And then, I rally…

 All this crap has really had me down. I’ve been deep, deep into my own head. Am I a shitty mother because my grown kid feels traumatized? Maybe. What I know to be true is that I am not that person anymore. My kids have been adults for more than a decade now. There is an old saying….what people think of you is none of your business.

It took me awhile to notice the pattern. When someone is down on me, it only makes sense to be down on myself, because what other people say about me must be true. I must suck as bad as some see me, I must be an awful person because someone(s) thinks so.

Then I remember.

I am not my mistakes.

I am not the same person I was in the past.

I did the best I could with what I had. (sometimes I feel like this is a cop out, but do people hurt people intentionally? I generally think not)

I did my best to stay sane and present for my kids.

I am a loving human.

I am a generous and giving human.

I am worthy of love and respect because I am human.

I am a human who makes mistakes. I will always be a human who has made A LOT of mistakes!

Those mistakes do not define me.

They are not who I am.

I’m seeing a theme here.

I think the crux of the matter is that I have rediscovered this place, and have sought it again, as solace, because I don’t feel safe on Facebook. Of course, safety on Facebook is probably the worst kind of delusion anyway, but because my daughter posts a lot there, and lives her life out and proud there, it’s not a safe space for me. It’s not a safe space for me because she has recently said some very ugly things to me that make me see the way she sees me, and that makes me sad. Right now, it’s looking like she can’t see me as anything except the mistakes she thinks I’ve made, from a place of judgment and hurt. The thing is, she hasn’t lived my life. Her view of who I am and as a result, who she is, is based on the extremely limited experiences and traumas of her own experience, filtered through her life, not mine.

I hope that she gets to a point where she can see me as something besides what she perceives as my mistakes, but that’s not my journey, it’s hers to make.

My grand daughter is in the hospital. She has asthma, and while we had had a three year break from hospitalization, that ended recently, so she is back there.

My daughter is so much like me, it does actually hurt to see it. Her trauma response, because she feels she’s been hurt by me, is to shut me out of her life and insist she can do all the things by herself. Her husband asked me last night to take her food because they had brought food for the child, and not for her. I went and spent a little time. She seemed grateful to have company. And doesn’t seem to know how to move beyond the hurt. That’s for her and her therapist to work out. I will just be available, and continue to love her.

I don’t have the answers….I just know, coming here, and being able to speak my truth, and remember who I am, who I want to be, and who others see me as, matters. The rest will work itself out, one way or another.

Peace.