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May 9, 2008, 3:52 pm PDT
I disagree with you
Quote From: mimiskbWhen a child's mother is an alcoholic in their childhood years, they NEVER get over it. Obviously she has forgiven you, but she will never forget it and act like it never happened, but YOUR behavior when she was a child changed her forever, but it sounds like you do not want to accept that. She's controlling? Didn't she HAVE to be as a child growing up with you? Isn't that what you trained her to be? Her teenage daughter doesn't want to sit around chatting with a grandmother she doesn't see very often? That sounds completely normal to me!! She may come back around in years to come, but if you aren't here for that, then that's just the way it is for families who don't see each other all the time. Your friends are forgiving? Well, that's nice, but were you ever their drunk mother? Have you done bad things to them or around them that they might have a hard time forgiving?
What you should do is be grateful for ANY time your daughter is willing to spend with you, that she is willing to let you have any access at all to her children, and take what you can get with a gracious and non-judgmental attitude. You can never make up for her childhood, NEVER. But, you can be a woman that she wants to know NOW. You don't have to go along with her schedule and can speak up for yourself if you have something else you want to do, but YOU can't control THEM either.
Just be grateful for what you get. Good luck with the rest of your life and relationship with these grandchildren. You say that children never get over it? Sure they do. Both of my parents were raging alcoholics when I was a child. I got over it and I forgave them completely.I can't count the times when I had to rescue my mom who fell into a dead stupor with a cigarette starting her bed on fire or left the stove on, or any number of other life-threatening things that happened. My father? He was out getting drunk too and then he would come home and abuse my mother. I knew even then that it was not something they wanted to be. There was NO support systems in place for them where we lived (and at that time) to seek the help they needed. I saw them as victims of a horrible disease and forgave them. I love my mother to death and would not want to see her spend another second 'feeling guilty' about something she had no control over. She's an intelligent, kind, respectable woman who deserves some peace after the years of torture she went through. Maybe in your life there is no forgiveness, but not everybody feels that way.
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