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Welcome T!  We are glad you found us.  We ask all new members to go to our HomePage and under Open Me First to read the posts placed there for you. Please pay special attention to the Forum Agreement to be sure WWU is a fit for you. We are a monitored Website.

If you replace 'daughter' with 'son' I could have written most of your post.  I know how you feel.  The aching loss and the sense of betrayal.  I knew I deserved better.  I did.  I do.  But getting to a happy place was a long chore with many pitfalls.  It started slowly, by first realizing that I deserved to be happy and my DS was not making me happy so I had to do that myself.  Something in us (especially mothers) rebels against turning away from our children.  It makes us feel like failures.  It took me a while to realize that nothing was farther from the truth.  The truth was that my DS was grown.  I had done my work and helped him learn as many lessons as I could.  Now I had to turn the teaching over to life and watch him master it.

It has been a long road filled with many setbacks where I fell back into what I now call "the abyss".  The journey into the abyss starts innocently enough.  I start thinking about my DS, how things 'used to be', how I can maybe get back there if I just try a little harder, how I must have done something wrong, how I should be able to 'fix' it.  The honest truth is the problem is not mine to fix.  I have no control over the situation.  He has his own lessons to learn and I have to just stand by and watch.  So now, when I start into the abyss I use my three mantras to help me get back to my life.  Sorry if I am repeating but here they are:

1) No news is good news
2) Not my circus, not my monkeys
3) What I focus on expands

If I can manage to tear my mind back to something that I enjoy (camping, canoeing, cooking etc.) then I can regain my footing and enjoy the rest of my day.  I worked hard to get to where I am and I deserve to be happy.  So do you.

Hugs!!

So many questions and so many answers - but not your questions and not your answers.  Letting go and not jumping in to solve their problems, and frankly to protect them, is very difficult to do.  Different circumstances but same path for me - being a support, letting go, and finding peace and some joy in one's own life.

I can't believe that I am even looking for and even writing on a site such as this.  I have finally reached my limit, and it is so heart and soul crushing that some days I can barely stand it, but it is what it is.  My daughter and I had a really good relationship pretty much through her high school years and I assumed that it would only get better as she grew.  I had a really good relationship with my mom and talked to her weekly, sometimes daily and often went to her house for visits always taking the my children, so they were exposed to that type of relationship between a parent and a child.  Once my daughter met her husband she changed and I suspect he had something to do with that.  He comes from a family that had a higher income then us and supposedly are more sophisticated than my husband and me.  I can't believe that my daughter lets this sway her thinking she was not raised this way, but she does.  It didn't happen overnight but has increased to a point where she ridicules things I say and puts me down.  All this occurring while I have been the one who has babysat her children saving her that expense as she does not pay me.  I don't get it, there is no reason for her to act this way to me but she does, and the things she does are so stupid and petty.  One example a couple years ago I told her I was thinking about growing out my hair and she told me that I "did not have the type of hair that can be grown out" Now mind you I have had long hair way past my shoulders more than once during her younger years so not sure where this is coming from but evidently I now have witchy hair that can't be grown out according to her.  Now she has long hair but I can't have that.  I know this sounds like a petty insignificant thing but this is just one of many put downs, some small so more greater.  She once even told me I didn't know how to post on facebook and proceeded to tell what I should do.  I asked other people to read my post and let me know if I had done something wrong and everyone said No it was perfectly fine.  She does stuff like this all the time.  Then she will all the sudden stare at my face like she is looking at a flaw and I will say what is wrong, what are you looking at, do I have food on my face or something and she says nothing.  I will go to a mirror and check and there is nothing there. My husband and I have helped her out financially and never asked for repayment, we have taken her and her family on all expense paid vacations.  I have tried for years to get her to love me like she use to and it just isn't happening. I was recently hospitalized and she didn't come to see me until my husband called her, but I was there for her when she was in the hospital.  What can I do, well today I realized nothing.  It is her, not me, I can do nothing about her behavior, but I can control how I respond to her treatment of me.  But that is the hard part, because it is so hard to realize that I will never get back what we had and I had no say in why it changed.  However I have to accept what it is now, and learn to deflect her negative comments and realize that those comments are not true, they do not define me.  I need to do this to get back my confidence in myself and help myself heal so that I can become once again the person I was.  But it is very hard, and very sad to grieve and mourn over all the lost opportunities that we are missing out on, because I don't cut the mustard anymore, according to her.

Thanks M!  I expect this will break up the marriage, it is just a matter of when.  I keep wondering if my DIL (if I can call 'him' that) will make my grands call him "Dad".  So many questions.  So few answers.

Hugs!

OK, wow! That's a crazy turn of events! To be honest, I'm a little bit envious. If my DIL were to decide she was a "he" I'm pretty sure my DS would run far, far away.

You did the right thing just offering to be there if he needs you.

Thank you so much for your thought filled words. Every time I find myself worrying, I'm coming back here to reread your post.

Yes, these are unsettling times for so many reasons. I'm happy you were able to spend time with your grandchildren. Cherish every memory.
We are fortunate that there is technology available to us for virtual visits when we can't be together. 

Thank you again for your wise words.

Welcome M!  We are glad you found us! We ask all new members to go to our HomePage and under Open Me First to read the posts placed there for you. Please pay special attention to the Forum Agreement to be sure WWU is a fit for you. We are a monitored Website.

Wow, what a horrible situation!  I think I would make my home a "No Politics Zone" and start throwing out anybody who brought up politics. If they won't leave then go to your room and shut the door.  You have a right to your opinion and you have a right to be treated civilly in your own house.  There is no reason for you to have to tolerate that kind of disrespect even if you were defending flogging children. 

Just as a by note if you or your SIL are getting all of your news from only one or two places please expand your views (and ask you SIL and daughters to do the same).  I watch several different news stations, and yes I have to gird myself for viewing some of them, but I watch them so that I can compare things after getting both sides of the story.  This is a tense and divisive time to be alive and it is up to all of us to try to understand the opposite point of view.  

Thanks M!!   My thoughts exactly.  My DS was over here yesterday and I told him "I just want you to be happy and I don't think you are.  You are in charge here.  If you need anything from me let me know".  He seemed to appreciate that reaction.  It is so hard not to tell him what to do!  Back to my mantras.....y'all know them!

Hugs!

I am so glad that you are in touch with your DS/DIL!  Most people are facing challenges at work right now if they still have a job. The stresses on families are tremendous and most of us have learned not to confide our problems with many people because the next time we see them the first thing they want to talk about is the last thing we want to focus on.  Our best present to our children is allowing them the privacy to work out their own problems their own way.  To them it reaffirms their adulthood and complements their judgement when we step back and stay quiet. If they need our help they will ask.  To us though it is a really hard thing to do.  We so want to make their lives easier by sharing our hard earned lessons.  It is a challenge to turn over the teacher's role to life but that is what we, as parents, must do.

I am happy that your DS has offered to set up a facetime visit for you with your grands.  So many of us have to be satisfied with these less than optimal forms of getting together.  My grands were here yesterday as their last visit before in person school starts (today).  I am going to miss them horribly but I would rather miss them for a year than possibly die and have them miss me forever.  I never thought I would have to make choices like this.  What a sad time to live through.

Hugs!!

Called my son today about a visit. Said he's been working lots of overtime, including this weekend. Said he would talk to his wife about us visiting. (We stay in a hotel, by the way.)

Anyhow... he texted later that it's not a good time.  Things are too hectic.  But the grandkids miss us a lot and he would set up a FaceTime next weekend. I told him please do - it's the only connection we have with them.

Not much else I can do. He's choosing not to share - my gut says something else is going on. I won't pry - I'll just keep praying.

Thank you StillLearning for your thoughts & support.