the next step

[HannahOne]

There is definitely a rhythm to caretaking! Glad you can rest now and that she is on the mend.

[sanmagic7]

thanks, hannah1.  we decided to put red highlights in our hair this morning, which was fun, but i'm getting myself together now to go to the drugstore and get more medicine.  she ran out of the stuff that works for her.  so, can't really rest today, but at least i'm clean! 

and the beat goes on.  been eating a ton of sweets to get thru this bout of illness, cooked sloppy joe so we could just heat and eat, and now there's a barrel of dishes waiting for me.  so, not a lot of rest yet.  but i feel better today.  my meds are helping, too. 

[sanmagic7]

lovin' my hair - such fun!  so girly, too, which is what i'm going for right now.  the last man i was with, i asked him if he thought i was feminine.  he said, 'well, you're no princess'.  it's been a long time since i've had makeup on, futzed w/ my hair, painted my nails.  too sick, too beat, too worn out, near death at times - so much drainage on my will and stamina that i couldn't get around to who i was anymore.  i guess i'm reclaiming her.  and for you youngsters out there, let me say, it's never too late!

o my heart!  i just heard the first robin of the year!  haven't seen one yet, which is always a big deal, kind of like the first snowfall of the winter.  but the first robin brings tidings of spring and it's such a glorious song it sings.  i'm smiling so big right now, can't wait to tell my D when she wakes up.

therapy today.  let's see how this new adventure goes. 

[Armee]

 

Joyoushugs filled with red Robin songs for the red Robin princess on her way to therapy to get loving kind support. 

[NarcKiddo]

Yay for the robin and the red highlights. I'm glad you're showing your inner princess to the world again. 

[SenseOrgan]

Go for it San! 
Nearly every time I'm working in the woods a robin visits. I like em a lot. They're such inquisitive and undaunted creatures. 

[HannahOne]

Love it for the hair!       And yes, it is NEVER too late! We only get more marvelous as we age!

I love robins, such a lovely bird. We have one huddling by our front porch as it creates a corner. He's all puffed up with the cold and sheltering there most mornings. A special friend. He was expecting warmer times here already! Spring is coming.

[sanmagic7]

i just need to put this here first, been thinking about it for hours already, have been grieving, feeling shame - rather new for me, and i don't like it, don't like to admit it - but my T asked how i was w/ my children, told her that i held both babies on my hip all the time till they were 2, she mentioned, ok, that's physical attachment, and i admitted, cuz it just came out, that i never felt joy for having my babies, never felt that rubbing of my big belly that i see women do all the time, never felt love for my babies (once, when in mex., my hub and i had a cat, and it was sitting in my lap, purring as i was petting it, and it came into my mind that i felt love for that cat, and then right afterward the realization that i never felt that same love for my babies.  i was so confused.  i told her that i loved my children fiercely, would kill for them, but did not feel the love, the joy, so i guess i had no real attachment for them, either, altho my D1 once told me that that was the safest she ever felt was when i was holding her on my lap.

and i cried tonite, grieved my lack of feelings.  my babies were my responsibility, were a chore for me, and i saw the look in my T's eye, that meant something when i said that, but i don't know what, and we ran out of time, so i don't know.  but tonite i was so upset about admitting all that and i began crying and crying that i didn't have the capacity to love my babies, and what a shame that was, and i feel ashamed even tho i know in my head that i just didn't have it in me, but still . .  .what a frickin' shame it all was.  not to be able feel love for one's own children when they were what i lived for?  how does that make sense?  i don't know, am just typing as fast as i can to get this out here, get this down, i weep for myself, for the deprivation my babies experienced because of me.  and i'm crying agin just thinking about it when i've been writing about my own deprivation all week and here i did it to my own.  please, god, i wish i could've given them what i didn't get, but maybe that's why, cuz i didn't get that feeling from my folks, how could i pas it along?  how awfu for them, i know they must've felt it, i know D1 felt it for sure, and there's nothing i can do now except grieve and grieve and cry my eyes out for what i couldn't do, what i didn't do and i'm so very sorry

[Armee]

 

  San

I think it is beautiful that you were able to open up to your new T about such a sensitive, delicate topic. I hope you can keep letting these out in her company. You've been on your own without help for too long.   

I have some theories on the question of love but I'll save them for another time. If you are up to it I'll leave for you a gentle hug full of love and care and respect, mom to mom. 

[TheBigBlue]

SAN, I'm really glad you shared this. I hear so much grief here - not coldness, not indifference, but deep mourning for what you wish you could have felt and given. That kind of grief usually only comes from caring as much as you did.

One thing that stands out to me is how much you did show up in your body - holding them, keeping them close, being their safety. Even if joy or warmth wasn't accessible inside you then, presence and protection were. Your D1's memory of feeling safest with you says something real about that.

I'm not an expert, but to me it sounds like back then, you were working with what was available to you - not with what you deserved to have, but with what you had. That doesn't erase the sadness of what was missing, but it does change the meaning from failure to loss.

I hear the paradox you described with the cat, too. If it resonates at all, one gentle possibility is that loving the cat didn't carry the same weight of responsibility or vigilance - it was a moment that didn't ask anything of you. Being with your children, on the other hand, sounds like it happened in a landscape of responsibility and protection. That difference alone can change what feelings are accessible, without saying anything about the depth of your love.

I hear your heavy heart for your children and for yourself at the same time. That's a heavy place to be. I'm glad you let yourself cry tonight, and didn't hold this alone. 💛

[HannahOne]

The grief is so real. It's ok to feel what you feel and know what you know.

I'm so sorry you are grieving. And, grief can be healing. It just hurts while it's happening.

It's so sad that you couldn't feel your attachment to them. Yet they were attached to your hip, so it seems they felt attached as it's through the physical care that babies attach. They don't know what the parent feels. They only know what they feel---safe on mom's hip. That doesn't change that you could not feel it, how you wanted to feel. At the time it seems you couldn't feel what you DID feel---fierce love, devotion to carry them as much as possible, and physical attachment. And it makes sense that you couldn't feel that at the time as it would have brought up your childhood wounds, at a time when you needed to be a parent. You did what you had to do, not feel, in order to parent your children. That's what fierce mother love does sometimes.

That you can know it and feel it now is painful, so painful. And also healing. I feel compassion for that younger you as a young mother, carrying for two babies while having been unmothered or poorly mothered herself. What a brave young mother, doing what mothers do for their children, carrying on.

[NarcKiddo]

This is a huge and hard thing to process. I'm glad you felt able to start doing so with this new T. I don't have children so I have no experience of any of that. But I do have experience of a mother who did not love me, despite what she claimed. And I can tell you categorically that I have never once felt safe with her.

I am sorry you are having to grieve and I wish you strength and as much peace as you can find during this process. 

[sanmagic7]

thank you all.  too tender for replies atm.

[sanmagic7]

finally feeling better.  wrote to my T about that experience, she said she was grateful i had EMDR training and could bring myself down a bit on my own, and also sent me emergency helpline numbers, i told her i had this place to come to for emergency help.  once again.  i'm so grateful.

thank you armee, for all the hugs and love  and kindness.  i don't know about 'beautiful', at least not in my mind.  it's just that my brain/mind is so full of this crapola that once i get started, things simply start tumbling out.  and then i rely on my T to take care of it, take care of me.  she's still learning about me - trial by fire, methinks.  and, yes, i'd love to hear your thoughts on love.  it's my favorite thing. 

TBB, i want to thank you for your kindness and observances.  they helped a lot.  perhaps you're right about the idea that i didn't have the same kinds of pressure surrounding the cat but i also simply do not usually have access to feelings, good or bad, so it was a surprise to me that the feeling of love showed itself at that particular time.  never felt it like that again, either.

What a brave young mother, doing what mothers do for their children, carrying on.

thank you for this, hannah1.  i never thought of it as being brave, just my responsibility.  they were my responsibility - one husband/father had already left the scene before D1 was born, and i'd been on my own w/ her for a few years already, she was left to me to take care of, so, yeah.  to me, altho i can understand how it may look to others, bravery wasn't even part of the equation.  so it sounds a little weird to my ears.  but thank you for that.

thank you, NK, for your kindness and caring.  funnily enough, D1, one of my most virulent abusers and w/ whom i've been NC for over 10 yrs. is the one who told me she'd felt safe w/ me.  go figger.  and it's people like you on this forum who help me get thru it all.

it seems that my mind is just ready to explode so much of what's been piled up inside at the drop of a hat.  that's how this all came out - my T said something about attachment other than physical, and it just poured out of me, already processing, already reacting w/ long-held emotions, thoughts, feeling.  seems that's how it's working for me nowadays.  it's rough, there's no control, and there's no knowing at the time what saying anything is going to mean to me, my mind in a few hours.  stir the pot, the pressure cooker unwinds and blows its lid.