The Saga Continues: wow....just wow. :(

[GuideMe]

Scent of Cedar * said: ↑
A mother's heart is a stubborn, loving, determined thing. I read a story once about a female pirate. She was a pirate captain, and she had her own ship. Her only son was kidnapped by other pirates. Calling to her across the open sea, they threatened to hang her son from the yardarm.
The pirate woman threw up her skirts. Naked beneath, she roared into the wind: "Go ahead! I will make another!"

I have no response to this. LOL!!!

Lil, you know what you have to do, don't pretend that you don't. Now throw up your skirt, show your nunu to the world and roar damnit.

Jabber be prepared to make another just in case.






P.S. Cedar, I hope you're not mad. I'm only teasing. I just had to finish with that to Lil, LOL. It was too tempting not to. Love you.

 

[Lil]

Lil, you know what you have to do, don't pretend that you don't. Now throw up your skirt, show your nunu to the world and roar damnit.

Oh MY!


LOL!!! I don't think I'd make a very good pirate!

 

[GuideMe]

I don't think I'd make a very good pirate!

Give it time, give it time.

 

[Albatross]

...she roared into the wind: "Go ahead! I will make another!"

I am thinking even without the nunu under the skirts to reinforce the message, this might be an original way to handle some of those phone calls we all dread.

2 a.m. phone call from the police letting you know your child has been arrested?

"Go ahead! I will make another!"

Repeated texts and calls from your child implying he will freeze or starve if you don't send him money immediately?

"Go ahead! I will make another!"

 

[GuideMe]

I am thinking even without the nunu under the skirts to reinforce the message, this might be an original way to handle some of those phone calls we all dread.

2 a.m. phone call from the police letting you know your child has been arrested?

"Go ahead! I will make another!"

Repeated texts and calls from your child implying he will freeze or starve if you don't send him money immediately?

"Go ahead! I will make another!"

I literally pee'd my pants!!!! Could you imagine their reaction?

P.S. and it goes without saying, you HAVE to say it in a pirate voice!!!!

 

[BusynMember]

Thank you, all. I am spitting my coffee early in the morning on a day I have to work and don't want to work (Packers game) and was not thinking about laughing.

What a riot. I love this board!!!! YAY!!!!!

 

[2much2recover]

That's why Fur-Babies are the best - they don't get arrested LOL

 

[recoveringenabler]

We're watching Evan Almighty right now. My favorite part is on:
"God: Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?"
From the first time I heard this it resonated with me. So...I think today I'm going to try to think of all this as opportunities. At least for a while.

Lil, I believe that to be true too. I've incorporated that thinking into my every day life. I see life as a series of lessons, opportunities for growth. My daughter in all her gfgdom,has been my greatest teacher. What I learned in the last 3 years, as I learned to detach, let go and accept are lessons that changed every single facet of my life. It was not simply me suffering over all of it with no positive outcome........certainly the outcome was not what I expected nor wanted, but underneath those desires, there was much for me to learn, about myself and my own issues of control, holding on, fear, perfectionism, being right, judgment, comparisons, living in the past and/or the future, my attachment to the outcome.........really, on and on it went.......the suffering had meaning. Then it ceases to be suffering.

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Viktor Frankl

Here is a good article if you are interested: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...1401/pain-is-inevitable-suffering-is-optional

Frankl's book, Man's search for meaning, although not light reading, is very good.

You're doing a really good job Lil, in a very difficult situation.

 

[PatriotsGirl]

2much - actually, my cleaning lady has had to bail her doggie out twice now...lol.

 

[BusynMember]

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."

OMG. I love this. It's so true. We can't avoid "moments" but we don't have to let them turn us into a victim or hang onto the pain for long. I am soooooooooo working on this right now. It has been soooooooooooo freeing to let it go. Many great books out there about this issue, by the way!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Repeated texts and calls from your child implying
he will freeze or starve if you don't send him moneyimmediately?

That is what I meant. That issue of our vulnerability to the kinds of lives our children choose. We are vulnerable too, even if we are the ones who made them leave. We are as vulnerable, we suffer as deeply as they do, when they are not safe. We are equally as vulnerable when we know things are not right, but we do not take a stand. Then the kids will drag the awful things they are doing right into our homes, right into their childhood bedrooms.

Right into the sacred places, the places where we read them stories and kissed them goodnight and loved them the most.

That happened to us.

How dare they, right?

It is so strengthening to laugh, to be able to draw away from the rottenness of what is happening to us. What is happening to our kids ~ especially for the younger moms, when there is still every chance that this could all end well~ these times in our lives are living, breathing nightmares.

But there was a truth in that initial posting of mine.

It isn't that the kids have no homes, exactly, that is breaking our hearts and spirits, because they did what they did to be told to leave them. It isn't that the kids will be cold or hungry, exactly, either.

These issues are so confusing for us because they point out the desperation of our positions.

Everything we do, everything we feel about our children and what they do and where they go and who they might have been instead ~ those things are the layers covering the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue is that mothers are vulnerable, vulnerable on every level of loving and being and even, of self, to the lives and the happiness of their children. (I think fathers see this differently.)

But ultimately, that vulnerability that is so much a part of who we are that we cannot even see it is a choice. There is something too in that story about the mother's choice not to be vulnerable to her child's fate making the child stronger.

Cedar

Lil, you may put your skirts down, now.

:O)

 

[Albatross]

Cedar, that was beautiful. I hope my comment didn't go too far.

These issues are so confusing for us because they point out the desperation of our positions.

But ultimately, that vulnerability that is so much a part of who we are that we cannot even see it is a choice. There is something too in that story about the mother's choice not to be vulnerable to her child's fate making the child stronger.

Yes. It is something like when fathers jokingly say, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out again..." except so much more.

"You have NO IDEA of the depths of my strength in loving you. And don't think for a second that I doubt that strength. I carry it forward in everything I will do. And I choose to believe that you, somewhere deep within, know that strength yourself."

It is very primal, skirts up or skirts down.

 

[Kathy813]

Lil & Jabber,

"Problem is, until he actually goes to a psychiatrist and gets a diagnosis we wont know"

Sadly, even if he did you still wouldn't know. My difficult child has been to a multitude of psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, etc. and she gets a different diagnosis each time. We call it the diagnosis of the month.

I haven't read all of the other responses but I agree that addiction trumps all of the other issues. We sent our difficult child to a three month dual diagnosis program to treat the mental illness and addiction issues at the same time. Sadly, sixty-thousand dollars later, she wasn't "fixed."

You are just starting a very hard journey. There seems to be a pattern that we all follow. Kick them out, take them back, kick them out and pay for housing, get burned on paying for the housing when they won't keep a job and pay for the rent and trash the place, take them back when they swear things will be different, kick them out again when they exhibit the same old behaviors. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again.

Until you finally have enough. In our case it took ten years. I was determined to find the right program, the right doctor, the right treatment center until I fixed her. If it is out there, I never found it.

I have finally come to the realization that my difficult child won't be fixed until she wants to be. For whatever reason, she wants to continue this mess of a life and I am going to let her do that. In the meantime, through the help of a therapist, I have taken back my own life. I know now that it is okay to let her fall and fend for herself and that it is also okay for me to have joy and purpose in my life despite what happens in hers.

You will both get there but it will probably be at different times. My husband is still trying to get her into another treatment program. To his credit, he has gotten to where he is refusing to give her any money despite her crying wolf over and over about not having food to eat or a place to stay. Miraculously, she has yet to starve to death or sleep on the streets (although she has lied that she has slept on the streets).

Stay strong.

~Kathy

 

[Lil]

We are vulnerable too, even if we are the ones who made them leave.

I think it might even be worse when we made them leave...Though I know it was his fault. Though I know what he did and that he had been warned and that we had every right to kick him out and we even would have been justified in having him arrested, deep down I kept hearing this voice whisper, "You kicked your own child out with the clothes on his back. You did this. What kind of parent kicks their child out with no money and nowhere to go?"

That voice is quiet now. I intend to try very hard to keep it that way, or to not to listen if the whispers start again.

Right into the sacred places, the places where we read them stories and kissed them goodnight and loved them the most.

This is one of my main reasons for wanting to move. Jabber and I intend to in the next year or so. I wish we could do it tomorrow. I wish I lived where there was no memory of shouts and anger and sadness and pain of betrayal.

There is something too in that story about the mother's choice not to be vulnerable to her child's fate making the child stronger.

Cedar, you write so beautifully.

You are just starting a very hard journey. There seems to be a pattern that we all follow. Kick them out, take them back, kick them out and pay for housing, get burned on paying for the housing when they won't keep a job and pay for the rent and trash the place, take them back when they swear things will be different, kick them out again when they exhibit the same old behaviors. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again.

Oh Kathy, I hope not. The plan is to have that journey end here and now. I can't imagine any scenario where we will allow him to burn us on the housing and still take him back later. I can't. I simply can't.

I do expect we'll have an issue of rent in February. Because he thought he was fired, he'll be three full days short on his next paycheck. He may not have enough disposable income to pay everything. We will see. But we are not unreasonable people. If we have to front some rent and he repays us...if he shows us he is actually trying to get by on his own? Well, again, time will tell.

For now, we occupy ourselves with our own lives until it's time to see what the next day brings.

 

[Kathy813]

Lil, unfortunately things aren't that black and white. I can't tell you how many times we said enough is enough and that we weren't ever going to do this or that again.

But like you said, we are not unreasonable people. We would start to see progress and hoped that it might be that turnaround we were so desperately hoping for. So, to encourage her to keep up the progress, we would get tempted to help her a little here and there and then quickly find ourselves falling back into the same enabling behavior.

My difficult child self-sabatoges every time things start going well for her. So we were on a constant roller coaster. It took therapy for both husband and me to finally get off the roller coaster ride.

Maybe you and Jabber will be stronger than my husband and I and can truly stick to your guns. But you may find yourself changing your mind in time. It is easier to stay strong when you are angry but that anger fades over time.

Like I said earlier, I haven't read all of your threads so I may be repeating something that has already been discussed but I found therapy to be a lifesaver for me.

~Kathy

 

[Jabberwockey]

I can't imagine any scenario where we will allow him to burn us on the housing and still take him back later. I can't. I simply can't.

And if he doesnt burn us then he is living his own life, outside our home.

 

[Jabberwockey]

Maybe you and Jabber will be stronger than my husband and I and can truly stick to your guns. But you may find yourself changing your mind in time. It is easier to stay strong when you are angry but that anger fades over time.

That is actually a BIG part of the reason Lil is ready to move now, not just to get away from the memories in this house. We are planning to move outside of town and depending on which direction we go, we will be too far out for immediate interventions. And the simple fact of the matter is that I wont drive 15 or 20 miles one way unless its an emergency. An emergency by MY definition, not his!

 

[GuideMe]

Lil and Jab, since he found out he got his job back and went to the pantry , which was two days ago? How has it been over the weekend? Has he been good?

 

[Jabberwockey]

So far so good GM. Only call this weekend was to ask to borrow a space heater as he says the baseboard heaters at the apartment don't work well. I've actually been expecting that one.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"You kicked your own child out with the clothes on his back. You did this. What kind of parent kicks their child out with no money and nowhere to go?"

No. You loved your child enough to do even this. Even this, though it is killing you to do it on so many levels. If it works Lil, you are golden in your own eyes.

It's when it doesn't work, when nothing works, that is when it gets tough.

What we are doing takes as much courage and strength and mother-love as there is. It's like this limitless supply of fire pouring out of us to heal and motivate and walk through and stand up to. But it's a very costly thing. (Fathers love differently Jabber. They look in on their children. Moms look out at the world from their children's eyes. I think that is true.)

Claim the high ground on this one, Lil.

This is not something you ever wanted.

I know that because I know my own heart.

Cedar