That is a really beautiful quote. Thank you for sharing it. I hope things are going better for you now.

Can I share my suffering story? I was sexually abused by my mother when I was a child. I didn't confront her directly with it and only talked to a shrink about it when I was in my 50s!! I always thought I had done something wrong. I grew up feeling inadequate, low self esteem, shy, withdrawn...and pissed off that a good portion of my life had been messed up by the one person in my life that I should have been able to trust. I had a hard time trusting women. I have bouts of anger, still. My mother did a lot of mean things to mean as a teen as well. She interferred in my life up until the time she had a bad stroke. Then I took care of her and was for some reason always trying to get her to love me...because I never felt she did. A mother doesn't love a child and do this!! I was a teen when I figured out she was a lesbian. She didn't have girlfiends, that I know of, but she liked to look at the female form and would comment on my body very inappropriately..as a teen, it was pure hell. My dad was travelling for his work and was seldom home. I never knew whether he knew about her, or not. I never talked to him about it. People just didn't, in those days.

I think the anger from what she did to me caused my breast cancer. But before that, I had a hysterectomy then had the rest of my reproductive organs removed becasue of fibroids and cysts.

Ok, so I was dealing with all of that...and along comes a diagnosis of an aneurysm in my brain. which lucky for me had not ruptured. But I had to have surgery to fix it in 2006. The breast cancer hit me in 2008. Oh, and my mom was dying in the hospital 8 weeks after my aneurysm surgery...I didn't even think about what I was doing but I told my hubby I need to get to her before she dies..so I got on a plane and then drove..which I was not supposed to do, but I didn't know that...and saw my mother three days before she passed. She was pretty out of it..not sure she knew I was there except for one brief moment when I told her about my surgery on my head and she asked if it hurt...so hell yes, I have suffered and still do. Having had cancer, well, it's like being chased by a beast. will I get it back? Who knows. I lost the few friends I did have because I was sick for so long...so I have learned to be cautious with people becasue they can be mean and insincere. Even tho they initially appear to give a damn. No one knows the depths of anyone else's pain..but I can tell you that having cancer made me try to reach out to people more than I ever had before. I hug people more. But I have more suffering....

My daughter is an only child and she hates me. She blames me for everything that is wrong in her life. She is unmarried, no kids, and does exotic dancing for a living....OMG. It kills me. She drinks. Which makes it hard to talk to her about anything. She is so abusive to me that I told her I could not take it anymore and to please not contact me until she does some AA steps. She has not communicated since July. I send her emails and phone once in awhile just to say i love her but of course, no response. She was dx bipolar as a teen and she has been very hard for me to deal with. I tried so hard when she was a kid to get her into extracurricular things...my mother never encouraged me in anything. I could never imagine abusing my daughter like my mother did me, but I told my daughter about the abuse...my mother was a completely different person with her only granddaughter than she was with me, so my daughter has a hard time understanding waht I went through. She is 39 now and I wonder if she will EVER know me. She does not appear to care about me at all and does not even know if I am alive or not. I have tried every which way to get her to stop the dancing stripper thing...so ashamed of her...my mother thought it was great...& I can imagine why. I paid for my daughters nursing training but she quit doing that because she started drinking. I tried to get her together with her dad whom she had not seen since we divorced when she was a year old. They finally saw each other after 30+ years but it was a disaster...something happened, but I will never get the true story from her. So with her permission I called her step mom to find out if things could be worked out so that my daughter could see her father....the step mom thought my daughter was a terrible influence on HER daughter that she has with my ex - this child is about 7 yrs old (imagine that, my ex is in his 60s) I asked this woman if she could help since I'd had breast cancer and wanted to know that my girl knew her dad and had some family in case I kicked the bucket...and I mentioned that I didn't like what daughter did for a living either...come to find out that step mom did not know that my girl was a stripper. So now my daughter says I ruined everything between her dad and herself by telling stepmom, and that I did it just to be mean!! Stepmom told my daughter' -'your mom does not have your best interests at heart'. Excuse me? I knocked myself out trying to fix everything up for my daughter and her dad. I was still recovering from chemo. Rather than having a shred of compassion for me and what I was going through for her, she has written me off like a bad check. It hurts so bad. She is my only child. As much as I was angry at my own mother, I was kind to her and went out of my way to try to gain her love. I don't understand. Is this how bipolar disease acts or is this girl just a blue meanie?

So to top things off, my best friend of 17 years, my Border Collie girl I had since she was a pup, passed away a few months ago.

Sometimes I wonder if life is worth the hassle. I have never felt loved my entire life. No wonder I got breast cancer, hey? Wow. I wrote a small book here sorry...I have never told a soul any of this before except my hubby. His daughter died of alcoholism at 39 years old a few years ago....it never ends, does it? I just would like a drop of happy before I leave this place..but am thinking I am doomed to be an unhappy soul.....so that is my story. Yes, I have a hubby...but he was raised German (no insult to any Germans here, I am 1/2 German) and he does not have much time for sad sacks. Or illness.

I'm sure there are many sad stories out there. We are all carrying a burden and a cross to bear. Thanks for listening - hugs ~