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A recurring quality of my returns (plural intended) from field work to the house where grown-ups call me, "Mom" is a sense that I never left. After a year and a half away, grown-ups still expect me to know the inventory of cabinets I haven't peeked into for a year and a half. Scheduling arrangements are still begin with the assumption that I know the new buildings, businesses, laws and road changes of this rapid cycling boom town. I feel different on the inside, but wonder if those differences are a psychotic delusion as the domestic waters insist a mom is a mom is a mom. Mothers are all the same and *they* never change. I *feel* suspended in familiarity. I *feel* like I am drowning in assumption.
Today's read fro "Hope For Today" resonates again. Gently edited to fit my current day:
"I was around a lot of anger this week. Some of it belonged to family members and some of it belonged to me as I came to grips with my powerlessness over people, places and things.
"By applying the Serenity Prayer to the various situations that occurred, I was reminded that my anger can be an attempt to change someone or something because *I* don't want to change. Being willing to change --to acknowledge my anger, identify its source, look at my part of it and express it lovingly-- is a big part of my therapy program. I gain self-worth when I change the things I can and accept responsibility for my reactions rather than blaming or shaming another.
"I have choices. I can stay in my anger or I can use it as a signal that I need to change. I trust my higher power to show me what I need to do so I can experience the self-esteem that comes from accepting my responsibilities.
"Thought for the Day
"The how, what, when and why of expressing my feelings is one major part of life over which I *do* have control.
"Therapy encourages me to acknowledge my feelings and to be responsible for how I express them."
End of Reader share.
PNA. Please no advice. Strictly personal reflections welcome.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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First, I hope everyone is doing well, and continuing to fight that good fight! Keep up the great work on yourselves; I'm rooting for all of you!So, I started doing therapy at the beginning of the year, when I was in my most depressed state, but with my therapist, I made big changes and steps in the right direction. But, over a month ago, she couldn't take my insurance anymore, and I had to stop...
I've told this particular story many times. I started out breastfeeding, and when you do that...the kid is in control...nearly 100%.
It drove my mother CRAZY. "How do you know he's getting enough Patty?" (with tone of you can't allow this to continue).
But I did let it continue...putting trust in the newborn human to know if it was hungry.
That followed with most steps along the way...with many huge challenges.
Yesterday was both my birthday and a mad dash to make a Mayan Temple multi-layered chocolate flavored cake with chocolate and grayish icing to simulate the solstice for my son's Spanish class. In other words...I was being called from my room repeatedly to find ingredients that hadn't moved in 17 years of living in this house. (My son knows how to bake...he was STRESSED.)
All flavored with the fact that my 15 year old daughter is going through one of her periodic know-it-all phases. (Drums fingers, refrains from carrying out ancient practices of human sacrifice.)
Lessons learned in my house...
STRESS brings out the worst in all of us,
Ositas de Terapia (Therapy Bears...my daughter "raurs" and gently lays on me) are in perennial need,
and Forgiveness
...are good things.
And sometimes it's good that we were just too tired to remember exactly what went on.
***PS cake looked remarkably good. I didn't get a cake for my own birthday...but I got scraps from the school project...good enough for me. Tomorrow we'll get subs and binge watch Gravity Falls in Spanish.***
It's not the Serenity Prayer, but it works for us...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM7tdMmbkCk
"there's a goat in my bed"..."hay una cabra en mi cama"
In strictly personal musings: feelings akin to that I mostly experience around family, and I have spoken about it with others. Falling into "known" roles and old behaviour patterns. Expectations that don't feel up to date.
I've spoken of it with my fiancée, who faces it a lot - her family thinking she hasn't changed these last several years. Or actively disapproving of changes while she has only experienced them as positive and liberating growth.
If I my also touch on her personal musings; she has said that she thinks her inter-continental distance from them adds to this. They don't see her every day, and when they talk, she's not going over every detail in which her experiences, perceptions, likes, or interests have changed. So they only have their old image of her. If the distance wasn't there, they would have seen the growth. In theory, at least. She also knows many of those growths would not have occurred if she had stayed, and kept walking into the pitfalls of their family dynamics.
Just to be sure: I'm in no way meaning to point a finger. Or to imply that your situation of distance is to blame for the situation. That's not what I mean in the slightest. And every family situation is unique.
I know I find it frustrating when I know I've changed, but others' perception of me is still very different. And they make assumptions about that temporal imprint of a person that I no longer am. I can easily imagine how that temporal imprint would be even stronger if you're a mother, where parts of their perceptions are shaped in formative and neurologically weird times.
I'll cap the reflections now.
What I meant to convey with my stupidly inane ramblings: when returning to visit after 18 months, I would need some gentle readjusting. People putting you in an old role of assumptions and expectations sounds more stressful than gentle. I'm sorry that you have to feel weird and contemplate this, rather than enjoying time of a family of adults getting reacquainted with each other are after 18 months of life.
Thank you also for the reader share. I especially like the last part of choosing how, when, why, and where to express emotion. Doesn't mean I'm not allowed to have the emotion, it's just how and when, if ever, that turns into words or actions.