Update on Mom & family

Oops! I let February and March go by without posting after promising to get back on track. I'm sorry dear readers.

In January I posted that my mom spent New Years in the hospital, well she just spent Easter in the hospital as well. She fell down and broke a couple things and needed surgery on Easter morning. There was some question as to whether they would do the surgery because of her heart condition but they decided to go forward.

I want to get away from the details of her health though. Al-Anon teaches us to focus on ourselves, not on others. It scared me that she fell while in the process of trying to start her moped/scooter. She was trying to drive. I'm not sure she'll be driving anything again. I can certainly hope for that anyway. I'm still talking about mom, aren't I? Well I'm getting there.

One of my fears over my lifetime is that she would go to jail for her crimes. This current stint in the hospital is giving me hope that maybe that won't be the case. How much trouble can she get in if she loses her ability to drive? While it will pain her mentally, it gives me some peace of mind to see her confined somewhat.

I am struggling with guilt and obligation right now. Trying to weigh whether I should visit or not. Visiting isn't just a drive across town. It's a significant investment of time, money, and energy. Right now my thinking is that I will wait it out and maybe visit when she's back in her apartment again unless I need to go down sooner for a legal obligation or something. It's not that I lack compassion, I'm just not sure I can be of use.

I've said to my friends recently that my husband and I are entering that sandwich period in life where we are still raising a child and also being faced with our parents being more needy. What do they each need? How can we be there for them without being in the way? These are questions we are asking ourselves. How to be a parent to our parents without insulting our parents is not easy stuff. We're just starting to navigate those waters I think.

When a parent passes away the lines are clearly defined as to what needs doing, but when a parent is in "ill health" it can be a little tricky deciding when to drop everything to get to his/her side. We have another parent who is telling us not to visit but isn't well either. I think we are wanted, but the words we are hearing tell us otherwise. For us to go and visit would be disrespectful I think so we are holding off. If they lived somewhere that was convenient we might get away with saying we were in the neighborhood, but that isn't the case. I do hope we can see them this summer though, somehow. Again, negotiating all of that FOG and also being aware that our parents are getting older, and our time left together is getting smaller.

As the snow melts and school vacations approach I am full of worry and wonder about what the coming months will bring.

confused

Yesterday I had the chance to make amends. I am still blown away by how welcoming and calm this woman was. She "forgave me" easily because she was never really upset with me to begin with. My mother is the one who harmed her, and I will not defend my mother's actions one bit. So the tears keep coming. I feel like I am maybe experiencing some PTSD. Since I work in a library it was easy for me to go up to the stacks today and browse. I went through the ACOA stuff again, and picked up familiar books and then put them back again. Then I went to the non-fiction stacks and picked up some books at random. I found myself led to a few and then others I just let find me.

Later today I will see my doctor about my asthma. I am confused whether I should mention the PTSD or not. On the one hand I feel like Al-Anon has giving me the tools to cope with these flashbacks, but on the other hand I am not sure of my own stability. I also worry a little about the "what ifs"... what if something bad happened in my life and I lost my balance. Would I end up back in that horrible place in my head? Even though I feel like I do a good job of staying in the present, it seems like I was pulled back into the past pretty easily.. well maybe not so easily. That was a pretty well buried skeleton that just got pulled out of the closet.

So today I am going in circles. Trying to use my Al-Anon tools to cope with my PTSD and all the ACOA stuff. I am also reminded of the FOG that I think I blogged about some time ago.. Fear, Obligation, and Guilt... I am never really free of the FOG I guess. I just somehow MANAGE it, and cope with it as best as I can.

Happy Holidays!

I'm still out here in cyberspace. I've been busy with a weight loss blog, and I have been doing okay with that FOG stuff and boundaries with my mother. Haven't figured out how to apply the FOG to my marriage. Not that my husband is blackmailing me or anything- he's not. I just know that I act out of feelings of FOG sometimes. We probably both do, and you can see it with our finances especially. We both want each other to be happy and we overspend as a result.

Oh well... those are problems for another day I suppose. We're working as a team on other fronts such as our daughter's education which is undergoing some changes during the next few weeks. Things we have no control of are happening so we have to decide how to respond. On Monday night my husband will attend a meeting to gather more information on the situation and then we will have to decide what course of action to take. Trying to practice the Serenity Prayer over and over in my head. Right now I'm feeling like we may have flushed $25,000 or so down the drain. Not a good feeling!


Anyway, life goes on. I am managing my boundaries, trying to stay out of trouble, not doing a great job of losing weight but trying.... and looking forward to Christmas somehow.  :-)


Happy Holidays!

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