Parenting...is definitely a daily challenge.


I have a mantra that I run through my head "less talk, less talk, less talk, fewer rules, fewer boundaries, less talk, less talk, less talk". Pick battles and a poor memory.

Conventional wisdom often seems more designed to throw up walls than to knock them down.

I like that you list all of your roles in life with such Zen insight and awareness, Stormy. I have to balance boundaries with empathy in life. I'm not all things to all people, on the one hand, but I'm not just either/or in my life roles, either. For example, I'm both/and, as to my bicultural, bilingual core identity as a USA citizen by passport and an English speaker in the home growing up from USA parents, but a Spanish raised kid because I grew up here in Mexico and also Uruguay.

It's my profession to be both English speaking and Spanish teaching at my college, it's so obvious in how I make my living teaching Spanish half time and teaching psychology classes half time. I teach half the day in Spanish and half the day in English every day. But in the States folks, even fellow teachers at my college, are still bothered by my both/and "bi" identity. They want to make sure I'm not a disloyal American, they tell me, favoring illegal immigration from Mexico--I'm not kidding.

I've heard that from my LGBT friends, too, that folks sometimes will pressure a bi person to stop being both/and and be loyally either/or, choose between sexual orientations and settle on just one identity. Not just straight persons, either, they've told me sometimes gay folks were pressuring them to pick a team to be loyal to, as it were.

But our personalities' identities are more complex than that, be they cultural, linguistic, national, sexual, or of the even greater situational ones you mention. We're organic beings, not robots whose software can be wiped clean and reinstalled. We grow as people, we don't program as machines, and as we grow, we absorb from the environment that nurtures us. We have to, as you put it, embrace it.

That can be good or bad, so as we embrace it we've also got to process it and not let nurture be destiny, As you said, being around criminals doesn't mean you just get to become one yourself.

But when I was a halfway house director over 40 federal felons, it did help that embracing my own background made it possible to embrace theirs enough to think like a criminal for the purpose of acceptance and of being a good leader in the house. The lesson from the Bonnie Raitt song you quote here applied. I couldn't MAKE the guys go straight, but if I understood them I could support them in THEIR efforts to go straight.

Almost all of my guys screwed up and ended up in the local jail at some point for shoplifting and stupid stuff. They'd call me from jail, and I wouldn't bail them out. Boundaries. But I'd say if they learned their lesson, and when they'd served their local jail time I'd understand and they'd get a second chance at my house.

Out of 40 guys, 39 kept the bargain. Only one took me for a fool and learned the hard way that I still did have boundaries. A SWAT team I called took him out of the house in front of the rest of the guys and back to federal prison.

They didn't turn on me for that, though, they accepted it with a Zen outlook because they knew the score. Karma can be a bear. But most of the time, if you seek balance, karma might work for you, too. At least you're approachable then, and folks can support you as you try to work on your recovery with that wisdom in mind. It's what I try to do in my own PTSD recovery, anway. So far so good.

Thank you, Patti. Yes, Motherhood is definitely a daily challenge! I like your suggestions!

Muji, you are brilliant!

I think it's highly unlikely your daughter doesn't love you. If I remember from your recent posts, she had a recent disappointment with you that must have been very painful. In separating herself from you she is probably trying to avoid further hurt and disappointment. I bet that even though she is not willing to welcome you back into her heart yet, as a self-protective measure, she still on some level appreciated that you sent her that stuff.

I have been on both sides of this divide - both as a daughter and as a mother. Your willingness to work on yourself and not try to force anything out of your daughter will surely bear fruit in future healing between you.

Thank you, Donna. Your response makes perfect sense. I appreciate your thoughts and insight.

Stormy, there are those that seem to live pretty straight line lives, and then, there are those of us whose lives have many diverse paths throughout it. I am in the latter category. We seem to have a hard time seeing things simply, and so we see so much complexity instead. We also are usually spiritual seekers. Just seems to be how we enter the world. In my family, we knew my father had converted from some other religion, and his sisters were good women although they did not go to church. My mother's 3 siblings were raised by my parents, and so they also kept the secret. In our 20's we finally learned that my father had been an orthodox Jew, and that explained a great deal. Not sure making it a secret was the way to go, but there wasn't any rejection of any family member. Parents simply felt we should be raised in one religion. As with Muji, I have lived a variety of lifestyles and had several careers. In my longest, I took a variety of contracts which ranged from working with the three piece suits to the deep system convicts. Like yourself, it is about spirituality not theologies. I agree with what Donna said. Give her that healing space, and she is likely to return. The parent child bond is not like any other. Perhaps if you look at it as her taking some time and space, instead of a rejection, your heart will be soothed. Comforting hugs.