Hey Libby!

It sure is possible to feel terrible due to stress and anxiety. And considering how much you’ve been through, no wonder you feel bad. To be honest, I can’t even imagine I would handle so much as you do. I suffer from anxiety too, and in the past used to worry way too much about my family members’ health as much as my own. It was causing me so much stress, that I barely could move on with life, caught up in “what ifs”. I encountered anxiety triggers often and spend most of my days trying to escape from crippling fear. It came to a breaking point when I could not take it anymore and gradually stared to accept that I have no control over other people’s health. I used to think that if someone close to me is ill, it is my fault ’cause I did not take proper care of them. It was pretty much a journey with giving up responsibility for things I had no control over and accepting I am only human who can do only as much before running out of fuel.

I know it might seem hard to relax when everything seems to go wrong, but it can be done, one step at the time.
With your mother, maybe you would like to let go of her as well. If she’s not honestly willing to help you, there’s no reason you should waste your energy on her. Again – you have no control over her actions. Try focusing on people who already love and support you, they deserve your attention way more than those who neglect you.

Lots of love to you, hope you’ll get better soon!

* One more thing, Libby: it hurts me to ask this, it hurts me to think this is at all a possibility:

Are you using your children so to MAKE your mother care about you? Are you hurting them so to evoke her empathy?

By hurting them, I mean: do you complain to them or in their presence about how your mother prefers your sister and her children over you and your children?

It hurts me to think of this as a possibility. It really does.

It hurts me to think how far you have gone in trying to make your mother care about you, how big of a price you have been so far willing to pay, your own “terrible time with stress and anxiety” for so long, as well as the price being paid by your husband and by your innocent children.

It makes me wonder how far you are still willing to go in your quest for your mother’s love?

When will you give up getting water out of a rock?

anita

Dear Libby:

There is something way, way more valuable for your 13 and 11 year old kids to have, more valuable by far for both than having a grandmother that will visit them often. That something that they need so much more is a healthy mother and father who are having a good loving marriage. This is so much more important for them. I have no doubt.

It is only that important for YOU to have the loving mother that you don’t and you suffer from it and pass on the suffering to your children in the form of your anxiety and sadness, ongoing frustrations with your mother.

I do so hope you cut ALL contact with your mother and continue the healing process that you started when you cut off contact with your brother, continue the healing by also cutting contact with your mother. For your kids’ sake. And for your own, same thing.

anita