Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
My daughter did something similar. We were talking on the phone and I was practicing my detachment words and she zoomed me a photo taken of her face after the beating. I knew about the beating, had heard the words ~ but that picture, just BOOM threw me right into FOG. After picking me up and dusting me off, the other moms here noted: Your own daughter that you love to distraction and suffer FOG for did this to you on purpose and she knew what she was doing and she did it with malicious intent.
And you know? Once I had run through every denial possible, I saw they were correct.
That was a very hard thing.
No you didn't. You're his mom. It's just that we are in situations where we cannot ever respond from our hearts to our children.
We have to be wise, and we have to be wary, and that sucks in a way. But we have the other moms' stories of their children turning things around once the moms responded differently.
So, we have hope.
And that is better than nothing, so we take it and make a life raft.
And then we look around and we see everyone else on the site, and they are all paddling their life rafts to beat the band, too.
So we say hello and get back to paddling our own.
Sometimes we say, "Could you pass me a bucket. I've sprung a leak." And everyone passes buckets and buckets, because we all have enough for ourselves and a spare.
We do, after we have been doing that, paddling our life rafts, long enough.
I am just a person, and have actually been wrong. On occasion, that actually happened. But I think, when you are interacting with what you believe is your son, you are actually interacting with Addiction. Addiction has no conscience, and it does not love its victims' mothers, because they are one of the few, good, committed sources of strength and lovingkindness that can help our hollowed out, addicted children make their ways back from it and reclaim their lives.
Once Addiction, which masquerades as my child and which I so detest, has been seen for what it is and dealt with appropriately, then there is only my child there, again.
This is a true story someone told me. She was at a rehab group therapy with her daughter. And one of the other rehab patients stood up and began berating his mother. And the counselor leaped up and got right in that young man's face and said: "When did you start using again!"
And the kid denied and denied that he was using again. Swore he was clean as a whistle.
But the counselor broke him.
And the kid admitted he'd gone back to using.
And the counselor told everyone that he knew it, the minute the kid began berating his mother. Because when the kids are not using? They are grateful, and horribly sad at what they've put their mothers through, and they feel so fortunate to know that she loved them enough to stick with them, to be there and to love them and to help them now, to come back.
Man, Julie Ann ~ you are good. I never even thought of doing that.
Cedar
