Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
I cannot know, but I believe my beloved and I are making headway on processing his mother's death. Her long battle with Huntington's Disease before she died made her death feel like a mixed blessing. It was a heroic battle. The fact that she died on the same night my beloved was having his near death experience makes it an especially tangled knot. In the most secret room of my Warrior Heart (the Romance Room) I believe she felt her son's distress and got to him the quickest way she could.
The newly widowed FIL is a more volatile subject. Small steps. He has a large domestic staff looking after him. Low priority in our family business? ? ? I consider that my beloved's business. I assist as best I can, but sorting daddy issues is as personal as it gets in my book.
The step we are proactively working now is the honest inventory of our honest feelings. Yes, he is working to validate the possibility that I might have feelings in his parental living room after 34 years of visiting, albeit as little as possible. The FIL has been preaching to the choir about the wisdom of not mixing business and family. Well. . . Bred, born and raised family business woman here. . . The graffiti on my side of that wall reads a bit different. Is there such a thing as a wall with only one side and only one view? I am working to allow myself feelings on my beloved's branch of the family tree --a spooky feeling after the 34 year prohibition-- but I am doing my own work within my therapy net. I keep him informed while respecting that he has a deeper, more complex set of feelings to sort. Mine are only, "In-law."
I had a nightmare about the FIL Monday night. Been chewing it like a cud ever since. It was a frightening nightmare but the fright quickly gained humor and it has grown more comical with every chew. The nightmare began with a familiar FIL tactic: Showing up unannounced with a rental U-Haul full of treasures and/or a cab full of hired hands. While I argued with the FIL, the employees opened up the back of the U-Haul and out tumbled a stream of other employees. The uniforms of their trades morphed into Horror Genre clown costumes as they jumped out of the U-Haul.
Need I point out the comic potentials??? Especially with dream images. .
Hm-m-m-m. . . . What are the honest feelings in that sub-conscious expression?
Sorting. . . Thoughts, opines and reality checks welcome.
The newly widowed FIL is a more volatile subject. Small steps. He has a large domestic staff looking after him. Low priority in our family business? ? ? I consider that my beloved's business. I assist as best I can, but sorting daddy issues is as personal as it gets in my book.
The step we are proactively working now is the honest inventory of our honest feelings. Yes, he is working to validate the possibility that I might have feelings in his parental living room after 34 years of visiting, albeit as little as possible. The FIL has been preaching to the choir about the wisdom of not mixing business and family. Well. . . Bred, born and raised family business woman here. . . The graffiti on my side of that wall reads a bit different. Is there such a thing as a wall with only one side and only one view? I am working to allow myself feelings on my beloved's branch of the family tree --a spooky feeling after the 34 year prohibition-- but I am doing my own work within my therapy net. I keep him informed while respecting that he has a deeper, more complex set of feelings to sort. Mine are only, "In-law."
I had a nightmare about the FIL Monday night. Been chewing it like a cud ever since. It was a frightening nightmare but the fright quickly gained humor and it has grown more comical with every chew. The nightmare began with a familiar FIL tactic: Showing up unannounced with a rental U-Haul full of treasures and/or a cab full of hired hands. While I argued with the FIL, the employees opened up the back of the U-Haul and out tumbled a stream of other employees. The uniforms of their trades morphed into Horror Genre clown costumes as they jumped out of the U-Haul.
Need I point out the comic potentials??? Especially with dream images. .
Hm-m-m-m. . . . What are the honest feelings in that sub-conscious expression?
Sorting. . . Thoughts, opines and reality checks welcome.
-
Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
-
My day...today...misplaced my debit card...didn't realize it until I got to the register after shopping to a full cart. Used a different debit card and pulled apart everything looking for missing debit card before I left parking lot. Got home, dropped keys. So now I have a missing debit card, missing keys. A full cartload to unload and put away. I got everything put away.Dumped purse for a...
Gentle vibes as you go, and may you find peace and clarity amidst the three-ring circus.
I surely do agree with how a death of a loved one can be a "mixed blessing," as you say. You said another mouthful for me, too, when you said "sorting daddy issues is as personal as it gets in my book." Amen to that. Only supersedes by how, after those daddy issues, I started sorting my mommy issues for the first time.
It's true for me, too, that nightmares often soften in the light of humor for me. Tragedy is often followed by comedy. Your "clown car" dream was an amazing example of how they can sometimes even share the same space--or U-Haul truck.
The Huntington's Disease pretty well mandated sorting the mommy issues in the In-law living room. Even with all the best secrecy and illusion that money can buy, Huntington's Disease is a tough elephant to hide and/or train. I suffered more conflict with the FIL's methods than I did with her disease. I believe he co-opted the undeniable phase of her disease for his own greater glory. A goodly portion of his current employee force was hired for taking over her jobs her care during the nearly 4 years she was bed-ridden and retained as "family" for his private amusement. Very private amusement. His living room has gone from stiff and boring to hideous. The nightmare clown U-Haul is the gentlest "humor" I have found in it for a long, long, long time. His current employee superstars are his "cutest" ever, but his household is much harder to visit than my own mother's welfare nursing home. Much, much harder. The stories in the state home are far, far more diverse. The FIL's privately owned tomb hasn't had a new story in it in years. The FIL's employees don't count. Getting stories from the FIL's employees is corporate dynamite. Free speech ill-advised, take the boss with a whole shaker of salt when he claims otherwise.
I do believe we are doing well, both individually and together, at processing the tangled web of grief over his mother's death. There is closure with the MIL. Her struggle is over. We can process freely with a fair certainty that she will not be offended. She used contractors on occasion, but never employees. Throughout her decline, the FIL has spent a small fortune on domestics to prove that his wife "never worked." I cried for her when I imagined the joys of watching her husband use her illness as the vehicle by which he constructed his current employee "family." He officiated their step-family status in her obituary. My beloved is still feeling guilty that he was in the hospital, in critical condition, for the formal ceremony at her funeral. I am sure his new "step-sisters" put on a great show.
I does wonder about the wisdom of putting grief from a mother's death and step family blending into a single process. Not my business? I have no doubt the FIL thinks so. Not so sure the other 3 generations of his blood family agree. . . I sure do feel shackled when the come to cry on my shoulder. No room for even the gentlest humor in those "Ears Open Mouth Shut" moments.
Thanks for letting me ramble. Messy goo. . .
Where does business leave off and family begin? That question yanks painfully at the knotty threads leading to the sucking black hole where my own estranged birth family lives. You know. . . The family business folks who raised me. . .
Ah, what tangled weaves. . .