Topic : 07/17 Mommy Dearest

The writer who felt basic/baby/care 101 was the most  essential  requirement before having a child was WRONG.  Since each baby is different, what you've learned with one child may not apply to the next.  Just following the rule of keeping baby clean, dry and comfy just about covers all bases.   

The important issue to focus on is to love the child, put the child first.  (no martyrs please!)  If a child feels loved,  feels secure, is encouraged to learn, taught patience and love, (by example is best) .....most likely that child will grow into a confident loving adult, who hopefully will make a good parent themselves.   

The biggest problem is.........so many young adults have not matured enough to take care of themselves.  When they become parents, I really feel sad for the child.  I'd like to see a mandatory maturity test given BEFORE anyone can become a parent.  That would save a lot of children from having rotten memories their entire lives.  

 My parents were totally dysfunctional.  It took years for my brother and I to undo the emotional harm they instilled. (He was in therapy for five years.)  Fortunately  I married a stable, loving, intelligent man who through the years helped me become confident, unafraid, develop self-respect. He taught me to see the good in people.    

(I don't mean to imply that my husband was or acted like a psychiatrist.  He just loved me, showed me patience, taught by example.  I had no idea how to handle anger other than fly into a rage, scream, yell.  How stupid is that.  By his example of calmness, seeking to understand, to talk it out,  I am able to handle disagreements in a calm manner.)  

My mother always boasted to everyone how she embroidered the diapers, and went without food so I would be dressed properly.  She would tell me how she kept me so clean and neat, what  a pretty baby I was..  That I heard all my life and,  and,  how much I owed her.  My mother told me at a young age that I was adopted.  No one wanted me, so she took me, gave me a home.......even though in truth, I was her biological child.  

So it's not diaper skills that make a good parent, it's love and patience, respect and listening.  If all parents had more of that, what a sweeter, kinder world it would be.  

I’ve read these posts time and time again, thought about responding but never have.  It was easier to keep my own life to myself. Scars tend to ache more if you rub at them…  I think what makes it so hard is that even though my mother was cruel, harsh and most often unloving is that few as they were, there were moments when she could be a what I needed her to be.  Never enough to ease all the times that she wasn’t but enough to make me tolerate her and hope for more.  It never came. 

She was rarely physically abusive but oh the things she would do or say to shred my heart and soul.  I often wish that she’d hit me, at least that would end.  But the words she used not only cut when she said them but did it continuously not only as they echoed in my head in her voice but as I learned to say them to myself.   

We lived with my grandmother, who was my salvation while she was alive.  She was where I learned what love should be but she died when I was 13.  I think my mom was jealous of my relationship with her mother because whenever they would get into an argument my mother would pile us three kids into the car to go for a ride while she cooled down.  She’d rant about all her life could have been if it weren’t for us kids.  Thankfully my brother and sister, being 4 and 5 years younger than me, don’t remember these rides or the details like I do.  They always ended with her driving by the children’s orphanage and telling us that we’d be living there if it wasn’t for Grandma…  Just one of so many ways that she made me feel unloved, unwanted and unworthy.  As I grew older the threats to be rid of me never ended, they just changed.  Funny too how they were always directed at me and not at my sister or brother.  I was threatened with juvenile homes, then just the streets as I grew older. 

Needless to say I had no self esteem.  I remember asking my friends why they were my friends because I could never see any value in myself and never could understand why they would want to be around me.  I look back on the person that I was then and I know just how far I have come.   

My mother spent most of the rest of her years emotionally tormenting me but through it something in me had changed.  I found value in myself.  I found my worth and I found my pity for the woman who lived such a miserable life that the only way she felt she had accomplished anything came by her devaluing those around her.  She was never going to be what I wanted or needed her to be.  She was human, flawed, and carried her own scars.  It would have been nice to have grown up in a loving whole family but I didn’t.  It’s a nice image but we’re none of us guaranteed the ideal life, we make of it what we will.  Only we have the power to make it good or bad.  I can look back now and know that as harsh as it may have been I learned some valuable lessons and skills by having to learn to cope with what had been my life. 

My mother passed away from her own neglect at the young age of 53.  She’d sworn she would never see the new century, not hard to self fulfill when you have so many health issues that you intentionally neglect managing like diabetes.  Every time she was in the hospital I was there to help where I could, including begging the health care professionals that she was committing slow suicide intentionally by doing everything she was told not to do.  I realized that the very destructive nature she’d turned on me had been turned in upon herself.  The professionals told me that they couldn’t force her to take help she hadn’t asked for herself.  That’s when I also realized that I couldn’t get from her what she couldn’t give herself.  When she died I have to admit that I felt a huge sense of relief.  I loved her and I miss her but the constant emotional rollercoaster she’d dragged me on my entire life had come to an end.  Of course the past would always been there but there would be no new pain piled on.  For the first time in my life I felt like a weight had been lifted from me because I’d somehow made myself responsible for more than I should have ever born.  I won’t say that my life is all that it should be, it has and will have a huge impact on my life everyday but I’ve learned how to survive when others would give up.  I’ve found that simple things make me happy and I work hard to see life in a positive light.  Dr. Phil is right, there’s no such thing as reality, only perception.  I choose to perceive it now much better than I’d had to live it to begin with.  It’s a work in progress.  *smile* 

The one observation that I’d most like to make is, we as humans can be cruel, history and current events prove that, but why is it that some go out of their way to be the ugliest to those whom they are supposed to love?  What twist occurs to bring about that condition? 

I had this wonderful chance to be on the Dr Phil Show when they were trying to find the guests to be on the show but I just so happend not to check my email on the sunday that they sent it to me so I missed my chance how ever I would still like to share my story with you. I am now 21 years old and I have a mother that I no longer talk to at this point for my self and the protection of my child and the children that I will have in the future. My mother has never really cared what has been going on with my life and it has been almost three and a half years since I stopped talking to her. she is a drug addict and an alcoholic and she will not take responsibility for her actions. she is now 41 years old and since I was little all I can remember is her being with alot of men. and her doing drugs in front of me I know that she needs help but I thing that she is beyond help at this piont I have been trying to get her to realize that I have her only grandchild and she may never get to see him unless she shaps up. however she tells me that it is way to hard. and she blames every thing on my Dad. Non of this is my falt or his but she doesnt seem to think so. some days I wish that I could have the relationship I used to have with her but when I look at reality I know it will never happen. she alowed me at the age of 10 to drink alcohol and even after I joined my church and she new it was not permitted to drink she would still offer me some. I told her no after I got baptised but I know that she was dispionted in me. Some time I think if she could only see me now and how happy I am with my husband that she may change but that is why I stay a way from her because I know that my feelings are the ones that are going to get her in return because she can only change if she wants to. and at the moment I thing that it will take her getting lung cancer for her to realise what she has missed out on all these years. for all of you that have gone through the similar experiences. keep your head up. and dont look into the past for answers look to the future and what you stand for it is the only way that you will get throught the hurt that you are feelling at this moment in time. I can say that I do forgivemy mother for the things that she has done. but I will not let me or my children suffer for her sake. My God bless you all. 

Thumaplina 

Dear Brooke, 

Your letter touched me because your mother sounds just like my mother, so I can really relate with you. (See my posting on April 4, 10:25 a.m. entitled: unaddressed social problem.)  I don't know if anyone of Dr. Phil's staff will answer, but I wanted to, at least.  

Overcoming my mother's abuse, then my mother denying it (to this day) has been the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with in my life. (And I've had cancer and been raped at gunpoint - they pale in comparison to this lifelong pain.)  

My mother defeats me at every turn. If I drive an old car so I don't have car payments then "I need to make more money!" If I buy a new car, then who do I think I am?! Nothing I do is right, yet the grandkids can do no wrong.  

When I've tried telling her that what she says hurts my feelings, she laughs.  

When I've tried talking about the big pains in my life, she just says: I don't remember that. Bull! How can you beat the hell out of someone and not remember it. 

It took me a long time to figure out how to love myself. I felt so guilty taking care of myself because that was the message my mother always gave me was: You are selfish (if I had a need or desire). What works for me is: detaching from myself a little (and consequently the feelings that I'm being selfish for needing to be loved) and pretending I'm my own daughter. I go someplace by myself, close my eyes and ask myself: what do you need right now? I always know the answer: empathy, a kind word, to feel safe, to feel loved. So then I visualize the loving, adult mother in me giving the helpless and hurting little girl in me a hug and I tell myself comforting words like I would give my own children. A variation is sometimes I visualize having a talk with my mother (if she did some emotional growth) and visualize hearing the words I want to hear from my mother (that I will never hear), such as: "You are so precious. I was a terrible mother and you didn't deserve my wrath. You are smart, sweet, pretty - and I just failed to see it. I'm just so screwed up myself......." 

These 2 visualizations help tremendously and then I can feel like it's okay to go to a movie or curl up in bed and read a book - that I'm not being selfish by being good to myself. It's important to know however, that I will never get this from my mother - not in this life. Trying to get love from my mother only frustrated me, hurt me, confused me............(where my brother is now). It's a very slow process, but you can do this.  

I finally, finally realized my mother is just a spoiled little girl in an old woman's body who was abused by her parents and has never dealt with it , and she needs love too. (She throws tantrums like a 2 year old does and they need love. They need boundaries, but they also need to know they are still loved.) That was a changing point for me. I now expect nothing from her. I stand up to her (I wrote her and told her I would not be visiting again unless she treated me with respect.) She was mad for over a year and didn't speak to me, then when she came around, she started treating me much better.  

I hope some of what I said helps.