He is proud of me. I have not seen this for a long time.
I am so glad you have seen it, now.
No. He never did. He found me and I have her name.
We break and break and break. And that makes us who we are, today. It changes the quality of the light, and we see things with a different kind of clarity, after we are broken.
Just like in that song, Halleluiah.
We saw each other in an instant and woke each other up. Like Sleeping Beauty.
I so get this.
Isn't that an amazing thing, that we had them, that we had those particular people, in our lives? Once I could begin letting go of "me, me, me" where my kids were concerned, I could see the size of the thing they were battling. I am finding them heroic, now. This is not where they wanted to take their lives, either.
So, I can find compassion for them, now. Before, I was always so darn frustrated with them, or so busy cooking food and being a mom and being a beggar wanting them to stand up and validate for everyone else I suppose, the mother I had been. (In other words, maybe to validate that I had not been my mother, in my mothering. Desperate times, when everything fell apart. I was so self-centered about it, too. Cheesh.)
Like Cartman's mom really, in the clip Lil posted for us.
We are all learning. I am learning to trust that I don't know, and that that is okay. And they are learning, maybe they are learning, that they don't need to be defensive because the elephant in the room is that I was disappointed in them for reasons that had nothing to do with them.
Maybe this is true. I think that is what I see. I think that is what I feel from and for them.
I think for a long, long time I felt shame. Imagine what it felt like to be rejected by him. To feel trashed. Of course, I see it was developmental. In part or all. Who knows?
Here is the thing I have been able to figure out about that one.
When they were little and they threw a tantrum, or broke the Bert and Ernie cookie jar, or did any of the things they did...I dealt with it, easily and well. It was not until I fell out of my depth that I felt shame at the way they saw me. They did bad things a million times, when they were little and of course they did. That is what parenting is, right? Toilet training, table manners, reading and friendship and chores and allowances and money management. I could do that. So...what happened when the situation was bigger than I knew how to parent them through?
Who's shame was that, and over what, exactly.
As I am learning more here on the site, and especially as I am working through some of the ugliness of how I was taught to see myself, I am seeing my kids so differently.
So differently.
So this is all bound up in self image, in validation, in shame, like you said, Copa. But it is changing now, how I see my kids. I know enabling changes relationships. I can see that part, and those frustrations, pretty clearly now.
But what was that shame, those feelings of utter worthlessness ~ what was that about?
It wasn't on them, Copa. It had to do with failure, and that had to do with my upbringing.
I have read about fathers and mothers who love their kids through their addictions without enabling. They don't talk so much about shame, because that is not the issue, for them.
I don't know more than that about this. I am still having a look at that.
And I will do all I know or can learn to get through it. I will have those shaming incidents from my childhood, from all of my life where my mother was there, cheapening every sacred thing. I will witness for myself, and I will see her, finally, for who she is. That dream I reported? That was me, trying to protect myself from going further.
She has no claim on me.
My mother is very proud of my appearance. It feels a little like being a whore, actually. Like eye candy woman on the arm of a decrepit old man who holds the whore in his power with money.
Ahem.
Well anyway, that's where I am working, today.
That shame never had a thing to do with my kids. My kids are coping with some terrible, destructive things.
I really do see them as heroes, now. And heroes never do need their mothers to fight their battles.
But they do want to tell them about their adventures, about their heroism, once they are safely home.
I am thinking of my Mother now. How it must have been so hard for her to feel rejected at the deepest level for who she was by both her daughters. For so long.
There is healing here for you, Copa.
It happens to me that posting about it is witness enough. You are welcome to post on any thread of mine, or to begin one of your own. It isn't the things we say back to one another that heals us. It is gathering our thoughts, daring to gather our thoughts, and making the shame of it a public thing. All at once, you will see yourself as the defenseless, thirty pound little girl these things happened to. Or the adolescent who needed a mother to tell her true things. Or the young mother with no one to turn to.
No one at all.
Then, you will be able to witness for yourself. You will see your courage, your brilliance and integrity in having somehow come through it.
And you did come through it, Copa. Dealing with life is a hard thing. But you did it. Staying present when our children are suffering requires gut level stability. No time to choose the right thing, to take the high road, to accept the pain for someone else.
None of those things are going to help our children, Copa.
We can model strength and openness and courage. We can honestly admire them for who they are and for the battles they fight and the things they triumph or lose themselves in.
And that is all we can do.
Believe they can do this.
And that is the very thing our mothers destroyed in us.
I hate my mother, today. Today, I hate my mother. It was one thing to forgive her when I thought I was doing alright in spite of whatever happened when I was a little girl, a beautiful young adolescent, a new mother, in her charge.
But no more.
I have protected her in my heart, have protected her from what I know, long enough. My children matter more than she does. I am not at a point yet where I can say I matter more than she does.
I will be there, soon.
I am doing all these things because I never want those things my mother did to weaken me again. In some crisis in my life, if I am weak and if I fail, it will be on my own. Not because of her, not ever again.
Cedar
Just not so easy when I have been his lawyer as opposed to his mom. It wouldn't be right for me not to go to court and talk to the judge...especially since he has to work Wed. and I can get right in...it's literally right up the street...and he'd have to sit for an hour or two before the judge would see him. So yeah...the legal stuff I'm more than willing to take care of. 
