To Tell the Truth

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think I am getting over the shame of it. That shame piece...I don't know what is
happening around that.

So, beneath the shame piece was/is defensive covering up of the worst things ~ of the things only I have seen, of the things only I know. There is such a hurt in that. I think the core might be that my child is hurt, has been brought low, and I did not protect...well, either child. I did not protect them from despair or degradation; I have read those really crappy truths in their eyes and it breaks me somehow, to see it there.

That is the source of the shame I feel, the reason I cannot say the words or face true things or be strong enough not to be rageful and angry in the face of what is happening, to me and to them. But this morning I can say (maybe I can say), "So what." Or, "That don't impress me, much." (Like in that Shania Twain song.)

Or, like MWM does with 37.

"So what."

So you got an addiction. That don't impress me much. It makes you do what you do, it means I take certain precautions. (Wise and wary, as we discussed once, here.)

But it is nothing personal.

I can feel the shakiness surrounding/enveloping/making unrecognizable the threat to my sanity, that last, final thing I could not face or believe, and the reason I started this thread in the first place. How do I fit that in with what ~ with how I intend for this to look as I survive and surpass and create that reality of courage and love that I swear I will have and it gets to be a defiant "I will!"

"Love is not a victory march.
It's a cold and it's a broken halleluiah."

Remember when we were thinking about that song, and about where the writer had been, that he could know that. He has been where we are, now. And remember the line about the broken places being how the light gets in....

Leonard Cohen, right?

And that is what gets broken, every time.

My will.

So I am afraid to say that.

Oh, boy, am I.

Whistling in the dark, on that one. Remember that old Billy Joel song, The Stranger? Where he whistles....

Just as the abuse is nothing personal, so are the things that happen because of the addictions and those things, those so deeply shameful things, have nothing to do with us, with my child and me.

Those things having to do with addiction or with mental illness have nothing to do with what moves and breathes in the unspoken depths of emotion between my child and myself and that is a choice.

So, we had a discussion here once on COM's Highchair Tyrants thread, about the role of the Mary, and about what that could teach us, about how that imagery could help us know how to witness, how to stay loyal, how to survive what is happening to our children and come away, whole.

That will be the next poetry, maybe. The poetry of coming together. If it is, I will post it, here for all of us.

This would be something we each could do.

I hear the rhythms and the music in your writings. I am not the only poet, here.

:O)

***

We truly did not do this. We are not their targets, we are their mothers, their one, last hope, and we need to keep the behaviors attending or resulting from addiction, or from mental illness (woo. i said it again) separate from who we know our children to be in their deepest, most secret hearts.

It comes down again, to a choice to love.

A determined choice.

Isn't that something ~ that it should have come to this.

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So.........I'll take it."

Headlights Mom wrote that.

And so, we all were saved, somehow.

Like your imagery of blood on
stone, I see it initially as very harsh and cold and elemental, primitive even.

Initially.

So it is a moving thing, for you. The mosaic of self, of breaking and coming together again.

The energy that moves it for you is love, and love is a choice. And that could be the ultimate nature of the thing ~ that choice to face it, to acknowledge what it feels like to lose respect for our child versus protecting ourselves from the hurt of it through illusion, through concentrating on hope or belief or faith. (Which is what I have been doing, in the hardest places.)

Until I couldn't.

Or to hate, to give in to hating and to that cleansing energy it carries.

But at least we feel strong, then. I really do detest that continual feeling of ineffectual weakness not knowing what end is up brings. Hatred, as long as we know it by its taste, can function like a lightning rod, can concentrate our energies.

It is so much less vulnerable a thing, to hate, to focus our energies elsewhere and let them go roaring off and away from us.

Loving, refusing the shame in it, refusing the role of savior and eventually, even mentor because we don't know what the Hell to say about any of it anymore is so freaking humiliating. Here again, most parents never lose that "wise parent" identity. All of us goes through the adolescence thing ~ and that's hard enough. But there is reward in it too, as we watch them flutter off and then, take strong flight.

We don't get to do that here, of course.

Our relationships with our kids are such honest, bleeding, vulnerable things. We have so few places to hide. I mean, think about it. Think about all the ways it felt to be the best mom, when our kids were little.

Man, I was golden.

Okay, there was one other lady who headed a parenting class all the PTA moms took. She probably was a more focused mom than me. (Remember, I was writing away during that time, instead of focusing on being a mom.) She was very pretty, and very calm, and I am sure her children have gone on to live very calm and focused lives.

I don't think even that mom could have done this and come out of it loving herself and her offspring. And that is what we are about here, working down in the depths of it.

But here is a miracle, in a way. The relationships each of us has with her children crash through the barriers set up by the roles we play, by the choices each of us makes about who to be. Creaking along like some oily, metallic contraption that cannot sustain illusion, our relationships with our children are troubling, extraordinarily real things.

If we are looking for
meaning in our experiences, I wonder.......if we hadn't been in the positions
that we are in.......would we have been challenged to think so deeply....

So, what Hope Floats was able to say in a few concise sentences has taken me a thousand words.

Yes.

:O)

We don't have a choice, do we? We are their mothers, so we love them, even when it leaves our flesh raw and stripped to the bone.

Yeah.

What she said.

But I would add that we love them through an act of will.

How extraordinary. Really, how extraordinary, to choose to love when we have nothing to sustain us, when our cups are empty and empty and empty until we finally accept the empty and choose love anyway.

There is still that empty cup.

Perhaps we will put it away, a cherished thing on a shelf somewhere in a place of honor. And we will let go of that role, of that person we needed to be, seeking affirmation from our roles as mothers. And we will be more than real, when that happens.

So, I will go back to Albatross' response and post more, later. I love it that we help one another see what it is that is really happening.

I don't want to get one of those 10,000 word notices where the site won't let you post.

Yes, that has happened to me.

Er...more than once, actually.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

How extraordinary. Really, how extraordinary, to choose to love when we have nothing to sustain us, when our cups are empty and empty and empty until we
finally accept the empty and choose love anyway.

There is still that empty cup.

Perhaps we will put it away, a cherished thing on a shelf somewhere in a place
of honor. And we will let go of that role, of that person we needed to be,
seeking affirmation from our roles as mothers. And we will be more than real,
when that happens.

So I was vacuuming and thinking about this.

And I kept seeing that empty cup.

Burnished metal.

Silver.

And myself, crawling along behind my child, either child, with my cup, my beggar's cup, in the air.

"Please don't do this."

And at first, it broke my heart to know that. To know my cup would never have anything in it. I would never have the affirmation, would never have that sense of self and completion and rightness come of basking in the reflections of successful children, of a job well done. I would never know the rich, peculiar taste or catch the scent swirling through the clouds of steam rising from my cup of life because no matter how convincingly I write or think about it, the stupid cup is empty.

But then, I had written that paragraph about the intensity of the relationships each of us, at the end of the day, has with our children.

And I kept thinking about that.

And as I was vacuuming, I realized that in a way, I have a thing, an understanding or a richness or texture or something that though it does not fill my cup, is somehow nourishing enough, nonetheless.

And that is what is called drinking from an empty cup.

The cup, my cup, is undeniably empty. Shiny empty, the bottom sparkling with brush marks from all the times I have polished it to be ready for the time it would be filled.

And yet, I am taking nourishment, am finding sustenance there, rich and real and truer than the filled cup may ever have been.

Maybe.

Maybe, this is true.

And as long as I haven't posted this yet and can always go back and delete this part, I will tell you too what I know about the sound of one hand, clapping.

The sound of one hand, clapping
silent shrieking on the Wind
Of nightmare dreams and nightmare grapplings
of prayers unprayed and Prayers, unwrapping
to gods of muddied spittle, and of tin....

To understand that sound of one hand, clapping, we first must acknowledge that in our minds and hearts, there were two hands. Whether both hands were ours, or whether we raised one to make a high five with someone else, we must have been very sure there were two hands.

Or we would have thought about doing something other than clapping.

Whistling instead, maybe.

So to think of clapping is to describe expectation, or the channeling of dreams.

It was a reality we were so sure of that to think about making the sound of clapping was no big deal.

We do it, all the time ~ to show approval, to celebrate some joyful thing, to wake someone up....

But when the time came to make the noise of celebration...for us, there was only one hand.

And that is the sound of it.

What we thought was real.

Cedar

 

[Albatross]

The sound of one hand, clapping
silent shrieking on the Wind
Of nightmare dreams and nightmare grapplings
of prayers unprayed and Prayers, unwrapping
to gods of muddied spittle, and of tin....

Did you write this one too, Cedar?

Are your works published somewhere? I am not much of an expert, but man...I think you should be. I love reading your stuff.

nd I kept seeing that empty cup.
Burnished metal.
Silver.
And myself, crawling along behind my child, either child, with my cup, my beggar's cup, in the air.
"Please don't do this."

I would never know the rich, peculiar taste or catch the scent swirling through the clouds of steam rising from my cup of life because no matter how convincingly I write or think about it, the stupid cup is empty.

When I pictured the cup, I thought of something I read once about Japanese culture, about cracks in pottery being repaired with gold, about how the damage is not only not hidden, but accentuated and celebrated. Those cracks become the strongest part of the cup. And, as Leonard Cohen would say, they are how the light gets in.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When I pictured the cup, I
thought of something I read once about Japanese culture, about cracks in pottery being repaired with gold, about how the damage is not only not hidden, but
accentuated and celebrated. Those cracks become the strongest part of the cup.
And, as Leonard Cohen would say, they are how the light gets in.

This is such beautiful imagery.

I love it.

Thank you, Albatross.

Yes, the piece about one hand clapping is mine, too.

I have been reading Anne Lamott, tonight. Help, Thanks, Wow.

It is an incredible book.

Her writing makes me very happy.

We don't have a choice, do we? We are their mothers, so we love them, even when it leaves our flesh raw and stripped to the bone. From there I think it has to somehow circle around and around and around. There have been no straight lines in this journey! Then I am thinking it should somehow build to a vortex or come down to a center, like a galaxy or a nucleus, because it leads us to the core of who we are.

It seems we all are broken, here. Not just here on the site, but here in this life and here, on this Earth. Surely there is purpose in it. We are circling toward the center, toward the core of the thing, of a thing, of some thing. We become compressed, we are under pressure, what we have always known is not enough and like a galaxy or a nucleus, or like a nova star, we burst and shine and show one another our true colors because the brokenness prevents anything less.

Here is something pretty.

(Albatross, you are calling so many things written so long ago! Our imaginings are similar.)

:O)

Yes, this one is mine, too.

***

Within the monster's core is fueled another, secret burning; a burning fired when Time was young and a shimmering whirl of hydrogen shattered against the dark. Consumed by the raging heat of its own compression the shining, fairy borne thing collapsed, pockmarked and punctured beneath the leaden force of its own burgeoning gravitational field. Imploding again and again against that starstruck dark, it was grown ever denser, was grown ever, impossibly, hotter until in the roiling hellhole at the core of it, atoms colliding with such force that their cushioning electrons were stripped birthed ~ magic.

And in that sweet and infinite dark the brilliant, split second majesty of nuclear fusion teetered.

And blew.

And there burnt, in that emptiness the rogue had sailed, the fiery hellhole of a raging, new blown star.

***

So maybe, though I thought I was writing about stars and planets...I was writing about myself, and about all of us, all along.

For some reason too I am thinking of the sand mandalas that Tibetan Buddhists create. So intricate, slowly created with sacred intention, fragile and temporary, reminding us to be vigilant and grateful for the moments of beauty and grace we share.

Slowly created with sacred intention...I love that imagery. That is what we are doing here, isn't it.

Sacred stuff.

It's so scary though, because until we look back on it, until we can pull all the pieces together, it all just looks like a string of disappointing days.

They do say that, though. Saints and mystics, I mean. They say our lives, our very mundane, day to day lives, are living prayers.

Maybe that is true.

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes it's the only gratitude I have for him. So.....I'll take it."

Headlights Mom

So, this is a miracle, that this came exactly when I needed it and Headlights Mom did not even know.

So maybe everything is true, and very real, and we are all on sacred ground, the ground itself made sacred because we are here, after all.

Which doesn't mean suffering sucks any less.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I didn't know you wrote.

Your writing is amazing. It can bring tears to my eyes and tighten up my throat. What talent!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Your writing is amazing. It can bring tears to my eyes and tighten up my throat.

I love having a chance to share it. I really am happy to see it so well received, and I thank everyone who has commented.

It means more to me than you could possibly know.

That I wrote, that I could do that and loved doing it was so much who the center of me was. As all this began to happen and our family seemed to turn inside out or something, writing came to seem like a pointless exercise in self-indulgence. It seemed to be pretentious and foolish and fraudulent next to the horror (and that is the exact word I mean) of what is real in my life, and in the lives of my kids and grands.

Years ago when, healed enough from the way I grew up to consider that anything I might write could have some value other than to take me to that place where writing happens ~ when I got that first story, and thought it was good, good enough to publish, even...I showed it to my mother. She read a page or maybe, two, and threw it aside. "I'm not reading this ."

Those were the words she spoke.

The words a mother speaks have such power. That is why it matters to this day how we speak to our children, however old they are.

That is why it matters that we find some way to honestly love them, to take pleasure in them.

For their sakes and for our own, it matters.

Loving them matters.

Anyway, when that happened, I already had the kids and husband was already not happy I was writing so much, instead of momming and wifeing. So, here is the thing. Though I like much of what I write so much, I did not know, really know in the heart of me, that it was anything that mattered, at all.

Just something I was reaching too far for, just something pretentious that I did.

So healing those pieces of myself that believed what I believed about myself and my writing will be an amazing thing. It was a little bit of a risk to post them, but the site, and each of us here, keep one another sincerely present in what is real, so it was okay to do that. It just is what it is...but understanding that something I wrote could touch another person changes my perceptions of who I am and of what I might be capable of way down deep where it matters what I think.

You would not believe how much that matters.

Thanks, guys.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

For some reason too I am
thinking of the sand mandalas that Tibetan Buddhists create. So intricate, slowly
created with sacred intention, fragile and temporary

Perhaps this imagery fascinates because this is how we create our own lives. We are always talking, here on the site, about the hidden purpose beneath what we see or feel; we are always thinking about how to love our children, about how to sincerely love them in spite of how they treat both us and themselves. (There is some elemental something, some outrage that I feel, at the way my adult children treat my babies, my toddlers, my adolescent son and daughter. I am really so pissed about that.)

Now I forgot where I was going with this.

reminding us to be vigilant and grateful for the moments of beauty and grace we share.

I really like this, Albatross. Vigilance was just the right word; exactly the right word because what we pay attention to is what will be real for us. There are moments, stunning moments of beauty and sublime moments of grace in each of our lives whatever our situations.

I agree.

"Mosaic" is just not a word that comes up by chance.

Thank you, Albatross.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Remember when 37 said if I did something he did not like, he would come up to Wisconsin and shoot us? I had to
assess the reality of that. With my logical mind, I thought, "He's unstable, but he
has never even laid a finger on a gun and is phobic about traveling. He won't do it. But, God, it is chilling that he even said it."

An invaluable insight, MWM.

To remember that they do that. To think how scary and embarrassing it must be to have been the person who did that, and to know your own mom knows you said those words, made that threat or...if it was a manipulation of the exDH, to know that what you said has been made public, and to wonder whether your mom can still cherish and defend and believe in you, now that she knows.

Thank you for that, MWM. I do remember your posts from that time, and how weird that situation is, to love your child (beloved....) so much, and to be so shocked and afraid and angry, all at the same time.

And scared. I was pretty scared. We had been so certain last time that everything would be alright and it wasn't. That figured into this too.

PTSD so sucks.

In future, I will know that my response to my child should be to address it with her just as I have outlined it, here. That it must be scary for her to think these things, but that she can tell me, tell husband, tell someone, and that together, we will get ourselves and one another through it.

The situation has resolved almost ridiculously well.

difficult child daughter sounds very well, seems so stable it is weird to think how off the wall everything was such a short time ago. The exDH is applying for work. When he finds it, they will offer to buy the house they are living in now, which the grandmother does want to sell.

The fifteen year old daughter (sixteen in just a few days) is coming home.

There will be a set of challenges attending that, but there will also be another set of eyes and ears on the premises, and that is good.

The twenty-two year old daughter has returned to live for a time in the same general area where her mother is. She will be working two jobs and living independently and so on, but there is a second set of eyes and a place and a person now, to watch over everyone else if things get weird.

Most importantly, difficult child daughter seems fine. It is a little spooky how fine, but I am not going to borrow trouble, here.

I wrote this part of my post out in my journal, so I can refer to it quickly if anything bad happens so I can keep my wits about me, this time.

Thanks, everyone.

We got me through it.

:O)

Cedar

 

[tishthedish]

So, on the issue of grandchild vulnerability Tish, how do you function around that?

Oh boy. It's been a hard road and I am still working on it. It started with stepping back and letting our difficult child 2 and his baby mama experience the natural consequences of their neglect. Child endangerment charge for him, a protective order taken out against both of them by husband and me to keep our GS in our custody until they both were unimpaired. We had a guardian angel in an aggressive DCFS investigator that actually "got it" and have held both of their feet to the fire. So much so that difficult child 2 is doing much better and baby mama has signed over custody completely to him since she is still active in her addictions. This gave difficult child 2 more of a sense of purpose and she has no access to GS without my son being present. And because of the difficulty of that time when we had custody of our GS for a month, difficult child 2 realizes that if he falters, husband and I will not be able to carry the load. Custody will have to go to a younger relative or foster care will be on the table. Prior to this I think everyone, including husband, thought I could keep up with the rigors of parenting a non-verbal, physically violent special needs child as I near 60. After a month with my doing the lion's share, it was obvious to everyone that they couldn't hold up their part let alone expecting me to parent as I had when I was 35.

Al-Anon and a phenomenal therapist has been key to my functioning around this. Without it and therapy I would have already sacrificed myself at the altar of doing everyone elses' bidding and rushing in to save everything and everyone I could. I shudder to think what that would look like.

My therapist made clear to me that no matter how involved my husband and I were with our GS he was still going to be exposed to dysfunction at some level from his parents. It's not an easy pill to swallow, but our excellent parenting of our own children could not protect them. My working overtime to light their path in order to ease their trip failed miserably. So I had to acknowledge that I am not omnipotent in anyone's life but my own.

I continue to seek answers and learn along the way. I see my beloved GS several times a week and take an active interest in his school and health. I help when I am asked. And sometimes I even say, "Sorry, I can't".

The pain of the past few years and Al-Anon make it apparent that all of it has to come second to my self-care and my relationship with my higher power. It goes against my grain, but it is starting to feel good. I have a long way to go though. I am coming off a rough couple of weeks and feel dangerously close to the emotionally raw place I was when I first started to seek help. I am going to have to keep working for a long time to get back to where I need to be...inside a house made of brick, rather than a house made of straw. I hope that answers your question, Cedar.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I hope that answers your
question, Cedar.

Thank you, Tish. Your response was perfect. I feel sometimes like I am the only one who isn't getting how to do this. I wonder what in the world is the matter with me that I can't let go and celebrate and be just fine with all of it.

Or at least, find meaning in it, and celebrate freaking that.

Someone even posted to me once that my take on things was so dark. I am like, "Walk a minute in my shoes."

But I didn't say that, of course.

One day, one minute, one step at a time, Trish. That is how you are doing it.

And that is how I need to do it too, and be grateful for the things that are good and not be ashamed of falling apart for a little while over the things I cannot believe could be happening. Not to me, not to my children, and never, ever, in a million years, to my grands, those so defenseless little people who surprised me with how limitless was my capacity to love and to keep loving, somehow brilliantly alive in spite of all of it, vital in my core.

In retrospect, now that I am through it, I think I did really well.

These things are too hard to accomplish and yet, there they are, and we have to decide: Turn away and let the chips fall (... my grandchildren. No! Not my grandchildren....) or figure out whether this time is the one when we need to call up the cavalry.

There is nothing easy about any of this.

Thank you, Trish.

Through your post, I am learning to honor myself. Honor the pain and confusion, and name it and know it is real. Which means you and I are very strong, after all.

It is the situation that is wrong.

You have had to be stronger than me. Both in coping with what is and in learning to stand up and say "no", you have had to be stronger than me.

Al-Anon and a phenomenal
therapist has been key to my functioning around this. Without it and therapy I
would have already sacrificed myself at the altar of doing everyone elses'
bidding and rushing in to save everything and everyone I could. I shudder to
think what that would look like.

Good for you, Tish. That is an excellent therapist. It is crucial that we learn to make that distinction between easing the burden and turning our adult children into dependent monsters. Or worse yet, into encouraging them to toss every vestige of responsibility for their children onto us while they trip merrily off into the sunset and we lose our lives, then our health...and then, our time is over.

Or our husband's.

And then who takes care of the grands?

When the parents have not learned to love and defend them through responsibility for them, who takes care of the grands after we are gone?

My therapist made clear to me that no matter how involved my husband and I were with our GS he was still going to be exposed to dysfunction at some level from his parents.

That is the hardest thing. To know that, and to accept that, and to let it be.

And to know when to call in the cavalry.

And to survive the not knowing.

Somehow, to survive that.

Well, it isn't survivable. Who am I trying to kid.

It's not an easy pill to
swallow, but our excellent parenting of our own children could not protect them.

I love this.

It is true, and I love it.

On the fridge it goes.

My working overtime to light their path in order to ease their trip failed miserably.

It does!!! It doesn't help a thing. And we are left with that shining path we created for them untraveled and the kids stuck in the weeds somewhere, calling for help.

And then, we hear a baby's cry.

So I had to acknowledge that I am not omnipotent in anyone's life but my own.

This is big. I am not liking to have to learn this.

It's a really crummy feeling.

I help when I am asked. And sometimes I even say, "Sorry, I can't".

That's another crummy feeling.

But hooray for you that you have learned to wait for them to ask.

Eventually, we learn to take our triumphs where we find them, and call it good.

That is big.

Congratulations, Tish.

It isn't easy.

None of this is easy.

I am coming off a rough
couple of weeks and feel dangerously close to the emotionally raw place I was
when Ifirst started to seek help.

I am so sorry to say so Tish, but I felt better about myself, about having fallen right back into that hellish place with all of it, when I read that this happens to you, too.

For me, the difference now is that I have been through it and come out the other side more than once already, so I know that an answer exists.

I just have to find it.

I see that in your post, too.

You know where you are, and that is something to know.

Sometimes, that is all I have, too.

I know where I am.

I have to find that set of words, that concept I haven't learned yet, that can help me understand my own position.

I am sorry for the darkness, Tish.

I don't know what I would do in your shoes, either.

Some things are too awful to do anything about.

Next time, you will know better.

Would you find it helpful to post about what happened?

I am going to have to keep working for a long time to get back to where I need to be...inside a house made of brick, rather than a house made of straw

That is alright. That is why the fable tells us each of the innocent little pigs had to take the easy way, the breezy, fun way, first.

Until they learned the wolf meant it.

***

I can never believe how very bad it is going to get, either.

It's a balancing act. Deep in the heart of me, as it is for all of us I suppose, it is about learning to walk in the sun. Guilt or hatred or resentment make that impossible. Fear, that mind-numbing fear for the future, for the child ~ that prevents walking freely in the sunshine.

I don't know how to get through it, either.

I only know that I will. I trust myself now to ask the questions, and I know that somehow, I will come through it intact.

Somehow, I will find the right words.

That is the fear, for me. That I will be shocked into hating; that one time, I will go too deep and never come back.

***

Ha!

No wonder that person posted that I am too dark.

Maybe I should turn on a light, in here.

Okay.

Upright, again, and all civilized.

I get it, Tish.

I am sorry this is happening.

You will. You will beautifully incorporate all of it.

You can.

You will.

I did not know I could do this, either.

But I did, I am, and somehow, so will you.

Cedar

 

[Albatross]

Years ago when, healed enough from the way I grew up to consider that anything I might write could have some value other than to take me to that place where writing happens ~ when I got that first story, and thought it was good, good enough to publish, even...I showed it to my mother. She read a page or maybe, two, and threw it aside. "I'm not reading this ."
Those were the words she spoke.

Cedar, with all the craziness with my difficult child the past couple of days I have not had the opportunity to tell you how very, very sad it made me feel to read this. I don't know why your mother would say such a thing. I can't fathom why. I can't imagine how much that must have hurt you. I am so glad that you were able to reconnect with that part of yourself and share it with us. Your writing is just wonderful.

And from a literary standpoint I think she's full of ... but that's another discussion. (I assume that icon isn't chocolate soft-serve ice cream?)

 

[Lil]

Years ago when, healed enough from the way I grew up to consider that anything I might write could have some value other than to take me to that place where writing happens ~ when I got that first story, and thought it was good, good enough to publish, even...I showed it to my mother. She read a page or maybe, two, and threw it aside. "I'm not reading this ."
Those were the words she spoke.

I agree with Albatross...that just broke my heart to read.

I remember once when my son was very young...I suddenly realized I understood why someone would beat a child. I remember vividly sitting in a rocker at about 3 a.m. and he wouldn't stop crying and I was soooooo tired and I actually wondered, for just the briefest moment, if it is possible to smother someone with a pillow long enough to make them pass out, but not do any actual damage.

Obviously, I didn't do it.

But I realized later, a little less self-control, a little more drinking or drugs, a little more stress, I could be that person who snapped. Even though I was not that person, I was a much better parent after Jabber was in the picture.

But the kind of cruelty in that statement..."I'm not reading this ", I don't understand that. I don't understand a mother who would hurt a child like that. I don't understand MWM's mother, the things she's disclosed, to be cold and unloving toward your own child.

Here we are...all of us with children who have caused us no small amount of pain, who have said cruel things to us, who have stolen and lied and broken our hearts...and I doubt any of us would ever consider saying such things to them.

 

[2much2recover]

Cedar, after reading how your mother emotionally and mentally treated you, I hope you get a better understanding where your difficult child inherited these horrible bad genes. It is obvious with what you write here that your heart is selfless and pure - meaning you are fortunate that the difficult child gene was not personally visited on you. I hope knowing whom this ugliness falls from gives you some peace of mind that it is not your fault, nothing you did wrong as a parent that caused the difficult child-dom. I, personally value greatly the thoughtful posts you contribute here and believe you have a genuine gift for writing.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am so glad that you were able to reconnect with that part of yourself and share it with us. Your writing is just wonderful.

Here is an interesting thing that came immediately to mind. Immediately.

"F you, mom!"

And I am 63 years old.

Validation.

Woo hoo! Thanks, guys!!!!



This is all of you in the Conduct Disorders Emergency Medical Van, delivering the messages that can change how we see ourselves.

:O)

The person jumping around is me.

That is how freedom feels.

Like, crazy, and with heat coming out the top of the head.

***

So, here is another little piece of the mother story. There was a five year span when my parents and I did not speak. husband and I don't know to this day what that was about, except that my sister was involved, somehow. husband said something about not having seen my parents for awhile, and let's have them for dinner.

(I left that sentence structured as it came out. :O)

Anyway, my mother refused and said, "I told you I was going to do this."

?

So, that was pretty shaming.

Especially in front of husband.

And when I said, essentially, "What?", she handed the phone to my father. Who said: "Is there anyone else here you would like to talk to."

And I said, "No."

And we did not speak for five years.

husband' take on that one, now that all this has come out, is that my father was afraid of my mother, too. (I had not told husband so much about the way I grew up, at that time. Until the horrible question of what I might have done to the kids came up, I didn't talk about it much at all. As I am healing now, in this time, I am seeing things as so meanly, stupidly abusive that I simply saw as normal, before. It is like you, MWM, when you talk about your first marriage. You have nothing to compare it to. Your cup can be shattered into a thousand pieces, and you watch the liquid in it flow out and call the empty good because at least you have a cup.)

And my sister played "Oh, I must get you all back together...."

And in that time, my father had a heart bypass.

And it was my sister who, against my mother's wishes, called and told me.

And so, on the day of the surgery, I called the hospital and learned my father had lived through it.

And the next day, my mother called to tell me my father had had a heart bypass and that he was fine. And, meanly enough, I said I already knew. That I had learned of the upcoming surgery and called the hospital.

And my mother left instructions that I was not to be given further information.

That is why, this time, I am not talking to my sister until I talk to my mother or Hell freezes over, whichever comes first. I am on my own, here.

And sometimes, alone is best.

"We are a strong, tight knit family who have come through some very hard times."

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

But here is a secret: I am only strong enough now to do this, to see things this way, because of all of you, of all of us, of what we do, here.

:O)

***

I posted something for Albatross this morning about that old television series, Dragnet.

Looks like I need it too, and hooray for me and here it is. (F you, mom.)

I didn't die.

***

We were in the horrible thick of it with the kids, and were so vulnerable to everything at that time. Just raw, open and bleeding and vulnerable. We hadn't yet put our marriage back together around the crashing down of everything that mattered. And there are people who will use your weakness, wherever that weakness came from they will fasten onto it; people who will attack or set themselves above you or betray you in your time of vulnerability because they can.

That is true.

We have some stuff, husband and I. Houses and things. (Only two houses.) We have more stuff than my parents or my sister, in fact. Though my sister did get married again and now, she has stuff too. Maybe more than me. She also has my mother, as I have posted about here in other threads.

husband thinks jealousy played into everything that happens, there.

We had just bought the second house the year this happened. So, we had two houses, but both of them were empty, sad places because we did not have the kids, right? The second house was better though, because it did not have those same horrible memories of the times when things were falling apart.

We sold that first house, the one we had built and raised our children in.

Lil, if you are reading along, you mentioned selling the house where you raised your child. I recommend it, very much.

Build another.

Anyway, that is why I am always saying there are people, even and maybe, especially, family, who will do you in however they can do it. Or maybe for them it has to do with recovering self image when it seemed that I had everything I needed and there were things they still needed?

husband says it is that my mother was losing control of me. As the kids fell, I had become too depressed to worry about anything more she could say. And she said a great plenty.

That is why I am always saying that, no matter what it looks like or how it feels, the words we say to our children matter.

Anyway, husband' take on it is that she could no longer get to me any other way.

And I did not get that for the longest time.

But he was right, I suppose.

(Cheesh. Maybe I don't need that Dragnet clip after all! Grrr! Roar! Where is that magical little guy with the sword, come to cut through repression and depression and dis-appreciation of all flavors.

(F you, mom.)

Not even in italilcs.



Anyway, some five years after that happened, I decided to join a writing group in the little town where the second house is. And I walked in (late) and...there was my mother. In a writing group.

And I was late.

And she said something about how those who arrived late had to take a card number of a different color, and could read only after those who had arrived on time had received feedback.

So, that pretty much sucked.

I had brought something from that story I put on this thread for Albatross.

***
And here is a new thought that is probably a true thing. Had the writing been bad, it is probably true that my mother would have let me go.

But if the writing was not bad....

It is a very sad thing, to realize the bitterly cold dynamics of an abusive family.

***

Anyway, at the end of it, my mother beetled over and was talking all about how I needed her, needed a mother. And there was this man from the writer's group (who would later become my karate instructor, as a matter of fact) who followed my mother and I out to her car. Like, listening in and chiming in and I still don't know how it is that he happened to feel he could do that.

But of course I do, now that I think very bad things about my own mother. She shared the terrible tragedy of this daughter that was me with them, didn't she.

And so, had a vested interest in making that true.

Or maybe I am just really mean and reaching for the worst possible interpretation.

So, I said all the appropriate things.

And that is how we came to be talking again, at all.

husband was happy, because he had really missed my father.

And we just sort of picked up from there, like nothing bad ever happened.

Pretty much the way it is for an abused child to go to school the next day.

Or an abused woman to go to work.

Never happened.

And there is nothing wrong here.

***

Eventually, I stopped going to that writer's group, of course. Not right away, because that would have been too obvious. But at the core of me, that certainty that my writing was intrinsically flawed was reawakened.

I did receive some incredible feedback from that group.

But.

And it turned out that my mother had always wanted to write. She would write one or one and a half page stories about incidents in her life, and they were actually well written and even, funny.

And I was asked to read them all.

And I did.

In retrospect, there have been many opportunities to stand up.

But here's the thing. We have to have had someone who believed in the best of us before we can believe it, ourselves. Before we can believe that we are not (wait for it....) fools fated to fail. (!) I will say it again: No matter how it looks, whether we believe they are listening or not, we are their mothers, and it matters what we say to our children, all of their lives.

Jabber, if you are reading this, fathers matter, too.

I am telling husband that all the time.

The words you say matter. They will echo down the years and be heard by your grandchildren, and they will be heard again in generations not yet born.

That is something we can do.

However bad it gets, we can know our hearts and speak the words of healing. Even if those words are "I love you. Stand up." "I love you. You were raised better." "I love you. We are done."

***

I remember once when my son was very young...I suddenly realized I understood why someone would beat a child. I remember vividly sitting in a rocker at about 3 a.m. and he wouldn't stop crying and I was soooooo tired and I actually wondered, for just the briefest moment, if it is possible to smother someone with a pillow long enough to make them pass out, but not do any actual damage.

I was always stopped in my tracks by a real horror that somehow, I would be like my mother. I was so afraid of that. I never knew I was afraid of it until I had my first baby.

And then it hit.

husband often worked nights, when we had our first baby.

And you all know what would happen at our house when I was little and my father was gone in the night.

So...I would take my wide awake, crying baby down to the kitchen table and sit there with her in my arms. And I would wait for the furnace to blow up.

Or for someone to break in.

And we would wait there until the sky began to lighten.

And it wasn't until I had been in therapy for some time that I realized I was awake and protecting my baby from myself.

But here is the courage in all of that for us, Lil. We faced what we faced (however I covered mine up) and we loved ourselves and our babies enough to face it down.

I did not have those same fears with my second baby.

I had come through the fire of it, and trusted myself completely.

Oy.

I always put a heart, a friendly heart, on those posts where we have been vulnerable enough to share at a level that helps someone else (me, in this case) heal.

Thank you, Lil.

*******

It is obvious with what you write here that your heart is selfless and pure - meaning you are fortunate that the difficult child gene was not personally visited on you.

Thank you, 2much. The more I read all of our stories and the more I uncover and recategorize and repeat my own...I don't know. I guess I see courage where before, I saw cowardice. I see tenacity and determination where before I saw only the losses, only the failure which seemed to be mine but for which my children were suffering.

It is strangely true that if we can find that safe place where we can risk exposing the times we were targeted and fell and lost and laid around half dead for a time (or for a really long time)...we can re~understand who we are.

So, what an unbelievable thing that is.

Thank you for letting me be ugly.

That is a very hard thing.

But...F YOU, MOM!

:O)

***

I, personally value greatly the thoughtful posts you contribute here and believe you have a genuine gift for writing.

I will take that with me.

And it will be there, strong and steady and just right, when I need it.

Thank you, 2much.

Cedar

 

[Tanya M]

understanding that something I wrote could touch another person changes my perceptions of who I am and of what I might be capable of way down deep where it matters what I think.

Cedar, you have an amazing gift in the way you write. It is a true blessing and I'm glad you do what you do. Reading what you have written is like riding gentle wave in the ocean.

 

[Lil]

Lil, if you are reading along, you mentioned selling the house where you raised your child. I recommend it, very much.

I wish we could do it today. Unfortunately, with home repairs and remodeling underway and FIVE houses on my block for sale - nice area, I have no idea why! - we are looking at a minimum of a year...probably two.

I do think, however, we HAVE to get our son's room cleaned out, painted, and redecorated soon...and most importantly, the door replaced. Every time I walk down the hall...which is constantly...I see the door...the door with half a dozen holes the size of his fist.

It unsettles me. I can be having the best day ever and see that door...and my day becomes just a little bit darker.

 

[Tanya M]

Every time I walk down the hall...which is constantly...I see the door...the door with half a dozen holes the size of his fist.

Lil, I can so relate to this. husband and I had to put a lock on our bedroom door as difficult child took it upon himself to help himself to whatever he wanted from our room, mainly money. I came home one day to find a hole about 1 foot wide in my bedroom door. difficult child had taken a hammer to it! He was bound and determined to get in, he also stole our safe which had money and important papers in it. (thank God the cops found him before he could get the safe open)
Anyway, after husband replaced the door the damaged one sat in the garage where I would see it and be reminded. Finally one day I couldn't take it anymore and I told husband it has to go. He suggested we burn it so we did. husband broke it down into smaller pieces and we burned it. There was something symbolic about doing that.....it really helped me to let it go.

 

[2much2recover]

It unsettles me. I can be having the best day ever and see that door...and my day becomes just a little bit darker.

Ah, I feel for you on seeing this dreaded reminder. Any chance you have a ReHome store near you where you can both pick up another door cheap and help a charity (Habitat for Humanity) http://www.habitat.org/env/restores.aspx
I hope you are able to make replacing a door a priority - a new door would remind you every day that you found have the courage and strength to stand up to your son. It seems sad, but in reality it is huge emotional growth on your part to tell him NO!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I do think, however, we HAVE to get our son's room cleaned out, painted, and redecorated soon...and most importantly, the door replaced. Every time I walk down the hall...which is constantly...I see the door...the door with half a dozen holes the size of his fist.

Take the door off, today.

Go in with a contractor trash bag and throw the worst of it out.

Vacuum the room, knowing that it may be remodeled into another purpose, or it may once more become difficult child's room. Let it be in limbo like you are, but let it be clean limbo.

That door, that smashed and disrespected door, has to go.

I love the idea of burning it.

You should know, Lil and Jabber, that damaged doors and filthy rooms and ruined carpets are par for the course with difficult child kids. Cleaning the room will be traumatic, will be incongruity, trebled. Football lamp and the empty shells of BIC pens used to do some kind of drug thing right in his own room! Lacey doll lamp, white provincial furniture and dirty words written in the closet in magic marker.

We had a thread here once, about how traumatic it was to clean the difficult child's room.

Do you put it back the way it was before things went wrong?

Do you change its purpose, entirely?

We are so tired and confused at first that we just leave it. That the broken door is bothering you is a sign of recovery.

Burn the door with Jabber.

Later, when you are ready, you can wear your pirate skirt to Lowe's and get another.

It unsettles me. I can be having the
best day ever and see that door...and my day becomes just a little bit darker.

I am sorry this is happening.

You are strong enough. It doesn't feel like it now, but you will go on from here and life will be good again, with no sadness in it that you cannot put aside for a time.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Finally one day I couldn't take it anymore and I told husband it has to go. He suggested we burn it so we did. husband broke it down into smaller pieces and we burned it. There was something symbolic about doing that.....it really helped me to let it go.

I love this.

I love that you did it, together.

Cedar