The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
For the last month or so my daughter has been the bane of my existence. I have finally have achieved happiness, and a somewhat sense of peace and serenity and I swear to all that is holy that if I thought she could be, she is doing it on purpose. Every single day she manages to push my buttons and test the waters. Every day she was screaming at me about something. I cant buy her a $210 pair of uggs, her car needs gas, her boyfriend values my opinion and asks me instead of her, I needed to borrow her car for a short period of time For these past 4 weeks I really thought it was some sick joke, here I was working so hard on myself and I have lost my daughter. Today I had an epiphany
Her father, my ExAH added meth addict, weed head, pain killer addict divorced when she was nine. Although I was there for her and soothed her when her father chose drugs and alcohol over her so many times remembering when I too was in her shoes with my own alcoholic father. However, I struggled in those years as a single mom trying to keep a roof over her head and take care of her brother with cerebral palsy. I worked two jobs and finished my BSN and was still home every night to cook her dinner. I said I love you often. I was at every football game, basketball game, cheerleading competition, Christmas play, and school dance. But I wasn't there. I was too busy being a martyr of being abandoned by alcohol yet again. I manipulated her and gave her liberal allowances to win her over from her dad. To test her loyalty. Just like my mother did. See daughter look what I bring to you, stability and possessions, stay with me child of mine, and appreciate what I do for you.
I put on the non judgmental and trusted mother hat for her during her trials and tribulations of young teenage looking for love in all the wrong places. In reality I rejected her because she disappointed me and hurt me with her disloyalty and disobedience. Just like my mother did. I became cold and unfeeling and disconnected just like my mother did. And my grandmother.
I have always tried to do for her. Bought her a car before she even had a license. Held her hand through her first job interview. (I had prearranged that she would get it lol) She gets good grades, she is in the National Honor Society, she works....yet I abandoned her. I rejected her because she did the same thing I did to my mother. I asked her to love me. I asked her to be there for me. My mother couldn't because she was lost in her martyrdom. She was cold. She was angry and she was afraid. She leaned on me to give her validation as a good mother and woman and when I couldn't she rejected me.
Last night she told me that she despised me. That I have become cruel and controlling. I am rude to her. It cut me to the quick. I think back and I didn't say those words to my mother by I felt them. Today I realized that my daughter and I have some things in common. We have been affected by alcoholism. We share the same sense of humor. We both have felt the abandonment of our fathers due to alcohol. Her twice as much because my RAH. She grieved over his relapses. We both have felt the rejection of the one person who pretended to be there for us.
I decided I had to break the cycle. I had to let it begin with me. In a desperate attempt to try to connect with her, to re open the door I went to the dollar store. As I was scanning the aisles for something, anything, that we had in common I found A Christmas pickle! I almost peed my pants in the store, it was perfect. I bought it and a card.
I placed the pickle on her pillow and the card. In the card I told her this was our pickle and it was our code. If we ever felt we needed each other or just wanted to connect or say I love you we were to retrieve the pickle and place it on each others pillow. If we needed something, reassurance, a hug, or a time to talk we were to attach the note to the pickle what we needed. I wrote that she was my daughter my flesh and I loved her. I was sorry what I did to her.
Well she found the pickle and the card, and she came to find me and we both laughed until we cried.
I am so glad I let it begin with me. I love that darn pickle.
I love that Slogan . This is indeed a beautifully honest and caring share, Suzann. The hard won wisdom and empathy that you have expressed is inspiring.
Thank you so much Betty. I never in my life thought that there was so much damage to the psyche, the soul, the spirit of a loved one of an alcoholic. Add to it a multi-generational impact. .... wow Here I was trying to focus on me, recover me, getting frustrated ....it's awesome though when you lean in and ask what the heck you get those little nuggets of wisdom, an Aha moment, just in the nick of time. Thank you all for holding me up and leading me where I needed to go....to the heart of ME. That sealed can of emotions and feelings, has been cracked open and instead of the toxic waste dump I imagined it would be, I was set free.
Great share fooled,I really smiled about the pickle,even chuckled a bit.
I can so relate to what you are or was going through with your daughter,as I'm in the same sit. With my daughter today ,my daughter lives over seas grandkids,hubby in airforce,this makes 9 years in oversea service,I have a really hard time with it,but more and more accepting that it is what it is.
Daughter hasn't spoken,skyped,messaged,me in 6 mths,I've messaged her everyday to say I love you and miss you,no replies ,it hurts.
Especially before 6 mths ago we was talking,laughing,everything seemed fine was fine so I thought then something went awry with her
She decided to cut me off completely it was a word here and there,then she ended all with she was to busy.
I'm blaming myself,for not having a closer relationship with her,I never knew how,I'm sure she struggles to ,same thing as you've described with you and your daughter of how the alcoholic affects us in so many ways.
I'm working on getting a nice box of homemade gifts and other things out to her,almost finished.
I have to work extra hard to live in today and to keep the focus on myself putting extra work into my recovery,in hopes that I can repair some of the damage done in my relationships with daughter and son...........thank you for sharing ,another great topic .....lu
And maybe the Christmas Pickle (LOL!!) tool will come alive after this post is passed on Suzann. I have empathy with you and it includes humor which my recovery also has a lot of. It is one major way I know I am healing. There is nothing I don't like about your post...nothing!! AAA++ You have done great!! The picture of you and your daughter laughing together is precious. Mahalo Piha...Thanks so very much ((((hugs))))
LOL Jerry....When all else fails Use the Pickle!!!! Thank you so much for your support. Its an ugly Pickle but for a$1 store Christmas pickle it even comes with a string to use as an ornament. LOL I worked hard for that pickle. Its priceless. Btw, Watching videos of people falling down on ice, amuses us to. ((Hugs))
My HP told me just now that this could also be a good example of what to do when we QTIP...I can see that if and when I don't take it personally and I relax my pride and ego other solutions arrive and rise to the top even with a pickle. I got my wife to read this post and she saw the magic in it also. Gonna remember this.
Reading this gave me a huge lightbulb moment, Fooled. I've been having a really, really hard time with my daughter lately and taking it all very personally....I read this and suddenly saw how much my 'expectations' were getting in the way of accepting both of us as we are and doing my part; I was stuck in 'but she should" and "I've sacrificed so much so..."
As a result we have had some great talks and I am viewing it all from a completely new perspective. It's good; really good.
So thank-you; your post was the catalyst and just exactly what I needed to read!!
My HP told me just now that this could also be a good example of what to do when we QTIP...I can see that if and when I don't take it personally and I relax my pride and ego other solutions arrive and rise to the top even with a pickle. I got my wife to read this post and she saw the magic in it also. Gonna remember this.
Oh wow, that is a great perspective Jerry. You are so right on! That is exactly what I was doing now that you say that. Thanks.
On a side note, I really try to stay out of my RAH recovery. I don't share with him a lot, and vice versa. We sort of go our own way on the same path. Some things happened last night that upset me and I took personally. I felt he was not meeting a need of mine. I relayed how I felt I was in this big circle of addiction (which is true) and as soon as I put one fire out another one is beginning to rage on the other side of the perimeter. Anyway, as an example, I shared the epiphany with my daughter and he was just awestruck. He never realized that she was hurting too! He thought she just was being rotten and he too took her actions personally. He has decided that between now and Christmas morning he is going to hunt for his own "pickle" with her.
When you said "I have a lot in common with her" .... it made me realize that my sons have a lot in common with me. I have some work to do there as well.
Thank you , have a wonderful day.
Love the pickle :)
This is amazing. It brought tears to my eyes. I can so relate to the mother daughter relationships that have occurred generationally and I struggle with my relationship with my mom. My daughter is still young and I hope to break the cycle as well. If I do anything at all with my life that is what I hope to achieve. To break this cycle. To show her a better way to live. To let it begin with me. Thank you for your share. That is so amazing what you did and the insight you had. It takes a lot of work and effort to see our own part in things and stop it. Thanks again.
I know i already commented but it just keeps resonating with me. It's a bit of an epic post you've written, really.
Just that, I thought I was so entitled to feel hurt and unappreciated and it never occurred to me that i was honestly expecting my child to make me feel loved and valued. I was so sure I was doing it "better" than my mother did yet I really have been just continuing the cycle.
You inspired an entire paradigm shift for me, Fooled, lol. Really well said.
Thanks again.
Wow thank you all for the great responses. It really makes me feel good to know a lot of our group got something out of this as well. I think my heart sunk to the basement when I realized hey, if I was affected then so was she. If I felt this way about my mother, then OMG. Since my epiphany and my post I have been doing some reading and learning, I was very intrigued by a theory of the addicted spirit. (Not CAL approved) Alcoholism has been around since there was alcohol. There is generation after generation of the disease and generation after generation of family members being affected as well. In our search for serenity wouldn't it be great if we could hand that down instead? MissM I thought I was doing it "better" too, even though I realized I made the same HUGE "expectations" of my daughter I am going to be a little easy on myself and say I want to do it differently. My mother is a great woman. Somewhere in there, occasionally I find a laugh, or a smile. Somewhere in me is acceptance and forgiveness as well. Maybe someday she will give me a "pickle" .
Fooled I found myself drawn to this post again this morning because it is so enlightening and this morning I found the word Mother speaking to me. My mother has passed a while back and I made amends to her in several intentional and unintentional ways before she died. Did my amends make her perfect or better? It helped her to understand and accept a closer relationship I think. She was also a child of the disease and wife of it so....
I worked with the guidance of my Higher Power, much different in ways than hers, and followed HP's suggestions until I knew that she and my stepfather could see the picture of our relationship in a different way. They told me so thought it wasn't for me alone and for them also. The disease had torn up their marriage relationship for years and then it wouldn't.
HP used me and still does. I believe that our HPs know and use us as is suggested in the 12th step. Again thanks for ESH ((((hugs))))
I agree Jerry. Today was not a good day for me in terms of myself. I was not grounded for some reason. However amongst my travel for my professional, I was able to lend them tools from my toolbox in order to keep themselves focused on today, and let some things go. I often think of this moment with my daughter, and I have hope. I was able to reach out to my own mother via the telephone the other day. I started to feel anxious as her conversation was centered around her knitting club and how she doesn't want to go anymore because her neighbor Carol doesn't go anymore and she doesn't know anyone else. A gazillion thoughts ran through my head from, "As usual, frivolous conversation" to "Wow now I know why I isolate myself, how long has she done this" I just sat and listened. I would love to be able to open up to her but she is just not that kind of person. I love her and I tell her but she cannot form the words. It is sad. I do not want to be aging and the only thing I have to talk to my daughter about is knitting and the weather.
Making amends and the concept of forgiveness may have made your mother better, but the fact that you were able to achieve a relationship is priceless. My RAH is trying very hard to make amends to his mother. She is also an A with a 30 year history of sobriety. His mother is very stingy with the forgiveness aspect and it troubles him. He gives up for a while and then tries again. Maybe one day.
