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Hi! I’m new to ParentEmeritus with homeless adult child in peril
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<blockquote data-quote="Copabanana" data-source="post: 761652" data-attributes="member: 18958"><p>There is nothing I can tell you that you don't know, that you haven't lived.</p><p></p><p>I have great compassion for your situation. Partly because I share so much in common with you. My son has a chronic illness and he chooses to not accept treatment. He refuses treatment for mental illness, too. His preference too is to be away from it all. He has paranoia. I know the terror. Lately we have been persuading my son to stay put in a house I own, rather than set off on his own. It's day by day. Unlike your daughter, he's ambivalent.</p><p></p><p>I live out West, near the Sierras and BLM land. Just recently I spoke with a woman who'd lived out there for a few years. It's my understanding that people can just move their trailer a bit, and by this they comply with the rules. It's not your daughter's fault if she's been snowed in. She's literally stuck.</p><p></p><p>But like you say so much has become even riskier with all of the changes society and the Earth are going through. So many of us are called upon to find security, wholeness and safety in an existential sense, when reality presents us with so very little that is reassuring. In that we are circumstances that are very much like our children's.</p><p></p><p>I for one sometimes have a hard time accepting the powerlessness of my situation. I can hold onto the illusion that there is something I can say, think, do that will transform our circumstances so that I am no longer in that magic trick where I am tied down and the magician is about to cut me in half. But the reality is I have put myself there.</p><p></p><p>What I have to accept is that I have put myself there in that box, feeling it will soon be sawed open, because of empathy, connection, and love for my child who I feel compelled to believe I can and should save.</p><p></p><p>I can't. But it's not that my child or yours, can't or won't save themselves. (From what you describe, the willingness of your child to accept and seek out important mental health services, and to stay connected to loved ones, is crucially important, and so wonderful. )</p><p></p><p>But I have to save myself from that box, where I feel in such peril.</p><p></p><p>These adults have free will. They have the dignity and power to choose their own lives. And I have the potential for independence from attachment that is destructive. Because when I feel such fear about imminent catastrophe, I tend to act towards myself and my life, in a way that is desperate, reactive, and panicked.</p><p></p><p>I am older than you. Living like that will shorten my life and impair it's quality. And when I think about it, that is crazier than the way my son is living. Feeling bondage to potential catastrophe and fear.</p><p></p><p>Your daughter is in real peril now due to the intersection of climate change and lifestyle choice. That is real. But the other stuff, the vicarious anxiety that comes from living to close to the edge <em>with them in the box</em>, I can change.</p><p></p><p>Love, Copa</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Copabanana, post: 761652, member: 18958"] There is nothing I can tell you that you don't know, that you haven't lived. I have great compassion for your situation. Partly because I share so much in common with you. My son has a chronic illness and he chooses to not accept treatment. He refuses treatment for mental illness, too. His preference too is to be away from it all. He has paranoia. I know the terror. Lately we have been persuading my son to stay put in a house I own, rather than set off on his own. It's day by day. Unlike your daughter, he's ambivalent. I live out West, near the Sierras and BLM land. Just recently I spoke with a woman who'd lived out there for a few years. It's my understanding that people can just move their trailer a bit, and by this they comply with the rules. It's not your daughter's fault if she's been snowed in. She's literally stuck. But like you say so much has become even riskier with all of the changes society and the Earth are going through. So many of us are called upon to find security, wholeness and safety in an existential sense, when reality presents us with so very little that is reassuring. In that we are circumstances that are very much like our children's. I for one sometimes have a hard time accepting the powerlessness of my situation. I can hold onto the illusion that there is something I can say, think, do that will transform our circumstances so that I am no longer in that magic trick where I am tied down and the magician is about to cut me in half. But the reality is I have put myself there. What I have to accept is that I have put myself there in that box, feeling it will soon be sawed open, because of empathy, connection, and love for my child who I feel compelled to believe I can and should save. I can't. But it's not that my child or yours, can't or won't save themselves. (From what you describe, the willingness of your child to accept and seek out important mental health services, and to stay connected to loved ones, is crucially important, and so wonderful. ) But I have to save myself from that box, where I feel in such peril. These adults have free will. They have the dignity and power to choose their own lives. And I have the potential for independence from attachment that is destructive. Because when I feel such fear about imminent catastrophe, I tend to act towards myself and my life, in a way that is desperate, reactive, and panicked. I am older than you. Living like that will shorten my life and impair it's quality. And when I think about it, that is crazier than the way my son is living. Feeling bondage to potential catastrophe and fear. Your daughter is in real peril now due to the intersection of climate change and lifestyle choice. That is real. But the other stuff, the vicarious anxiety that comes from living to close to the edge [I]with them in the box[/I], I can change. Love, Copa [/QUOTE]
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Hi! I’m new to ParentEmeritus with homeless adult child in peril
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