone levels in the environment shot through the roof and I went through what SIL does 24/7. I tried to channel all that energy into physical activity - sports - but even that was exhausting.
So, even though I think I'm fairly tolerant of differences in kids and parenting styles... the reality different. I like to think I'm an expert and I sure know what bugs me! Or what I can see in any given interaction, even. But, the fact is I don't know what that kind of parenting looks and feels like. It's a miracle that I did it as well as I did - and it sure wasn't perfect!!! Hubby's old school and while he can be the biggest kid of all... there are just certain things that today's kids do, are, and take for granted that just gets under skin and reads as blatant disrespect to him. And he's a nervous person around kids - except his grandson. Don't ask me what's different!! LOL!!
The one thing I catch myself doing - too much - is applying all the things I've worked through and learned about my own childhood experiences to all these different kinds of child - parent/adult interactions. These new situations are very different, especially in one respect - the parents are not emotionally abusive. So I realize that while my buttons are getting pushed sometimes (or hubby's) that what I'm responding to is nowhere near that kind of situation. I am hypersensitive, in other words. And I remind myself that normal parenting includes a kind of balance - between "Rules" and being allowed to ditch some of the rules for "fun". And that in healthy parenting situations, sometimes we do want to let the "balance of power" shift from parent to child... and back again. That's how kids learn to be independent and to separate their identities from dear old mom & dad. It's their "practice". And it's also building that relationship of trust between the two. (Something I know I didn't get to experience as a child.) Parenting just isn't an exact science and even if one gets a good "system" going with one child it doesn't necessarily apply to the next.
So even if I'm uncomfortable sometimes, with others' parenting techniques or styles I find ways to cope and allow them their space. I often learn something from it. I do look for my own opportunities to interact with the kids from my experience, speak up about my own limits or rules, and gently enforce them, even if I have to put on my aggressive self with the boys sometimes, to get their attention! I think it'll be good for you and your son to have this different experience - even if you have to retain "what works" with your son most of the time and that is different your friend's parenting style. Since for me, parenting is essentially a relationship between two people, I don't see a parent so much as "authority", in charge, infallible, etc. Sure, ya gotta be sometimes! :D
But it's the other stuff - the stuff of the relationship: caring, feelings, trust, fun - that is what "grows" kids into flexible, whole adults. It's the fertilizer! :D
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I'm beginning to understand how she extends her controlling nature through her child. It is fascinating to watch and gives me enormous insight to how we humans sometimes do disservice to our children.
Here is an example: We drove 40 miles to a small city to see a gingerbread exhibit. On the way, C was looking at and talking about a newspaper article about the gingerbread. The children asked to see it so she handed it to her 5 year old (who cannot read) and after a while my child asked to look at it. The girl said she wasn't funished but she continued her state of "not finished" for over 15 minutes and her mother would interject that my child could see it when hers was finished. On our return trip we stopped at a hotdog place and saw a picture of a toystore in another paper. My child picked it up and her child reached to take it away from him. He had had it less than a minute when the mother asked my son to let her daughter to see it. And on and on it goes.
I recognize this as yet another opportunity for healing. That all depends on the focus I maintain. I am working on it although recognizing that writing about the offense does more to keep me in the wound than in the healing. However, I fervently believe and have learned from this place, this board that getting it out and acknowledged and receiving sympathy and compassion are all big parts of the healing process.
Hope to be back in touch soon. - GS
Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
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yes - shorter periods are a must.
It was a difficult week for me and for my little one. He held on and only lost his cool a couple of times out of site of the others. I am so proud of him because it was very, very difficult.
On the way home my friend was reading the "boundaries" book and talking about different things. her back and neck were hurting but every time her child demanded her attention she turned around. As the hours passed it began to really hurt. I suggested she allow herself to answer without turning around - to draw that boundary. She said that she could see that but it was difficult because her mother never made eye contact, she would say she was paying attention but she wasn't and my friend did not want to do that to her little girl.
So instead she has overcompensated. She allowed her daughter to hold everyone hostage at the table saying that it was manners to not be excused until everyone was finished, all the while the little girl just sat twidling her fork and giggling because she could control it all. Day 2 I caught on and excused ourselves. My friend is not recognizing how she is setting zero boundaries for her own daughter and setting her up into a life of entitlement - the very entitlement my friend gladly points out in others around her, which she despises so.
Having reached the other side of surviving that long trip, I see that i can continue to grow and make it through. To make an entire week of constant assault on me and my little one and survive without a confrontation is something beyond remarkable for me and my child. I am so proud of him.
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CB - just a quick thanks to you for reaching out. It was bizarrely perfect timing. It felt so warm and inclusive. Thank you.
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GS, I'm so glad to hear you again.
Does "constant assault" feel true still, or was it just in the moment of reliving it that the extreme descriptor felt true?
love to you,
Hops
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Oh it DEFINITELY feels true still.
It was relentless and it required relentless counter work on my part - both to get ME through it AND my little boy. It was daily, morning, noon and night from the little girl and from the mother.
Here are a couple of more examples - the same meal where the mother said it was bad manners for people to leave the table before everyone was finished her daughter got up to whisper in her ear. When my child said that it was bad manners to whisper her mother said that she was just being silly and the whispering continued.
The message - what my child does is ok, what others do is bad manners.
If I put a book or a notebook or a glass or a cup down for a short period it was moved or gone through or something. When she cooked she left all the dishes for me to wash. When I cooked she left all the dishes for me to wash. What I purchased at the store became community food. What she purchased was for herself and her child. What she consumed from the house she expected us to both replace including for instance honey even though I brought my own honey.
We brought bed linens and she asked me to bring towels so that the night before we left we would not have to launder the house towels. She said that she and I could share one. I chose to bring one for each. She didn't ask me to bring towels for her daughter. The first day she appropriated both towels for her child and herself. Two wet towels when I went to take a shower. I washed and dried them that night. The next morning she washed her hair and used the hand towel and bath towel and then moved them both to her private half bath for the duration.
She rearranged the things in my car, reset my clock, took charge of the heat and air and radio, decided what we would eat and when we would eat. Told my son which toys he needed to share with her child and when (no reciprocity.) On and on and on.
It still feels very much like a constant assault.
When I got home I had lunch with a friend from Virginia who was in town with her family visitiing her sister. We haven't seen each other in 7 years. She and her husband have raised many, many foster children. They were talking about the differences between horseplay, conflict and bullying. Bullying in their definition has the characteristics of being an issue of power happening repeatedly over time. My precious son definitely experienced bullying.
Did I mention that the last evening she demanded my son come vacuum the stairs. Then her daughter said, "mommy, I want to vaccuum." So she oversaw how that was being done. I could not be around it because I was suffering from real strain with asthma (and no medicine) but even though I was in ear shot I'm not sure what happened but my son wasn't doing what she wanted him to do and she snapped at him and hit him on the back. Then she sent him up to get the whisk broom which was where i was. He came up in tears. I was so very angry and simply held him in my lap and told him he would be staying with me and we would go get his bath and go to bed. Shortly she came up and asked me if he had gotten the whisk broom and I told her I would do it later that it was time for his bath and bed. She was not happy. We had only the 6 hour drive left to endure.
It was definitely a constant assault. And I am indescribably thankful that it is over.
I am often drawn to others who have had difficult family of origin issues but I have reached a point that I will be less likely to choose them as friends. It is simply far too difficult.
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....or you could say that you are glad you tried it, but that this woman and her child are not a good match for you and yours.
This situation sounds as though it is beyond spending limited time with them...they dont sound like people that can work for you.
I dont know if you remember the illustration that I use in my own head over stuff like this: relationships occur in concentric circles --the relationships that are closest to the "center" or the safe ones. Further and further out are rings that include relationships that I may enjoy, but that are (for whatever reason) are not safe to have close up.
This one may need to be in one of the outer circles. Seriously.
These kinds of things are hard... you are trying to match FOUR people. I have found that sometimes I get along with the mom as another woman, but NOT as a mom. So that woman might be someone fun to go have coffee with or go to the movies (maybe we share the same enjoyment of goofy british comedies, but little else).
Sometimes it might be the two kids that have a blast together... the moms like each other, but maybe not enough to spend a long weekend. So then you have playdates where one of you takes the kids. Who play together, have a blast and you get some closets cleaned out.
Once in a blue moon, all four of you will click and that's magic.
CB
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Jeez, I misread your explanation of this, in the first post. I had no idea the struggles were so constant! I thought you were relaying a random incident. I am sorry!
You handled the situation really well, though. I think this shows how far you've come - the real, established progress you've made.
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CB - you nailed it. here is a bit of history. I have known the mom for a very long time. We have been in a group that meets weekly for certain periods of the year to pray intercessory prayers for individuals. I have always liked her but had a clear sense that she was normally in charge and had a tendancy to be somewhat judgmental in that special Christian way. She married late to someone I have known (and never particularly liked) since high school and with great difficulty she finally had one child born 4 years and one day after my own. That was one thing that we had in common. A couple of years ago she helped her husband fight a very difficult battle of cancer which he miraculously survived. It was, of course, poignant for me to watch her be in the forefront of that battle, working hard to keep her only child's father alive. Then in June a friend told me that she and her husband were separated. I gave her a call. It was a case of reaching out just when a person needed it and I have been there for her ever since. We have been getting up early each day during the week praying together. Until this summer I was never an early riser. It has been a good experience.
Our children have been around each other often across the years, usually at church activities or for several years we all had breakfast at the same restaurant on Saturday mornings. The have always gotten along but it has been for such brief periods - an hour at most.
I will continue to be friends with her. Surprisingly she has been calling this week. Honestly, I wasn't sure how things would shake out after last week. But I won't sign up for a family activity again. That's a definite no for me.
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Thanks PR.
It was such a victory for me to NEVER give in and lose my cool.
It took me two or three days to figure out that her behavior had to do with her operations through her daughter. That insight gave me some fascinating healing insights. To actually watch her do this puppetry through her daughter that will do some N type damage to her daughter and see the effect on others around was so revealing and helpful. It was like peeling back the membrane of human psychology at work, seeing behind the scenes of things other humans simply don't get to see.
On about Tuesday, I was sitting in my room racking my brain and beating myself up about what is it in me that keeps getting into similar situations. I knew that she had just come back from a long weekend with long time girlfriends and it had gone well so I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what in God's name do I do to trigger this kind of behavior over and over and by the grace of God I got it. I saw, truly in a lightbulb moment way, that it had EVERYTHING to do with her daughter. That insight gave me enough knowledge to prepare myself to protect myself and my son and develop a psychological defense, taking myself out of the process, recognizing that this was about her and her defenses and not about me nor my child. That understanding singularly helped me but it was not enough to save me. I had to keep working at my defense (fortifying myself, building myself up, not taking the knocks, knowing I could do it. AND I DID! AND I protected my son and got him through it. That was no small victory for BOTH of us. I am so extraordinarily thankful. It gives me courage and a kind of budding confidence that I will build on.
Thanks so much for your comment. It helped me think and write this through and cement the achievement and utilize the healing. To have gotten through this with our "friendship" in tact is so important to me. For so long I would begin a friendship and it would implode/explode and leave me with a gaping wound untended. I think I have finally moved to the razor's edge where I might fall that way but I might as easily fall on the other side as well. This has been such an extraordinarily long and perilous journey to get to this edge. Honestly, I'm not sure I really thought I would get here. And quite frankly "here" is good enough but I rather doubt I will stay here. I think it will only get better.
I have been in such a dark valley for so very long. To see the light, a light I thought would elude me lifelong, is like the dawning after the disastrous hurricaine night. There is life but there is still a massive clean up ahead.
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recognizing that this was about her and her defenses and not about me nor my child
That's huge, GS!
You were rational and saw that it's not about you.
You did not take it personally! WOO HOO!
What a huge step into being less hurt as you interact with (all sorts of) humans.
Happy for you,
Hops
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There is life but there is still a massive clean up ahead.
AH! but it will soooooooo much easier than in the past! I believe that the "life" = "energy" or motivation or desire... and so will fuel an exponentially deeper, faster movement through now. Sure, there will still a "hangover" effect of the old patterns... they'll stick around, but I think you'll find that the fear surrounding them and the intensity of the power of the patterns is way diminished from what you've experienced up till now.
So that you'll have a lot more of the kind of experiences where you'll realize in a quiet moment - OH! that's gone! I haven't "done that" in a while... or "I don't do that anymore". And sometimes, in stressful periods, you might notice some of that starting to creep back in - I've noticed this myself. It's like we hold those old dysfunctional patterns in our brains as a default, fall-back, "if all else fails" way of coping. But the "pay off" - or what these old patterns used to provide in the past - isn't as satisfactory; maybe don't have the same kind of energy... as before. So, they also don't have so much "power" over us and are easier to change, even if that change is - "again". (I'm more than ever convinced that the concept of "practice" is essential healing.)
Some of my & hubby's old habits have crept back in, while we've been grieving MIL and adjusting to a new reality of life without her presence. Sure - hubby & I had our own patterns of being together pretty well established prior to living with her the past nine months. But now - the situation is still quite different from the past and while we've "tried on" the old patterns they just don't "fit" as well now. There's a sense he & I both have, that we're in "new territory" and while there's the comfort of the "old & familiar" (which was really toward the dysfunctional side of the spectrum)... that comfort is a lot less than we'd both hoped for.
So it's onwards... towards new things. And while that doesn't feel as "natural" and doesn't come totally without some intention and effort... the "pay off" of making those changes has more value than the old patterns of coping we used.
On another note: have you thought yet about changing your moniker here? I'd say you've got plenty o' strength now! It shows through the new "voice" I hear, in what you've been writing. Very strong; very clear... and between the lines, I sense there's still more to discover.