Storming and facing Grief...Trigger warning

In the class I am taking, Moonshine, the Tarot card pulled for the month of April was the 3 of Swords. Another reminder that I am NOT facing all of my grief. The biggest fear is that I won't be able to bear it. Which is stupid because my entire life has been about bearing grief. I have a right to my pain. I have a right to make decisions based on the VERY REAL reality of things that were done to me. I have a right to self-care and I make VERY SOUND decisions, I weigh things out, I research, I put an inner light on any issues. I CAN TRUST MY DECISIONS.  You may want to bypass reading this, I am basically writing it out to work it out again.

In January, some thing happened that I won't discuss here, but it involves the issue of my narcissistic biological mother and the decisions I have made to take care of myself. I was abandoned at birth, my grandmother and her 16 year old son took care of me. (My parents got married because my mother was pregnant. They were divorced by the time she was 6 months pregnant with me.) All she has ever done was make my life miserable.

The grief of trauma, the grief of things out of my control that happened to me as a child. A grief for not having a loving and protective biological parent. The grief of having to live with my biological mother after I was 12. The grief of how my choices, that were made as a teen and a young woman, were those believing that someone would rescue me! So lack of decisions became a decision! Also, that big part of me that has so much empathy for those that are hurt, trapped me in some of my decisions. Every time I turned around until I was 39 I was betrayed by those I loved, who were supposed to love me.

Since my 20-30s, I faced it all head on and had a lot of therapy, and other safe places to discuss it. I was at the top of my game at my career. I was in that place where I could disassociate from the trauma and the pain and talk about it without crying. All along, the career poked my under belly of vulnerability, and I tried to make changes for children going through the system. Then in my middle 30s I talked about my life and I was able to cry for myself. Because by that time, my biological mother took her final shot at harming me, and I finally GOT what the Universe was telling me...I finally went NO CONTACT with the toxic, emotional beatings, I was her whipping child to exact all of HER anger and sickness on.  I was the black sheep of the family. She really blew my life up, why? Why would a mother do this?

When I was 33, (I always laugh that I was 33 and felt like I was crucified like Christ, I know sick joke), I took my kids to Missouri to see my family that lived there. I had 8 weeks off of work, that is how much vacation I had. I had bought a used RV, flew my half brother Chuck out to help us drive back, before we left my half sister got married and I was her maid of honor. Running shield for her against my mother. My youngest was 13, my son turned 15 there, and my nephew who I had custody of was 15 going on 16. The day we were leaving in the RV the damn thing broke down so I had to FLY everyone out with no notice to Missouri, like that wasn't stressful enough.

I have always confronted my mother. Stood up for myself, rebelled from her bullshit, but I really TRIED to have a relationship with her. For some fucked up reason I wanted my kids to have a mom and dad, and grandparents. So I stayed WAY too long with her involved and trying to control every aspect of my life. Granted, I know she is mentally ill, but that doesn't help living in the aftermath of the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life caused by my mother, my half-sister and her juvenile lawyer husband at the time. That STILL reverberates through my life.

My biological mother was FUMING that I dared to take my children and my husband at the time to meet my dad. Not only was my dad there, his 2nd wife, my grandma Mary, and my 2 half brothers and their families. My kids had never met my grandmother!  Not only that, but how dare I NOT tell her everything that happened while we were there, what I talked to my dad about, a blow by blow of every day we were there. I remember explaining to her, like I could explain it to an irrational narcissist. That my relationship with my father was MY relationship and I wasn't going to share it with her. Oh now she was really mad! She went after my family. She DIVIDED my family. She intended to mortally wound me. But instead she found out that I was a badass Warrior! And I am still fucking standing! I wasn't a shrinking child without choices or options for my life. She found I had teeth, I had a backbone that she knew was there, I was always stubborn and I was ALWAYS going to survive!

Long story short, she convinced and manipulated my 13 year old daughter to make allegations against my ex husband, so on a Friday like they always do, social services showed up and took my kids. Leaving a foster son who wasn't family in my home, but took my son, daughter and nephew. Now because my sisters new husband was a juvenile lawyer he used his contacts and bypassed my kids going to the children's shelter. Instead, they drove them OUT OF COUNTY to my mothers house. 

That night my son and nephew called us at home, without my mother knowing, telling me they wanted to come home. I tried to soothe and assure them that all they had to do was tell the Judge on Monday what THEY wanted and it would happen. (Which it did).

There was nothing I could do over the weekend and by Monday, I had to have a conference with my boss, because if these allegations were true, I shouldn't be working where I was working! (Oh by the way "I" was the sole supporter of my family) Then I got a lawyer for my husband who now had criminal charges against him. My son and nephew were returned, and my daughter said she would kill herself if they made her go home, so she didn't. 

It went sideways for my daughter in the middle of all of this...we had been going back and forth to court, dealing with shrinks, who by the way didn't believe all the things that had happened to my family or me and I had to have my half sister come to an emergency session for the shrink to hear it from her! WTF I should have fired him! ANYWAY...at some point my daughter went to live with my half sister (across the street from my mother) and they had some kind of an argument, my daughter threatened her, she wouldn't let her go out, and she threatened to harm my sisters kids. 

Then came the betrayal of my daughter. Because my sister was scared shitless by my daughter at this point, she lied to my daughter that she had a friend who was dying at a hospital near where I lived at the time. And would she please go with her for 'support'. Now here is the real fucked up action of a grown ass adult who started this shitstorm! She put my daughter on a 72 hour hold at the hospital! Because she threatened her kids the hospital accepted my daughter. Try to put yourself in the place of a 13 yr old who is told "my friend is dying of cancer, come with me for support" and then have that lie be connected to being abandoned at a pysch ward ALONE!!!! And you had betrayed your parents and ended up there. (GROAN)

Every time I think about this, my heart feels like it is going to explode. My stomach gets into a knot and I relive the horror all over again. It is a scar on my soul that will be there until I die.

So my half sister dumps her in the pysch ward and leaves! The intake nurse then calls me! I cannot even form sentences that would express what was happening to me while I was on the phone with the intake nurse!!!!! I had to drive there (how I did that without getting into an accident I will never know!) and sign papers that I knew she was in there! And had about a 2 hr discussion with this nurse and my daughter. I went over the entire global view of what was happening, and allowed my daughter to tell how she saw things, because lets face it, we ALL see things differently, but I gave her the respect and space to have her own insights and views of what the fuck was happening to her.

This is where she was screwed and in fact I was screwed. She, because of all the stuff she had said, was a ward of the court. And now the court was "concerned" for her personal safety, and the judge decided to put her in a level 6 psychological lock down hospital for juveniles. It took me MONTHS to fucking get her out of there. Oh $30, 000 for hospital, my wages attached since my lovely half sister got welfare for my daughter, so they took me to court and attached my wages like I was a fucking criminal and didn't pay my bills. Plus, the lawyer for my husband and court costs and costs for a program that was court ordered once she was released back home. Not to mention all the UNPAID leave from work because remember, I used my 8 fucking weeks of vacation!!!!

I did call my mother, I am not and have never been a coward, and I confronted her on the phone and I told her everything I needed to tell her, including the fact that I would NEVER again talk to her. She was no longer welcome in my life. There was no please forgive me,  I will never be this way again. Because I would never believe a word she said. And I told her on the phone that night, I forgive you, but you are NO LONGER welcome in my life. I don't want bad things to happen to her or my sister, I just have no use for them in my life. Now, I was big girl when I made this SOUND DECISION. I knew, and thought through this, I knew some day my mother would be in the process of dying. And I made my peace with it. I have nothing to reconcile. There is nothing left unsaid. I won't be devastated that I didn't talk to her before she died. I have absolutely nothing left to say to her. 

Man, I have to say thinking about all of this really makes my IBS act up! 

At some point, once my daughter was home, my niece who I had had custody of for awhile, tells me she came back to live with us, and the really horrible thing, I have no memory of that! My marriage did not survive...nor did a relationship with my daughter. More complicated painful things happened. I had been through and survived Christianity and those that claim they are Christians, I was in a horrible destructive marriage of 20 years, my kids were 18. WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE? I was 36 years old. I struggled leaving my husband, it took me until I was 39 to have my ex FINALLY get a job, I bought him a car, and I left him the rental house and on Memorial Day in 2000 I left him. 

So I know you are most likely wondering? So what? 

In January, my decision for self-care, for survival, for the SOUND DECISION of going no contact with my mother, step father and half sister, FOR THE REASONS stated, it was used against me in a way that was shocking, and harmful. And I am still wrapping my head and my heart around it. I have NEVER knowingly hurt someone so deeply that it changed their lives. I have never wanted bad things to happen anyone. I have lived a life with all that pain and more, and have always chosen to be BETTER not BITTER. 

This happened after my half brother Steve died on December 11th, I was reeling from that...and the complicated grief I feel since I didn't grow up with him, but he was my person, you know the person you can go to and not get judged harshly, the person that always made me laugh through all the sorrow... So much was taken from me as a child, and my dad moved from where I lived all the way to Missouri when I was a kid... taking my half brothers, and then a couple years later my grandparents moved too. Lots of grief. Lots of primal pain.

So part of this whole storming and grief is that someone is concerned that when my mother dies I am going to regret my decision. NO I WILL NOT REGRET MY DECISION. Sadly, I will feel free. And that I could be "cut off" like I cut her off. Like the reasons WHY I cut her out of my life were not valid. My mouth must have hung to the floor. Again, another betrayal. Its been a brutal year. And so it makes perfect sense to me that I am storming and grieving...and I don't even know what to do with all of this right now.

Through all this 'Storming' I didn't want to acknowledge all the re-opened pain, and that I am still struggling with the death of my brother, and feeling very much attacked by someone I love. I am not sharing this for sympathy, I am sharing this to get through it...I have been pushing all of this down since December/January.

I have started a new spread in my journal, I am pouring it all on the page and just leaving it there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I'm blogging along with Effy Wild in April. If you'd like to join the Facebook group to read the rules, go here!

 

Comments

[Effy]

I'm just here, holding all of this with you.

[Jean]

Yes good to get it out however you need to. Just want you to know that I did not regret turning my back on my mother and I did not grieve when she died.

[Cheryl Fuller]

Sitting with you..

[Rachel]

Hearing you and holding space.

[Sue Blott]

I hear you, Carmelita. Your pages are raw with emotion.

[gypsy]

Thank you so much for your comments everyone, and Jean I think my experience will be the same. All my life I grieved a real relationship, "the ideal", because that wasn't my experience.