Standing up to the triggers…

The ripple effect… like the 5 drops of water in the image, I, the first drop, have started the ripple effect with the four drops above, my kids.  I now need to start a new movement.

January 10th, 2018

Today I needed to stand still. As my sister says, “quit sweeping it under the rug”. To stand still and feel my children’s pain. Am I a “Pollyanna” like I am called again and again by my sister? How much am I hiding behind my pain? “Deal with your fucking pain,” my sister reminds me. Pain– I’ve had my life’s share…I don’t want to deal with any more pain. But, when I don’t deal with it, is it giving a blind eye to the suffering of others, especially my children? The judgments imparted on all of us, by all of us, are the demise of the relationships we all want so much. The normality we have all wanted and are struggling and striving to find is just out of our reach.

Self-help, positivity, and surrounding myself with books, podcasts, positive quotes…in reality are those my crutches, my vices? Do AND am I running away from the pain that has been caused? Yes. When the questions and pleading are put in my face to seek help am I avoiding it at all costs? Yes. I suppose I get scared to face everything I have done to put us where we all are. Choosing the life and men I have, has made me who I am and has given me the four beautiful, smart, and intellectual children I have. Also, it has given me the pain that I now sit here writing about. Ultimately staying, enduring and embracing who those men were, if they were their fathers or not,  was 100% my choice… but do you live your life with regrets? The word victim echoes between my ears as each of the kids tells me that’s the face I have put on to them. Being a victim is nothing anybody wants to be. But, aren’t I the victim in some respects alongside my four? A victim of circumstance & choices that I can not take back. Ultimately none of us are victims because we choose. But, what about when the choices are made for us? Abuse, neglect, and abandonment come to mind. The partners I chose, not anybody else but me. “But,” that word again…with all the questions in my mind. What actions caused me to make the choices I did? Some I have answered, but some I know I have not dealt with. So many questions. The key for all of us is forgiveness and not being judgemental. Judgemental of me in their eyes, judgemental of them in their truths and even judgemental of the ones I chose to love along the way.

Standing still and saying I’m sorry…

I have been trying to forgive myself for choosing actions in my life and the life I gave my four for my whole adult life. I did the best I could at the time. I did the best I could. I did the best I could! And…I’m doing the best I can now. I also know the best I could, could have been better. So many different choices I could have made, but that is the past. The effect that is still occurring, the ripple effect doesn’t end. As I try and make things better, a better life for myself at 52, I finally feel the need to deal with all the underlying pain that my four are dealing with trying to grow up and do things differently. The pain seeps out too many times in too many ways when I least expect it. Too many triggers. The time has come to seek the help I need to be able to be a better person and to know how to handle my four kids and the pain we have all gone through.

Life has so much to offer, happiness is attainable, and the chains of our upbringings can be broken. With work. I need to do the work. Even typing it seems exhausting, looking at positive quotes seems so much more attainable, but it will never heal like the healing that needs to happen. Strength has not been my friend when my fear and ego take over, but I know that it is there. So instead of letting my ego and feelings of being a victim take over, my children deserve for me to reflect on what has made me into who I am and in turn who my children are and what they resent in me. My choices as a mother, even as I now have adults in my midst, doesn’t change the mirror I am to them. It’s my responsibility to choose correctly from now on so that the feelings that are deep inside them can start to turn to a more positive light. I am not perfect, I never will be nor will they be. I will choose wrong again but doing the work will help us all. I will remember things the way I experienced them and sometimes the way I will recall them will not be the way my four will want me to remember it or better yet the way they will remember it. We all experience things differently and will have pain deep inside for the way it affects us personally. We can be in the exact same situation and the exact same situation will affect us in a myriad of ways. But, when we choose to be a mother or a father it is our responsibility to protect and to see their situation as your own, especially considering the hand we have in who they are.

So today, on January 16th, (6 days after sitting with this in my mind) I vow to put in the work, as painful as it may be so I can start to heal from the inside out. This I know to be true.