Family of Origin (FOO) Support Thread Part 2

[Copabanana]

I am secretly a hero, and very brave, too.

I will have to change the logo from dollar signs to the Superman "S".

I am brave.

Good job, Cedar.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Had I not been traumatized as a girl I would have been the kind of woman who is attention seeking, dramatic, focused on her appearance, attracting men. Maybe even a diva-type. (Wow, would I have loved all of that.)

I know. Like, really high high heels.

:O)

D H is taking me to dinner.

We just had hot dogs, too.

We will just be eating our way to happiness, then.

You are right, Copa. Thank you. Maybe it is like a movie I saw once. It was in Japanese, so I don't know what the words were. Something bad happens, something shaming, and the samurai leaps into the community cesspool and stays there day and night, his arms wrapped around a pole and passersby ridiculing him. One night when the moon is full, a lotus opens in the middle of the cesspool.

The samurai climbs out.

Maybe, that is all of us, here on this site.

The jewel in the lotus is the symbol of the self.

Cedar

How did that poetry go?

A white and a six-petaled promise reflect
in pools catacombing the Earth.

Thank you, Copa.

 

[BusynMember]

I guess I can try to find somebody to oversee his appointments and going with him maybe through the County Mental Health.

Although he is hostile to being managed and my autistic son isn't, I still feel it is in your child's best interests to get him a guardian. It can be a stranger that the court appoints. If not, he will not take care of himself and he will have all the power over his medical care, which he doesn't seem to understand. Nobody can legally oversee his mental health care, at his age, unless t hey have legal guardianship over him. They still can't make him take his medications, but they can get info from doctors, make appointments and call the office if he is not complying in coming and try to work it out, much like a child who is underage.

He can't take care of himself. He doesn't know how. On the other hand, you can't care for him either. It is too hard on you and he is too hostile. You may want to look into this, but it IS a legal procedure and the judge has to order it. Since he is already considered disabled, I doubt it would be too hard. Your son will fight any guardianship, and I'm not sure how it works if he doesn't want a guardian. I don't think all people have a choice of refusal.

Can't hurt to try, hon. You can't go on like this. Big hugs. Just got home from work and trying to help with a tired mind...

 

[BusynMember]

Usually I can be in that place where I can be happy for friends whose families are okay. (That place where I can manage resentment, then. That must be what I mean.) So, this is resentment and anger. Better to have it out in the open. In a way, these are the feelings we have been working for in our FOO therapy.

Honestly, one thing I learned recently is that we never know if famlies are ok, no matter how they look. Before Sis got her divorce, she never once told me she didn't love her husband, much less that she (as she says now) NEVER loved her husband. On the surface the family looked perfect. Involved father (at least with his son), two beautiful, brilliant twin daughter, a gorgeous house, looked to me like they had money.

The truth that I just found out:

Sis picked on one of her twin girls until she was about twelve to the point that daughter wrote a distraught letter to her deceased grandmother (my mother) when she passed which included the words "I have nobody now. My mother hates me..."

My mother was her champion, much like my grandmother was mine. And my sister claims she patcvhed up relationship with that twin, but that is not good parenting and it isn't a perfect family.

Now she claims she never loved her husband, which is a whole other dynamic. She was married twenty years to a man she didn't love. Dismal.

Her son suffered when the divorce happened because she abandoned him to the father, although they all still lived together...she was with her abusive boyfrieind. Well, her married boyfriend first. The son didn't matter. I remember that very well. She was barely with him. The father was.

What happened to this great looking family?

Do they have more problems than even I know about for sure?

Of course.

You do not know if any family is happy. Most do put on the best act they can and shut down talking about the bad stuff. Nice tables don't mean well balanced families with totally healthy, happy adult kids.

We never know what lurks behind anyone's door.
Don't be jealous. You have no idea what you are jealous of.

I hope this helped. I have known many families who looked great that later broke up and everyone was shocked.

Don't judge a book by it's cover. Bad cliche with good meaning.

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, one more thing. I have to go out and you are probably out to dinner already.

We did similar things as young women. You creating a perfect family. Me, striving for a profession. We were idiots. We were trying to make up for what was broken inside us by building fantasies. It never could have worked.

If it had, you would have ended up a bitter and brittle woman, with the pain within unaddressed, unexpressed. I would have ended up all alone. Isolated. With nobody and nothing meaningful. I was already headed there before I adopted my son.

There is no pain and suffering that I have endured or will ever endure that will be so great as to overcome the joy and gifts that my son has given, or that could touch my love for him.

When you are low, you persist in scapegoating yourself for what happened to your kids. You would ask us this, whose voice is that Cedar?

Yet you do not go after D H. Instead you believe he never deserved the pain he has endured. You will always seek to protect him from blame and from hurt. Whose voice is it, Cedar, that is so mean to you, who singles you out while sparing others?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But I have a personality type that makes me easily dismissed and would have predicted that I remain quite ineffectual and unsubstantial as a person.

We cannot see ourselves as others see us, Copa.

I have told this story here on the site before, but you may not have read it. So, I will tell it, now.

There is a Blind Melon video about a fat little red headed girl in a bee costume. She tap dances her heart out, but no one is impressed. Whenever she moves, her bee antennae bounce around in the most distracting way and there is just no way for her not to stick out like a very sore and red headed thumb. Everyone rejects her. Finally, she comes to the gates of some new place.

BOOM.

Every is wearing bee costumes.

Until I went back to school at the Benedictine university, I was very sure there were not so many people like me in the world.

BOOM

They were all wearing bee costumes.

:O)

(I had a friend who I had asked write a letter of reference to adopt a child. She wrote that because I was emotional, this should disqualify me as a parent. Gee. Maybe she was right, after all.) Shallow. Inconstant. Timid. Fearful.

To learn to see the unkindness in the ways we judge ourselves Copa is why we are working so hard on this thread. Remember my parting words to myself once I was dressed?

"That'll do, pig."

And I would go out into the world, Copa, thinking that was funny and got me out the door without the usual self hatred. It makes me very sad to know that now? But "That'll do, pig." was a thousand times better than feeling so ugly I gave up and just went wherever it was I was going.

Mother. Always and forever, my mother's voice; my mother's sly contemptuous look. Here is the flavor of my mother. In an adolescence where one had to have smooth, flat lengths of hair, mine was outrageously red, and naturally curly. And as I was leaving one day, my mom said: "With as much time as you spend on that hair, you should look better than you do." So I spent even more time on my ugly, ugly hair and never even knew it was beautiful until now, when I can believe that it is. And here is the funny thing: It is beautiful in old pictures, too. The very pictures I believed were so ugly!

Now, how could that be.

Thanks, mom.

***

Regarding the person who wrote the letter...if that was her position, a friend would have said so before she agreed to write a letter in your behalf. Given that you brought your boy up to be well-mannered and kind, managed his complex medical needs and bonded closely with him until his drug use began, I would say your friend was as wrong as could be.

She can be safely disregarded then, as can so many predators we allow, until we are healed, to feast in the wounds our mothers created.

***

Shallow. I think people are only shallow when we have not taken the time to see beyond our assessments of who they believe themselves to be.

My sister is an excellent salesman, whether in selling actual things to people or in selling herself. It lasts until she has what she wanted, whether in attention or money or time, and then, she must rest. I have a terrible time selling anyone anything, including myself.

But I make an excellent nurse.

If we have grown up in the shadow of a salesman type, we may well consider ourselves less valid people than, in fact, we are.

If our sisters are salesman types, and if they have hated us (which mine certainly does seem to have done and yours too and SWOT's as well) there will have been sabotage and ridicule and envy instead of love for the pseudo mom sister whom the mother has taught to believe she is nothing but a receptacle for the abusive mother's rage.

And who the sister perceives in that exact same way.

I could be wrong, but I don't imagine we came out of that thinking well of ourselves in the ways that matter. We came out of that thinking well of our physical attributes because that was the only place neither our moms nor our sisters could define who we were allowed to be.

Which led to a whole other set of problems, but that is why they invented high heels.

Heh.

:O)

And you know how we feel about high heels at my house. They say, on Beverly Hills Housewives, which I used to watch so hard after daughter's beating: The higher the heel, the closer to God.

On we go.

Regarding the other unkindnesses to yourself, Copa ~ inconstant. Timid. Fearful. The timidity and fear were undoubtedly symptoms of complex PTSD. Inconstancy...whose voice whispered that word into your ear, Copa?

Happy Hour, here. D H and I decided to stay home and eat bratwurst. After the hotdogs and the rest of the melon, no one is hungry enough to justify driving an hour for dinner.

:O)

Cedar

 

[nerfherder]

did not know that. I will look up Anthony B.

Quickly - I am trying to keep a 14 month old girl out of my toolbox.

The book you want is Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential." And everything you read in it about his psycho baker friend? I was pretty darned close to that when I was a baker. And all his stories? Totally not exaggerating. Been there, done that (except the heroin and meth.)

Back in 2004, when driving across country, I spent an overnight with my late friend Bob. Bob was a restaurant critic and chef, worked for some big names in his day.

So we spent the night with a roast chicken from Polyface Farms (Google it, another fantastic food writer, Joel something), a bottle of chianti, telling each other stories of our professional days.

"Tony? Tony Bourdain's an ," he said. "A good enough chef, but even my 9 year old who sat at the table with us at (some chef awards banquet dinner) said so."

I really miss Bob. Even had a dream about him, a few months after he died, he was approving our outdoor kitchen and I was showing him the keystone shaped brick I found.

Six years later we live on a farm, Blacksmith built an outdoor kitchen, and there is a keystone shaped brick I found by the pasture fence.

 

[SeekingStrength]

And as I was leaving one day, my mom said: "With as much time as you spend on that hair, you should look better than you do." So I spent even more time on my ugly, ugly hair and never even knew it was beautiful until now, when I can believe that it is. And here is the funny thing: It is beautiful in old pictures, too. The very pictures I believed were so ugly!

And there is no doubt, your hair was/is beautiful. Wow. That comment just plain stinks of mean.

I have a few stories similar--- about my mother. Not about my hair. But, hey, i have some stories. Stories of meanness. My mom, when she got irritated with me, would call me a slut. And, if my dad called her out on it, would later say she did not mean slut like i thought she meant slut. She just meant cheap, lol. I was probably about 13 and had no opportunities to be a slut, however way she meant.

If i brought this up to her now, she would totally deny it ever happened.

sigh

husband and I are observing our 35th anniversary tomorrow. We are going on an overnight trip. Last time we took this VERY SAME TRIP, we both received texts from Difficult Child and a "friend" of his. I need to talk to you, Difficult Child needs to talk to you.

We are both trusting that the universe works better for us this time. (I blocked Difficult Child's #, so it will surely go better for me).

And, i am more protective of my 35 yrs of commitment to husband than ever before. He has earned my loyalty a thousand times over. I wish I had stepped up 30 years ago.

He held his tongue many times.

And, then he did not a couple months ago and mom is no longer speaking to him.

My mom, i expect, would love nothing more than for me to come to her side, diss my husband for his absolutely maltreatment of her. If I did that, she might even speak to me again, haha.

That won't happen. Is it because I got smarter and/or because there is so much history?

Hey, you guys post stuff and it gets me to remembering. It's your fault.

It is helpful. I had not remembered the slut comments for 20 years. Can't wait to share this with husband.....because, really, it's kinda big stuff.

And, SWOT, when i said it is painful to read, I hope you know i meant because of my memories. I am grateful.

When you guys share, something in my core sometimes kicks in. And, it is painful, but i appreciate this forum to write it out.

 

[Copabanana]

slut. She just meant cheap, lol. I was probably about 13 and had no opportunities to be a slut, however way she meant.

If i brought this up to her now, she would totally deny it ever happened.

Seeking, my mother never acknowledged anything mean she did or said. She would just deny it ever happened. While I got used to it as I got older it was really hard when I was a girl. It made me feel as if I could not trust myself, my senses, my perceptions, my memories. But actually, I always did. I just pretended I didn't trust myself. Because I could not consciously hold on to the fact that my mother was how she was.

I really loved my Mother. Now she is dead, it is hard to think about the ways she hurt me. Because I want to feel every bit of love she ever game me and I gave her. There was not much. So it is hard to write or think anything bad.

So, as I read this I realize that I am doing the same thing now when I try to overlook the reality of my life with my Mother. I am discredited the truth I lived.

I was very, very depressed after my Mother died when I did not allow myself to remember that my mother was mean to me. I kept the truth inside of me and it was eating me up. So every now and then I need to remember to tell the truth.

I think to call a 13 year old girl a slut is a horrible thing.

My grandmother used to call my mother a slut. I remember. My poor Mother. She just liked men a whole lot, to meet them and to have them be attracted to her. And she loved fun.

Seeking I am so glad for you and your husband for the happiness of your commitment. You seem so strong Seeking to have had a mother who would want to bring such pain and loss upon you, and care not at all about your suffering. Just to be right.

 

[BusynMember]

The names we were called are NEVER acknowledged as abuse.

Slut is a horrible name to call your own child, even if they are promiscuous and worse if they are not.

Any time a mother calls us a negative label, whatever it is, it hurts us to the quick, unless there is an apology and an acknowledgement that this was the wrong t hing for them to do...an apology from my mother just once would have been so sweet. I apologized to her over and over again for anything I may have done to hurt her. She never acknowledged that I did this either. I did it with words a nd with cards and I meant it, although, honestly, I can have a big mouth, but nothing I said to her in anger or hurt came close to what she did to me, over and over again. The rejection from childhood on up just ate me up more than her words. The labels stuck in my head and spoke to me, even after she died. Especially after she made sure I knew she did not consider me worthy from the grave. Mothers words stay with the person forever. I am 61 and have finally learned not to hear, "You are worthless" or "You are bad" (this is the biggest one) in my head in her voice. I recently have learned to be very mindful of these emotional flashback abusive phrases from her lips. It took me 61 years. Some people die with these phrases in their heads.

I did start to improve in my 40's, but it's slow going and after she died, I had a setback from her final rejection and laugh from the grave, but since then steadily moved upward, seeing my FOO for who they really were and are for the first time. That it was not me. That they define me as they do because that is what dysfunctional unloving families do to their own. There HAS to be a good guy and a bad guy. And often the entire family joins in. And most often the scapegoat is started in childhood, even infancy, because he or s he is the vulnerable one who is sensitive and more difficult and more apt to call a self-hating mother out on her stuff.

Mine started at my birth.

"When I held you in my arms, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing."

That is something she could have taken to her grave. I never needed to hear that. I never forgot it. She never bonded with me. From the grave she kicked me again. I tried to make amends. I believe in tryng. She would not accept them. I would have accepted hers, but she never made amends, never thought she did anything wrong. That destroyed any relationship I could have had with my siblings because they bought what she sold and, further, were both damaged as well. I feel I have done t he best, at least on an emtional level, as I can accept love and give unconditional love and both of t hem struggle mightily with intimate relationships, even with one another.

She damaged us all.

They tend to blame my father more and he is not blameless, but he was also abused and easily baited, like me.

He did some horrible things...he cheated once. I never defend that. Get a divorce first. However, he loved my mom and she hated hm by then. I remember her talking about his cheating to me in her rather demeaning voice. "I didn't CARE t hat he cheated. I just cared that he picked a lowlife on welfare to cheat with me on." Not her exact words, but exactly what she meant when she said it and articulated as such.

Then my grandmother, who I really loved but she had a mean streak, and my mother went on a campaign to get my mother out of the marriage. My mother did such a good sales job, all three of us s ided with her. Looking back, I think she abused him and belitted him in much the same way she did me. I feel a kinship with him. I know, as he did not, that the other two blame him. I would never tell him the horrible things the others said about him, although not to his face. And some of it was deserved, but clearly he was the "abusive" one in their eyes.

I was the oldest. We had a den built off our kitchen. I used to sit there at night and here their kitchen fights, which is where they mostly took place because the living room in our small house would have awakened my seven years younger sister and my brother. She would bait him and mock him for the choices he made. Not that he made good choices all the time...he pretty much gave away his part of a pharmacy he owned to his drug addict partner just to get out of the nuttiness of the partner's addiction. Looking back, I understand. But she never let him forget it and never stopped mocking and belittling him for being so weak.

His partner got into dangerous business with dangerous people. He was a Quaalude addict and once held a gun to his family, who fled. I think my father was partly trying to protect us, and my mother disagreed and never shut her face about it. I heard it night after night, late at night, because I was the only one old enough to still be up. I hated her for it. When she did it. I wanted her to shut up. Just like I always did when they fought.

My dad isn't' perfect. He has a terrible temper when he gets angry. He gets rageful. Although once in a while he'd throw things when provoked, he never hit her. But sometimes they would fight in front of all three of us, especially on Sunday mornings. Late nights and Sunday mornings were the only time the two of them were together as Dad wasn't home much. I don't blame him. During those Sunday morning fights, while we three huddled on the stairs, they would go at it viciously. Dad looked murderous. I wanted to scream at her to stop baiting him. I didn't want him to do anything. I was scared. I was scared of HIM when shes baited him. I knew he had a bad temper. So did she. She would get in his face and almost taunt him to hit her. He never did, but it was so scary.

She was t he one who had more c ontrol. In fact, s he baited on purpose. He was wrong too. But I kept wondering why she wouldn't just walk away from him since she knew all three of us were watching. Why did she insist on continuing the fight, that was often about each other's horrible families (their opinions) and stop it. If she was so scared of him, why did she get in his face when he was mad? I did not blame her for his temper, but I blamed her for deliberately baiting him in front of us. And I blamed her more than him. Fair? Probably not. But I knew how s he baited me. She was so GOOD at pushing buttons in the vulnerable.

Maybe I stuck up for my dad, at least in my head, because he did not favor my siblings over me. He didn't hate me. He didn't treat me as a scapegoat. So I naturally sided with him. Except for the divorce, in which I was newly married, struggling, and had her ear. But that didn't last. They SHOULD have gotten divorced, but it was not HIS fault. They were both at fault. In the end, my mother, like my sister and brother, never found a satisfactory relationship with anyone but one another. Her boyfriend wasas dysfunctional as my father. He was nicer to her, but he was also sick and needy, like my brother. She worshipped him. He cheated on her with an undocumented woman who wanted to be a U.S. citizen. He married her. She abused hiim. He dumped my mother for her, although they stayed friends.

In the end, my mother picked a dysfunctional man a second time and was hurt, as I feel she deserved. I didn't wish it for her, but I knew she hadn't changed and, like my sister, wanted a man who could not really give her anything emotionally.

I swear, I'm the only one in the family in a happy relationship that will last until one of us dies.

I am the only one who is not afraid to feel love and give it.

I am grateful I got out of the family, even if it was partly because they rejected me. Their influence was not a good one.

I have been very mindful throughout my life not to call my kids names. Even when my two more difficult ones were giving me grief, I did not call them names often and the few times I slipped up there were immediate apologies from me.

Those two difficult(er) kids have kids now.

They are both loving, amazing parents. I am especially impressed with Princess and the constant way she loves and empowers her baby daughter, who does not understand there is ugliness and anger toward her in this world. Her SO stepped up to the plate as a father. I was unsure at one time if either would grow up. They are the best young parents I know. I was not as good a parent as t hey are to my grandbaby. She is the happiness baby. They never act angry toward her.

Bart is sometimes overindulgent of his son, but he would do anything for him and is very protective of him and God help anyone who says a nasty word to his son. He has fought until he was a nervous wreck in court for his son's well being. I am proud of him.

I hope, that a part of this is because t hey were never abused themselves. I actually gave myself a pat on the back!!!!! That is not normal for me. I am more apt to tear myself down. But I'm learning, have been slowly learning from the 40's to now. Why do we have to be this old to see things clearly? That we are valuable? That we have done well in life? That we are not responsible for the problems other have? That maybe we imparted some good to our kids, even if they struggle? That it is a hard task to find and give love to a SO for a long period of time, but we are doing it? That we have good hearts, maybe better hearts than those who told us we were bad people? Why does it take so long??

Well, late is better than never.

I wish I had beautiful, thick red hair. I have very fine hair that I now dye brown, which is the natural color. But I was pretty when I was young and people still think I look good for my age. I get guessed ten years younger. The one thing my mother did NOT do was tell me I was ugly. In fact, she told me that I "had nice features" and "was pretty." These were imperative for her...to have pretty daughters (she does). Why? "Girls don't have to be smart, they just have to be beautiful." But she also harped on our weight and my sister has one whopper of an eating disorder that has never gone away, that she has never gotten help to resolve. By far, she is the prettier one, but she is also too thin, which she enjoys. "Men like anorexic women." Her words. She believes it. So did my mother.

I am rambling. I am done.

I love these early morning/late night hours where the world is quiet and peaceful.

Good wishes to you all.

 

[BusynMember]

So, as I read this I realize that I am doing the same thing now when I try to overlook the reality of my life with my Mother. I am discredited the truth I lived.

This is so easy to do, Copa. Don't beat yourself up, hon. We all want to believe our mothers loved us. If my mother had not disowned/disinherited me at the end, I may still be pretending our relationship was not so good 100% because of me and not at all because of her. Remember, when I first went for counseling at age 23, I said, "My mother was a GREAT mother. I was just a terrible kid." Yep, that infant who stiffened in her arms, was certainly the problem. Not the mother who didn't try to hold her anyway and just put her into her crib with a propped bottle. I was the guilty party. Infants do that on purpose, you know. Maybe I felt the hostility as an infant?

By my mid 30's, I was starting to figure out that it was not just me and that I was angry at her for not loving me. I wasn't the perfect daughter. I was angry. But I didn't cause it 100% and I was sorry every time I hurt her and expressed it. She wasn't sorry and never expressed it. So I put distance between us...I could see she was trying to not only ostracize me from her anyway, but from my siblings.

What she did to me was actually helpful in making me open my eyes without cheating.

Your mother didn't do that to you. I thank God she did not. Nothing is as painful as a slap from the grave that can never be resolved.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I really miss Bob. Even had a dream about him, a few months after he died, he was approving our outdoor kitchen and I was showing him the keystone shaped brick I found.

I love this, and I love that you miss him and still think about him. I awakened this morning with imagery of placing or seeing old, squared stones underwater. Not very deep water. The feeling is one of exploration of the stones, the very old stones, and where they lead as the water deepens.

Very nice imagery; very strong.

I love your imagery of outdoor kitchen, the feel of sun and clouds and stars in it. I see the keystone, the marveling at the sharing of it.

:O)

And everything you read in it about his psycho baker friend? I was pretty darned close to that when I was a baker. And all his stories? Totally not exaggerating.

You are like my daughter then, nerfherder. One of her friends, during a time in daughter's life when no one knew she would pull through, says her song is Janis Joplin's Bobby McGee.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have a few stories similar--- about my mother. Not about my hair. But, hey, i have some stories. Stories of meanness. My mom, when she got irritated with me, would call me a slut. And, if my dad called her out on it, would later say she did not mean slut like i thought she meant slut. She just meant cheap, lol. I was probably about 13 and had no opportunities to be a slut, however way she meant.

If i brought this up to her now, she would totally deny it ever happened.

OUCH

roar

At least I could wear a wig or cover my hair or just say "That'll do, pig."

Plus, I really was a pretty little thing, and that red hair was part of that, so as I went out into the world, there was affirmation where before, there was only my mother. But at the core of me, I believed my mother about this, as I had believed in her about so many things. I have posted so many times on the threads having to do with FOO issues, that to break through the denial surrounding my mom and my sister, I had to figure out who was lying.

Me, or them.

Turns out it was them.

And I was so surprised.

***

But how does a young girl respond to that global denigration in the name "slut" when those words are spoken over her by her own mother?

How in the world does she do that?

Through her husband, of course. That is probably why the mother hates the daughter's mate. One more time, abusers abuse because they abuse. The husbands are immune. The abusive mother, pulling invisible strings she wove into her daughter's psyche, goes blind with rage.

In a far land of witches and ogres
in a time of Princesses on strings....

***

They always deny it, Seeking. I had always believed they literally did not remember, or that I was remembering it incorrectly, maybe. In the years since my father's death, I have learned they lie. They do remember ~ they remember everything and they celebrate it in some dark, isolated place within whenever they see or are with us.

That is the feel of "whore" I posted about for awhile when we were first beginning our healing here. That feeling that someone sees you through a haze of toxicity that is somehow a real, sickening thing in the heart of you, something weird and unnameable and that makes you weak.

Remember my posting that my mother drew back her arm as though to strike me, as though to pop me back into that old "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." headspace when I had taken my granddaughters to visit her?

They remember, alright.

***

Slut happens when a woman (or a man) lives a dissolute life. There is not a way for a young girl (or a young boy) to be a slut, or to be cheap. That is why old roues become excited by corrupting the innocent. The fascination is in the corrupting of something innocent and filled with light and possibility.

There is nothing so beautiful, I think, as a young woman or a young man. They just seem to carry it with them when they walk.

Cheap.... What do you think your mom ~ I mean, where would she have found internal justification for speaking such words to her own child?!? Or, to anyone.

I'm sorry that happened to you, Seeking. No one should be hurt and taunted and made to feel like that, especially a beautiful, beautiful young girl just coming into her womanhood.

What in the world is the matter with these people.

What would her definition of slut ~ what would that mean to your mom, Seeking? We were posting about the twisted prevalence of misogyny in our country and in the world on this thread, once. About what it means to be viewed through that filter of hatred and brokenness, the perfect victim for the power over abuser.

Was your mom physically abusive too, Seeking?

Even my mom never called me something that awful. I don't think she called me names. My mom was out of control, out of her eyes, when she did what she did. I think she felt badly about it afterword ~ except that she didn't, not really.

Have you read Maria Harris' Dance of the Spirit, Seeking? It's about the movement toward and away from and back again that is a woman's spiritual journey over and over again, deeper each time, through her life. There are seven steps to the dance of our lives: Brokenness and Nurturing are two, but I can't remember the rest. I love this book, and have read and reread it so many times over the years since I found it. I looked for it this morning to post the other five steps to the dance for you, but I couldn't find it. It must be in the other house.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/reviews/view/2255

Here is a partial quote:

"We begin to look at things and people with more care, hearing words and music not heard, before.

...and a realization dawns that a personal daystar has begun to shine, giving us its light."

Maria Harris
Dance of the Spirit

Copa, here is a quote for you this morning:

"Take the appearance of fear as a positive sign. Fear does not visit when you are conforming and safely following the rules."

Mama Gena
Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts

http://www.mamagenas.com/category/politics/

I love Mama Gena.

Now, there is a way to see "slut" for the power and for the joy in it. Mama Gena celebrates that.

In high heels.

:O)

And, i am more protective of my 35 yrs of commitment to husband than ever before. He has earned my loyalty a thousand times over. I wish I had stepped up 30 years ago.

He held his tongue many times.

And, then he did not a couple months ago and mom is no longer speaking to him.

My mom, i expect, would love nothing more than for me to come to her side, diss my husband for his absolutely maltreatment of her. If I did that, she might even speak to me again, haha.

That won't happen. Is it because I got smarter and/or because there is so much history?

Seeking, my husband calls himself "unmuzzled", now. He feels he allowed himself to be denigrated and treated badly and insulted to his face by people who knew he was a muzzled man, a powerless man, a man unable to protect himself or me because of the way he felt about me, and because of the things that I believed mattered and because of the way I could not see the meanness in either my mother or my sister. Had he stood up to them the way he would have responded to any other person who treated him that way, he would have lost his wife.

So, he took what he took for my sake and, as I have posted here before, is almost giddy now with his freedom from that kind of imprisonment.

Your mom and mine sound eerily similar, Seeking.

If this is true, then I know a little bit about what this time feels like for you. So confusing and abrupt and such a sense of loss. That is how it felt, for me, as I came to realize my FOO were not who I had always believed them to be ~ or, believed they could be. That is the difference now, in this time when I am learning what it is to be free of the weight of them ~ to be free of the weight of their interpretations of me in relation to them.

I no longer believe in them.

Their own behaviors, the things they actually did and said and do and say...I don't know, Seeking. It's like all I had to do was open my eyes and believe what I saw, what I always saw, and refused to admit the choice in it for them, the choice to do what they did on purpose.

Well, I still stumble over that one a little bit.

:O)

That's okay.

Where was I going with this.

A very happy anniversary, Seeking and Mr. Seeking. As I began to heal, I felt that the things around me ~ my husband, my home, my trees and the wind and the water ~ these things became mine in a brighter, more legitimate way, as I let go of my mom and my sister.

They truly detest my D H.

This has to be a typical pattern too, for dysfunctional families in which it is the mother's dysfunction that fuels the family dysfunction. My mom has hated the mates of each of her children, and has tried to subvert them in their relationships to their husbands or wives. My mom invariably disparages the husband or wife, adn disparages her own child to the husband or wife.

What could the name of this pattern of behavior be, I wonder?

There must be a name for it. We have each experienced these kinds of attitudes toward the spouses who love and protect us from our abusive mothers.

When you guys share, something in my core sometimes kicks in. And, it is painful, but i appreciate this forum to write it out.

We are (I think I speak for us all on this) so pleased you are here with us, Seeking.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

One of her friends, during a time in daughter's life when no one knew she would pull through, says her song is Janis Joplin's Bobby McGee.

Thank you, Cedar, for the video and song, which I so needed this morning. Her voice was so pure in that song, and like a whirling dervish on the stage. I remember when she died. Death meant so little then.

Yesterday I went to pick up my son to bring him to the laboratory for his blood work. Apparently, there is an existing order still good.

Fought with M last night. I was so fragile, needed his care and support. He lit into me about how I am doing everything wrong again. How I am as bad as I was right after my mother died. Barely functioning. Not going anywhere. Compulsively buying on the internet. Boxes arriving one after the other and filling the hall. He hates that I am on the computer more than anything and sees that as the worst problem of all.

How everything I do with my son is incorrect. That I need to take charge. That my son manipulates and lies to me, and it is my responsibility to challenge it, to be with him night and day to mold his behavior.

M is so sure that he knows most everything.

When we found the laboratory, my son had gone in and returned saying it had closed at 4pm. When we got home (I said we could stop by here to pick up some vitamins that he had left) it was before 4pm.

I asked him. How could it have been closed? The door was locked, he said. Don't you believe me? And that is my son.

There is not one thing I can do to get him to follow through with treatment. If I get him to go this time, Sept 23, for the appointment, what about the time after that?

When I tried to defend myself with M, that I was trying (again). Went yesterday back to the physical therapist. That I was buying the clothes to look pretty for our trip, all he could see was the glass half empty. All the things I was not doing.

He sees false start after false start.

I was waiting for him to be done with working so he could be with me here in the house. I felt that with his support, and working together we could do it together. I guess that was another mistake.

He sees this tough love as helpful. I told him, how does it help kicking somebody on the floor, so that they will get up? Are you so perfect as to think you have a right to destroy me completely because I fail?

After three quarters of an hour of criticizing me, I started getting mad, but it did not help.

How does it help to criticize me? How does being mad help? To kill me off, how does it make things better? I demanded.

I know I am failing at everything. He doesn't need to tell me. I know. I bought stocks. They are going down. I bought a small office building. It is going down. I try to do something to do something right. Nothing works. I have no core left. I do not know who I am. Anything I write here is just false hope. I have nothing at all. I do not have myself.

But my being mad made it worse. Because then I have nothing and nobody at all.

I think it started earlier in the evening when he told me that we could not come back here to this house next year, because the trip cost too much money. That we had to stay there, if we liked it, and commit to make that work.

I had never conceived of leaving my house here for ever. It may be that sometime in the future that I decide to leave it. But there is nothing in me that is in a position to leave anything. I do not have anything. How can I leave it? So it felt like M was taking away the only thing I do have. My house.

I tried to explain to him, that I was not in the mental frame of mind to lose more. That if I felt that I could not come back here, it feels like an insurmountable loss, which becomes an obstacle to leaving at all.

I told him I do not want to feel I am losing. I want to feel as if I am gaining. That when he imposes all of these rigid rules, I panic.

I do not want to give up my house. I just want other things, too.
Can we just go, and work the rest of it out?

We have to have a plan, he said. I hate him right now.

Is your life so perfect that you feel you have a right to destroy me? Do you not understand who I am and what I have done with my life, that you have a right to destroy me, now that I am down?

I have nobody. I have nothing.

There is a cure now for Hep C. I googled to see if anything came up for Hep B. There currently are drug trials in Australia for a cancer drug used in combination with another drug that I cannot remember.

My son missed 6 visits with the Hepatologist. I asked him, what interfered with those appointments.

It was not a priority then he said. I understand how important it is now.

I feel like going and yelling at M so that I get the pain outside of myself. Even for a minute, it feels like it would help.

 

[Copabanana]

That is the feel of "whore" I posted about for awhile when we were first beginning our healing here.

There was a time many years ago when I could not walk on the street because it felt like I was a streetwalker.

Of course I did everything else relatively normal. You all are going to believe that I am a complete whack job. I am not.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It made me feel as if I could not trust myself, my senses, my perceptions, my memories.

Me, too. That happened to me, too.

Because I want to feel every bit of love she ever game me and I gave her.

You loved her, at the end I think, Copa. Blazing, fiery love from the heart and core of you.

Triumph.

I love my mom, too. Love is so different a thing than they (not just our moms ~ everyone) taught us.

Halleluiah, right?

That kiss at the end....

So, as I read this I realize that I am doing the same thing now when I try to overlook the reality of my life with my Mother. I am discredited the truth I lived.

It would have been very hard for me to have reviewed what I needed to review in my relationship to my mother if she were already gone. At the back of my heart I know I can choose to see her, again. I hope I do see her. I would like that. In the secret heart of me, I believe she would like that, too. Just for a flash of time, she would. Then, over time, the games would begin.

It's like there are two people in my mom, one of them unreachable.

My grandmother used to call my mother a slut. I remember. My poor Mother. She just liked men a whole lot, to meet them and to have them be attracted to her. And she loved fun.

She was Mama Gena, Copa.

There is no such thing as a young slut, male or female. Something slutty would be someone who has compromised their own values time over time. Young people ~ no one, really, could be a slut until they were old roues, set in their ways and out to corrupt the young and the beautiful.

"Slut" would be a values driven way to hate. Values are come of the societies we live in and the families we grow up in. In the south Pacific, or in very hot countries where people run around naked, children are named curious, not sluts, whatever kind of play they engage in.

So, to name someone slut names the person speaking not bright enough to distinguish even that simple truth.

Slut is code speech for a virulent, nameless hatred poured out of the heart and over all things.

Very sad, to have that kind of hatred in us. We see it every day on the news, and especially in the commercials.

They say that is a "lowest common denominator" or "mob rules" kind of morality. But I wonder about that.

That is another cost of having been brought up in environments of hatred. We have had to search to find the beautiful things, the true and lasting things that matter.

My mother so loved the Tall Ships, and the Lipizanner stallions.

This is also the feel of my mother:

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I recently have learned to be very mindful of these emotional flashback abusive phrases from her lips. It took me 61 years. Some people die with these phrases in their heads.

I try to be so conscious of that with my own kids and grands.

That must be what is meant when they say someone did or did not give a particular blessing to their child. It is true, too. The words we speak echo down the generations.

We can change that.

That much, we can do.

My grandmother used to call my mother a slut. I remember. My poor Mother. She just liked men a whole lot, to meet them and to have them be attracted to her. And she loved fun.

Copa, this is so beautiful.

but since then steadily moved upward, seeing my FOO for who they really were and are for the first time. That it was not me. That they define me as they do because that is what dysfunctional unloving families do to their own. There HAS to be a good guy and a bad guy. And often the entire family joins in. And most often the scapegoat is started in childhood, even infancy, because he or s he is the vulnerable one who is sensitive and more difficult and more apt to call a self-hating mother out on her stuff.

I feel this way too, SWOT.

This is what I am trying to describe when I say that I must shift perspective from seeing myself being abused to seeing the abuser doing terrible things to a child or a young girl, or a woman who is her daughter, or to a man who is her son.

There is such power in those namings we are named, for better or for worse. Not just from our moms or dads, but from everyone in our lives. This is what Maya Angelou writes about too ~ the power in our words. That is why, so she wrote, she did not speak at all for something like six years.

That is something she could have taken to her grave.

It was her intention to hurt you, SWOT.

That's the thing we have such trouble with, as we try to understand our lives. The words spoken by our mothers were not just things that came out in conversation. They were words chosen and spoken with intent.

It's hard to know what to do with that.

"When I held you in my arms, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing."

"When they brought you to me and I saw that you had red hair, I told them they had the wrong baby, and I sent you back. They came back with the same baby, and said you were mine after all, red hair or not."

I never felt badly about that story, actually. I wished many times that somehow, a mistake had been made, and I were not my mother's.

On the other hand, there are many things I admire about my mother, and am proud to claim. It's important for us to acknowledge those things too, I think. We are working toward compassion for all of us, here. We cannot truly love ourselves or hold ourselves in compassion, until we can acknowledge the truths in our upbringings and hold all of it in some way that hatred has no part in it.

How does that go? Hatred got us into this; only love will get us out.

Pretty tall order, but I think we can do it.

I would have accepted hers, but she never made amends, never thought she did anything wrong. That destroyed any relationship I could have had with my siblings because they bought what she sold and, further, were both damaged as well. I feel I have done t he best, at least on an emtional level, as I can accept love and give unconditional love and both of t hem struggle mightily with intimate relationships, even with one another.

I think this is true too, SWOT.

Where we should have the strength and safe harbor of family, we have only ~ whatever it is that runs in our families, instead.

Hatred, maybe ~ and a desperate wish that this were not so.

Okay.

Except for my sister and my mom.

Ha!!!

Denial strikes again.

I will just slip back in there, then. Comfy, here where I can believe whatever I want.

If I were never to see them again? I could safely believe that they love me.

"They just can't see it, that's all." Cedar says, pulling that same beautiful rabbit out of her hate.

I meant hat.

I meant hat, you guys.

I am grateful I got out of the family, even if it was partly because they rejected me. Their influence was not a good one.

I feel more and more this way. I sometimes feel that I should not have turned away as I did, but the truth is I was excluded in every way that matters before I ever stopped granting them access to me.

In fact, my brother still has access to me but appears not to want it.

Huh.

Dirty rates.

Rats.

I meant rats, you guys.

For heaven's sake.

I hope, that a part of this is because t hey were never abused themselves. I actually gave myself a pat on the back!!!!! That is not normal for me. I am more apt to tear myself down. But I'm learning, have been slowly learning from the 40's to now. Why do we have to be this old to see things clearly? That we are valuable? That we have done well in life? That we are not responsible for the problems other have? That maybe we imparted some good to our kids, even if they struggle? That it is a hard task to find and give love to a SO for a long period of time, but we are doing it? That we have good hearts, maybe better hearts than those who told us we were bad people? Why does it take so long??

I don't know. I think this is true of us, though.

Probably it has to do with the vulnerability in stepping into adult lives where mistakes and the growth that attends them are interpreted through those toxic, abuser-installed filters as terminal errors, as a validation of the abuser's assessment of who we were and whether we were capable people. Each of us came away from our childhoods believing we were stupid or bad or inept or that we had terminally dysfunctional thinking. And here is the thing: It was when we had our abusers on the defensive that these terrible labels were affixed. So, any time we face a challenging situation, any time we are challenging ourselves to learn a new thing even...the energy required to keep at it and the belief systems that would tell us we could do it ~ all that would have been subverted by emotional flashback to our abuser's responses to those same feelings of having figured things out.

Emotional flashback, again.

Great terminology, SWOT.

Thank you.

It wasn't until I needed to know whether I was stupid in some way I couldn't see, or evil in some way I couldn't see, and was that why these things were happening to my daughter, that I was able to push through those feelings of "Don't you dare."

My mom used to say that, alot. Don't you dare, Cedar. And it would be about my thinking, about thinking she was not normal. They like you to believe they are all knowing and all powerful, right? Difficult to do that, once you see the discrepancies between the moms of your friends and the moms on television and your own.

I graduated with honors. After having been out of school for something like eighteen years, after having been a mom at home, while I was falling apart and after what happened with that first therapist, I graduated with honors. (On the am I stupid part.) And received scholarships every year but the first one, from the Benedictine Sisters. So, that pretty much takes care of the evil part, then.

I am just sayin'.

Those internal barriers our abusers set up within our psyches are real, and are very, very hard to break through.

Things have always been pretty easy for me.

So probably I never was stupid. And I sort of knew that? But at the same time, I didn't.

How strange.

I wish I had beautiful, thick red hair.

Ha! SWOT, I have red hair! I would see that people dyed their hair my color (or some variation thereof) and wonder why they did that.

Isn't that something.

Here is a secret. When my color first started to fade, I would color my hair to cover the greying, right? And one time? I used this cheap dye because daughter (who was the one who told me I should color it in the first place), said that would be okay. And it turned this whole clump of my hair the strangest shade that was almost pink!

It was so funny and so embarrassing but I just left it. I never did dye my hair again.

Last time daughter was here? She had artificial hair braids. She said I should do that, too. So far? I have been able to resist.

Oh, that daughter!

So, that's my hair dye story.

I am proud of him.

I love this.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Yesterday I went to pick up my son

Fought with M last night. I was so fragile, needed his care and support.

I feel like going and yelling at M so that I get the pain outside of myself. Even for a minute, it feels like it would help.

Oh, Copa. I am so sorry this is happening to you both.

D H would do this, when we were going through the worst of it. I learned to say "Is that how you meant to talk to your own wife?"

I learned to say "I feel so badly for myself, and for us both."

I learned to say "I am sorry this happened to you. You are such a fine man, and this never should have happened to us ~ not to you, and not to me."

The first time I said those words, Copa? Is one of the few times I have seen tears in D H eyes. (Well I mean, he gets tears in his eyes at movies sometimes, but never, ever, in real life.)

Ever.

Except then.

Fought with M last night. I was so fragile, needed his care and support. He lit into me about how I am doing everything wrong again. How I am as bad as I was right after my mother died. Barely functioning. Not going anywhere. Compulsively buying on the internet. Boxes arriving one after the other and filling the hall. He hates that I am on the computer more than anything and sees that as the worst problem of all.

How everything I do with my son is incorrect. That I need to take charge. That my son manipulates and lies to me, and it is my responsibility to challenge it, to be with him night and day to mold his behavior.

You are not doing anything wrong, Copa. You are in the midst of a living nightmare. You child is self destructing. Though he needs you desperately, your child is at the same time going off the tracks psychologically from the effects of illicit drug use. First goes empathy. Then, integrity. And then, our children forget that they ever loved us. They begin to hate us, instead. We are their mothers. They are so deeply ashamed of the men they have allowed themselves to become. But they are trapped in their addctions, Copa, and cannot get out alone. So, we stand up. And that is a very hard thing. And we fall apart in every other aspect of our lives, but we function as we believe we must around all things having to do with our children.

And then, they hate us for that.

You are standing up admirably, Copa.

It is the situation that is so horribly wrong.

On the shopping: Only you can know for sure, but I believe you posted to us that you had ordered in excess to have a selection of items from which to choose and that you intended to return those things that did not please you.

I remember your joy in the pretty new things that had arrived.

M is wrong.

You acted with intent.

On the son: M is taking the attitude men do take. Either stay on it and fix it, or turn away. Son did not do what M offered, either. Son wants what he wants which, at this point, seems to be to service his addiction in peace while desecrating the loving relationship he once had to his mother so he doesn't have to feel badly about destroying her life to service his addiction.

There has to be something like that going on with all our sons, Copa. They come to hate us so vehemently...as much as, before their addictions took hold, they loved us.

Shame has to be part of that. I cannot shame my son into standing up as the man I raised him to be when he is using. When he is using...he is not that man.

He hates that I know that.

He hates me because I know that.

So, the way I see it, your son's behaviors are all wound up in addiction and the shame of it and the shame of being the man he is instead of the man you believed him to be.

You can't fix that.

M cannot fix it, either.

D H would not believe it, either. After I had been on the site long enough to stand up to my son, D H took over. Like M, D H was "on it". He drove three hours one way twice weekly for something like six weeks. Maybe longer. I was not allowed to be part of it because I had messed up so badly in the past "babying D H son". He got everything cleared up for son one last time. (Licenses and impound fees and etc.) He brought food, not money. Frozen broccoli, chicken, dog food for the dog and etc. These were the same kinds of food we had brought for son together the last time we saved him but not really.

On the saving him part, I mean.

Know what the upshot was?

Son spits at us, to this day: "WHAT WAS UP WITH THAT F-ING BROCCOLI?!"

It is son's contention that, as is the case with so much of his life, though broccoli is what we provided, broccoli was not what he needed, to thrive.

:O)

We always brought son groceries that, frozen so that he could eat at his convenience, were also rich in Vitamin C and blah blah blah.

Ahem.

The point being that D H could not fix son's addicted person behaviors, either.

That is probably why son hates us to this very day whenever he is using.

D H and I were just talking about that broccoli business last night. It seems hilarious to us now.

But we did not think it was funny, then.

One day? I may send my son a nice, big package of frozen broccoli. and it wasn't those boxes of squished up broccoli either, you guys. It was those packages of flash frozen broccoli heads.

Just to clarify a point.

I told M I was going to kill myself. It is only a slight manipulation because I do not have any drugs to do so.

Copa, I know this is not supposed to be funny, but I get the biggest kick out of the way you see things. "It is only a slight manipulation because...."

How does it help to criticize me? How does being mad help? To kill me off, how does it make things better? I demanded.

That is a man's way, Copa. If they can't get the thing under control, they kill it.

D H does that too, about everything.

That is why I had to learn to say all that stuff I posted about earlier. They don't mean it. That is just a man's way. "There. Now it's dead." Remember Tony Montanna in Scarface? "Meet my little friend!"

He goes down, fighting.

A man.

The guy in the background? The one who finally does Tony in?

That's me.

:O)

I think it started earlier in the evening when he told me that we could not come back here to this house next year, because the trip cost too much money. That we had to stay there, if we liked it, and commit to make that work.

That could be a good thing too, Copa.

Take a vacation, instead.

Just a week on the beach, off season.

Perfect.

That is what D H and I would do. And I would lay around in the sun without hardly any clothes on and feel ever so much better.

Real estate is coming back, so some people say, Copa. Those who take the risks make the money. It takes a set of brass appendages to stay with it.

"Let me win. If I cannot win, let me be brave."

Timothy Shriver

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have nobody. I have nothing. I want to die.

There is a cure now for Hep C. I googled to see if anything came up for Hep B. There currently are drug trials in Australia for a cancer drug used in combination with another drug that I cannot remember.

My son missed 6 visits with the Hepatologist. I asked him, what interfered with those appointments.

It was not a priority then he said. I understand how important it is now.

Maybe this will be a turning point then, Copa.

Finally, you are not losing and losing, Copa. It is just like you told me yesterday when I could only see what was lost, and not my bravery or determination or anything but bad things.

We are brave, Copa. We are functioning in situations that would destroy some of us.

You are functioning beautifully, Copa.

Our situations with our children are not survivable.

But here we still are.

In a way Copa, we are Tony Montanna, too.

Only the fight we fight is for our kids. And they hate us for that. So, like Tony, we shoot up everything else because there are times when there is just is nothing else to do.

You are coming through it, Copa.

You are brave.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

On the other hand, there are many things I admire about my mother, and am proud to claim. It's important for us to acknowledge those things too, I think. We are working toward compassion for all of us, here. We cannot truly love ourselves or hold ourselves in compassion, until we can acknowledge the truths in our upbringings and hold all of it in some way that hatred has no part in it.

As badly as my mother treated me, specific by the way to ME, I know she was damaged herself. I never doubted that. She never got her own mother's voice "you have brains in your feet" out of her head. She never stopped being sad that her mother favored her brother and was bold about her favortism. My grandmother was married to a man who did anything my grandmother wanted, said little, and worshipped her. My mother saw this and thought that this was how a good husband behaves. My father was so different from that that she had less tolerance for him than others may have. She told me "Always make sure the man loves you more than you love him." No matter how she claims he abused her, and sometimes he was verbally abusive as was she to him, he loved her way more that she loved him.

You know what is sad? My only memory of my grandfather, who came over on Saturdays with my grandmother, is him sitting watching TV and driving us places because Grandma didn't drive. He barely spoke.

Anyway, back to Mother. I am able to look back and see why she did what she did. What I can't forgive is that she was well aware of how favoritism hurts and did it anyway. Repeated the entire cycle again. Deliberately.

She was creative like me and could be funny, but it is hard to think of much to admire about her in my eyes. She had no career. She was not a good mother and the family is and was a wreck. She had no friends at all until her very late years when she joined a line dancing group (she did love to dance). She was angry and bitter toward her mother, in some way, until the end. I witnessed her anger in my grandmothers nursing home room, the one she died in. Mother was berating her for favorite her father. So it went on for that long and she could not even control herself when my grandmother was that sick. I will never forget that.

My mother, on the other hand, was overly kind and submissive even to her golden people. She had a few of them: my brother, her brother that my grandmother favored, and her boyfriend that married an illegal alien who wanted to be an American citizen...she thought all of them were impeccable people who were brilliant, less so of the boyfriend, I believe. But she told me all the time "He never went to college, but he's brilliant! He knows so much!"

Well, I never went to college, but I'm pretty smart too, Mom. I also read so much. And I would never have been foolish enough to have married an illegal alien who didn't love me because I felt sorry for him...just so he could get a green card. I believe the lady was from Thailand or some Asian country. Copa, this is not a slap at you and M as this is nothing like your relationship.

He was a nice guy, except for that, I guess.

I would not want to be anything like my mother. I would not want to have duplicated her life.

Still...flaws and all, I loved her until I absolutely couldn't anymore. When she slapped me from the grave. That was so hurtful and mean...it died. Just.Like.That.