Quote:
Originally Posted by Curry
I spent a lifetime trying to coach my mom on how to act like a mom. I confronted her when she acted crazy. I did everything I could to make her notice me. She lied manipulated everyone in my family to blame me for her unhappiness and somehow her alcoholism. At the end I phoned her regularly and once every year she would come to the phone to speak to me. Eventually, I started talking to her in my head. I told her I loved her and admired her for all her good points. Then I told her out loud that I was holding her in my heart. She started sobbing and hung up the phone before she gave me information about my Dad's stage 3 cancer. I am feeling better and better about her because I am changing, she just stays the same or gets worse. I saw her as a vulnerable helpless troubled girl in my mind the other day instead of a mom who makes me feel like I can never get enough love. Now I have to work on myself finding love.
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Hello
I think it is important to realize that our parents ahd their own lives and their own issues before they became our parents. you cannot change them. I cannot change them. We can learn to understand and accept them for what they are. Sometimes we ened to stay away from them ebcause they are so destructive and toxic. Soemtimes we just ahve to be very careful about the times and circumstances in which we are around them or interact with them.
The point is; it is easier to move on and owrk out our own problesm once we disengage oruselves from those problems of our parents. We are not them. We are our own persons. We can learn to love and forgive them their failings ebcause they are human as we are human. Their aprents affcted them. What they didnt get from their families affected them. Their dreasm, their desires , their wants and needs were likely common to our own. Life is messy and people screw up and the ebst we can do is to udnerstnad why we are the way we are when how we are causes us problems.
Once I realzied my parents werent born when I was born--that they ahd histories forged long ebfore that moment- it was easier not to hold myself somehow responsible for fixing them. The only person I can fix is myself.
But with being able to understand and forgive all the nasty stuff- there is an added sense of freedom and love that somehow keeps these things in persepctive for me. It is possible for people who love you to hurt you and not intentionally do so. Sometimes it is all they know because it was all they lived themselves as kids.