Oh no they didn't! Is my first reaction to those ridiculous rules, and can I please please have you? Is my second. I do suspect your competence is threatening to these new parents. They need to have another two or three kids to drop the ego and just get gratitude for the undoubtedly awesome help which is a loving grandparent, being you. What do you change about that? Not a damn thing, its their issue, so try not to take it personally, which I know is hard when you just wanna love the babies. Nothing I can add except I think they are so lucky to have you and keep on keeping on. Hugs, Edna.

(((hugs))) to you both and thank you!!! I do my best and try to be the best I can be....it baffles me that they seem so 'stuck' and I do get hurt and worry about the babies!

I've been praying and will continue to do so....and - it is hard...sad for me and a bit painful even if I know I can't affect a change!

Well I think that everyone here knows that other people's rules don't always apply!!

I'm so sorry that you are feeling excluded. I think you will be an angel in your grandchildren's lives and, during the tough days, when obstacles get in the way, just knowing that you are there for them, holding them in your heart with so much love, is a truly wonderful gift. Sending ((((hugs)))).

Iamhere I am so sorry to hear about this. It must be very painful for you. Sending you big hugs. It sounds like you are handling things well. Is it possible to ask for what you need? I don't know the situation at all so maybe it's not possible but could you just ask to see the children. It sounds like offering help and asking questions irritates him. Can you just ask to see your grandchildren? I get kind of overwhelmed with my mother's help sometimes (but my mother respects none of my boundaries so it's a very different situation than yours). When I wasn't coping well or able to set boundaries I sadly shut her out. For a year on and off I couldn't cope when she was around. The one thing she did was ask if she could spend time with my daughter. No helping (or over helping) no questions no expectations of me. I couldn't deny her that. Eventually we set up an arrangement where she took my daughter to do something twice a week. As I started to do better I could manage my relationship better and now we spend more time together as a family. Shutting my mom out like that is something I am not proud of. I just had so much difficulty coping with my ah and the responsibilities of being a mom there was nothing left. I hope you get to see your grandchildren soon.

Hey all.....I thought I'd give an update. I haven't seen the grandchildren for 23 days. This is truly not new as the pattern for my AS and baby momma is that I get pulled in when they want/need something and then I get pushed away when they are done. Thus - dismissed.

My parents asked for pictures of their greats last night. Without turning this into a 'thing', I sent a text to my son asking him to send them some pictures. He called and acted angry with me. He suggested what hurt me was stupid, he didn't owe me an apology and his baby momma was angry with me for being hurt by him.

I listened and asked if he could how insanely crazy that sounded and he agreed. However, he then began (again, always and still) to suggest it is and was all my fault...

So, I had to quickly get off the phone as I was getting upset and I was sitting in the parking lot at the golf course with my sponsor waiting for me!!!

Has anyone here figured out a way to see grandchildren with limited exposure to their parents? Have any of you become completely exiled from your children? I have spent 5 years in recovery trying to figure out a way to have a relationship with my son and my sponsor and I are both out of suggestions....

Open topic for anyone with any thoughts, suggestions, etc. I'm still detached and plan to stay that way.

TIA!

Hugs.
My parents and I were not on good terms when my daughter was a baby but, mother would turn up at the door regularly and would ask if I'd like to bring the baby with her for a walk; I would decline and she'd say 'Oh, can I take the baby to the park then since I'm here?" and that was always fine with me. In time as we repaired our relationship I began to join them (I felt left out, lol).

There wasn't any discussion between us really other than 'do you want to come for a walk" "no" "OK, is it alright to take the baby for a quick walk since i'm passing by?"

Don't know if that would work in your situation but I appreciated that she clearly respected my wish not to engage with her whilst still wanting to be grandma; I couldn't say no to that.

Thanks MIP family.....I kind of feel an emotional hang-over today - just sadness as to how devastating this disease is. I'm back to the basics + a meeting today. Just for today, I intend to give this to HP and see if I get some nudges on best next steps.

I appreciate all the suggestions....(((hugs))) back to all!

Thanks Yarncrazy - one of my issues....I don't have photos as I don't get to 'see the babes' when I am dismissed. That doesn't mean it will always be like this nor does it mean that I can't do something else that's creative. I am 'wrong-brained' for scrap-booking, but good with the computer!!

Thanks my friend.....As an adult, I can handle this. I worry about the little ones - I was fortunate to have a stable upbringing with exception to people passing on. It bothers me to think of important people floating in/out of a young person's life at the whim of young parents. I know God's got this as it's all new territory for me.

(((Hugs))) - thanks for taking the time to ponder and share!

Hello sweetheart,

It sounds like you are a trigger for your son.

As you know, addiction is characterized by a heck of a lot of denial (don't even know I'm lying), projection and blame. Take the substance out and the person is still very emotionally and psychically sick. 90 days is not long. The root causes of his addiction are still active.

I am an ACoA. My mother is in the same boat as you, and I am in the role of your son. In my scenario, I'm an ACoA and the mother is the addict, so it's a reversal of roles to your scenario. The reason my mother is dismissed is that she is an alcoholic who relapsed. She suffers excruciating pain at being ostracized from her grandchildren, I know that. But when she drinks, I am in too much pain to do anything but shut her out. Then when she sobers up I'm afraid she'll drink again and hurt my children.

I'm not sure how young your son is but I'm 30, so we may be of a similar generation. I relate to your son here. I have a few thoughts, not to defend him, but to offer ideas.

I think your son's unconscious is active here. Many people believe that addiction is rooted in subconscious pain. That's why addiction is such a compulsive thing that the addict doesn't even understand why he or she has to do.

Subconscious pain & behavior is very difficult for everyone to deal with because its mechanisms are hidden and invisible. He may not know why he does this to you. If someone were to ask him, he would automatically give a defensive, false answer from his protective ego masks. They would not be the true reason.

It seems he wants to exert power over his life by diminishing you. This may be because you are his mother therefore the safest person for him to retaliate against. It may be because he holds illogical resentments towards you. For example, if one time when he was high or drunk, you didn't behave how he wanted, he may still hold that memory as anger towards you, or a belief that you are a bitch or someone who rejected him. Didn't give him bail money? Didn't enable him? Drew a boundary? His thinking about those instances will still be very childlike and resentful and victimized. When any of these memories come to him, his habit is not to objectively review them in a dispassionate manner to see how he contributed, or to investigate the real true truth. His body tells him to repress that memory and all he gets is another surge of pain about it.

He might have dozens of stored resentments like that, each as unfair or illogical as the last. Something is telling him that you are not safe. His mind is still an addict mind - narcissistic and unreasonable. He may have stored memories or resentments from childhood.

In my inner work I notice that many of my traumatic memories are trapped in time. The memories are stored and are, themselves, unaware that time has passed, and even if the conclusions I came to at the time were illogical, they have not been evaluated. This means I have many frozen experiences informing me of distorted views of the world. Your son is like that, I know it in my heart. If he happened to be drunk or high when he thought something about you, he had even fewer faculties of reasoning available. I hope my words are making sense. I'm not saying you have traumatized him, I'm just saying I have observed how sick thinking builds and builds and rules us from behind the scenes. Every human alive has scar tissue from childish misinterpretations of parents.

As his mother, you've been there for the whole thing (ie, his life). It is obvious to me that you remind him of something that hurts. It might even be that you are an intense threat because he knows you know him better than anyone else in the world. He may be scared of the mirror you hold up, and he may not feel worthy of your unconditional love. 'It is not our darkness, but our light, that we are most afraid of'. You may remind him of his true self, of the child he was, of the goodness inherent in him. You may trigger his guilt or his feelings of being lost. Your competence may also trigger his unconscious self hatred. There seems to be a lot of fear of judgment 'don't talk about us to anyone'

He may also be trying to teach you your place and how you must behave. You mentioned outright rules, but underlying, unspoken rules are also woven through your story. He has established the rule: behave like xyz or you're out. I think he is domineering the relationship by enforcing his own denial. I notice that, afraid to lose your grandchildren, you have tried tactics to deal with this that skirt widely around the issue. You are not in a position to say to him, "Hey! You're my son! Cut this out, it's unecessary and unfair, let's talk about this out in the open and clear the air!"

Instead you have to approach it sideways, using subtlety, never being direct. That's disempowering. He's tricked you/got you over a barrel, so that you are playing into his game of denial. Where everyone around the addict, sober or not, has to go along with their games and never voice it or call them out on it or face it directly, but instead twist themselves around the game and try to adapt and make the best of it. You've got to try things like getting close to the baby momma and other paper thin ways like that, because he has the situation twisted so that everyone puts blinders on and panders to his rules. What would happen if you and the mother of the children agreed about this and both refused to let him get his way? It's an illusion that it has to be this way, but they are so good at weaving illusions that keep good people stuck.

The tragedy of the fact that you have been approaching it from the edges is that you have such wisdom. You know exactly what is going on with this boy and his baby momma. You're better equipped than anyone to inject truth and sanity in there. I've seen you around these boards, you're awesome. Truly awesome with hard won wisdom and strength. I know we are all about detachment and serenity and surrender but you have a bit of power and oomf to reclaim here. He's bullying you but this is also a form of enabling. The enabling has just taken on different tools. You're not buying him booze or preventing him from facing consequences of drinking, but you and his baby momma ARE enabling ridiculous, punitive behavior. You're skirting around it to avoid punishment, to avoid a tantrum, to avoid a disaster - classic alcoholic/addict scene! She misses out when you're not around, too. She needs that help you are offering, so many new mums don't have it. It's not right. And she and those kids need all the value of all the gold you've dug from all your years in the trenches. There's so much opportunity here. I know the motto is that she'll find the alanon stuff when she's ready yada yada, but is there such thing as being too patient and passive? Too detached where 'detachment' turns into powerlessness when really, there is power you have but don't know how to use/can't risk using?

I see there are a few things you could do.

If it IS that you are a trigger for him, don't act clingy or overly interested when you're there. Don't ask lots of questions. Don't let your energy show desperation.

Is there anything that you could be doing or saying, that you've been unwilling to look at so far? Any reasonable boundary you've crossed that you could reclaim self control over?

In an ideal world you could say to the both of them: what is really going on here? Is there a way we can stop this dynamic? You could speak it as it is, hold him accountable.Or have a real-talk session with the mom.

OR you could ask him, "My darling boy, am I hurting you? Have I hurt you in the past? Does something about me hurt you? Please tell me about it, and please tell me the truth. No matter what you say, I will listen and accept and love you, I want to know, and I want this to heal between us." and then be able to listen and allow all his toxins to vent themselves. You'd have to be able to hear everything he said, even if it was bullshit or even if it was hurtful, and he would have to understand it wasn't an opportunity to abuse you but was an opportunity to get this off his chest. He is punishing you for something. Maybe if he can speak it, even if it has to be multiple times, he can resolve it within himself and your relationship can take on a new hue. The old psychologists Jung and Freud worked out that when people talk, they often come to their own realizations or conclusions that are healthier. It would be easy for it to escalate into a wounding argument where you both defend and attack, but it could also shift this dreadful, painful and unfair dynamic.

The work of Byron Katie could be really useful here. Or Debbie Ford. They give us tools to really truly detach and take back projections of all sorts.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet. He may relapse. She may learn the hard way. This won't be forever, one way or another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Edited by hiraeth on Friday 6th of November 2015 09:44:56 AM