You are allowed to have feelings!  The good, the bad, the ugly.  Don’t feel bad about having them.  They kept you alive.  Feeling the things you thought your mother would approve of and bring connection, well, maybe they did because, although you could not see it, maybe she actually approved of you being like her in her own weird way – a way that showed the opposite of approval.  Imagine how much worse if you’d felt and behaved the opposite ways to your mother’s examples.  Some people cannot show approval to their children.  They think it weakens them.  One day your mother will have to reconcile her life in this world.  Whether it be with God, or whatever comes at the end, I believe we all have a reckoning.  I don’t look forward to mine; mainly because I am so worried about my pride getting in the way of my accepting my failings.  I’ll say it again, your mother should be ashamed of herself, much more than ashamed, she should be beside herself with remorse.

“all this gratitude and emotion for a moment of me acknowledging your hurt…”

I started weeping again.  I’ve been so caught up in things lately I’ve forgotten to sit with an emotion and let it flow through me.  I took time this time, time to allow myself the deep hurt I feel over your kindness and understanding.  You’ve given me a gift, one that hurts and heals, I think.  It’s not your fault it hurts, it’s my hurt, and it’s being allowed by not expecting me to get over it.

“I am motivated to try and write you another poem sometime in the next few days, would it be okay with you?”

That is so thoughtful.  Thank you.

Isn’t the world a smaller place when we can be friends across oceans?  Back in the olden days, when I was a child and an adult, we wrote letters.  They took weeks to get there, sometimes months if the postal service stuffed up and sent them surface mail, or they got lost.  I used to write to my mother, letters full of the things I thought were important, letters full of words and thoughts my friend had because I thought she was amazing.  My mother showed them to me a few years ago, with a snide comment about their content, and I read them quite in amazement.  They were exactly how my friend spoke.  But I was in them too, a boy I liked, my shock at a girl in my class having sex…

“Sad Soul’s Son, tell mom why, tell her just as it is.
If you can, please tell her.
She bought orange and poppy seed cake yesterday, tasted like casserole.
I bet she she’ll bake the best cake ever for you, mother’s love seeds in cake, if you come over for a talk
Separate truth from lies, Sad Soul’s Son; see your mother as she is, see your father, your friend as they are
See yourself
Tell mom what’s in your mind and heart, tell her, she’ll listen, she will not argue
She wants to know, she needs to know, Please talk to her. Tell her your truth.”

I finally read these lines slowly and surely.  They are so precious to me.

My love for my children has evolved for each one of them as they grow up.  I love the older ones in a more .. separated? .. way.  I love this one that has left in a different way to how I loved little boy him, or baby him.  I loved him in a more little boy way just before him leaving.  He’s not a boy anymore, and I missed all that happening, he’s a young man now.  I’d been preparing and evolving emotionally as he’d been moving into his adult self, more conscientiously than with the others as he was the last one left, but I did not expect it to all be ripped away.  I thought he’d start walking his adult life in stages and I’d get to walk beside him when he needed me.  We’d be friends / mother and son, as he matured.  He used to say he was never going to leave home, never leave me, that I had to go with him wherever he went.  I knew that was a little boy talking, but it made him all the more precious.  Instead it’s totally different.  I think I am mourning the loss of him as I knew him too.  I’m just sprouting forth words and words and words and my sore heart.  Sorry.

I saw your one in your thread.  You’re letting go of so many hurt emotions you never should have had to shoulder.  I’m proud of your achievements!  I’m having some moments catching up on the internet and emails because I can’t put one foot in front of the other just now.  There’s so much I need to do in my short hours I’m not at work but instead I’m falling apart.  But I think maybe in a putting together kind of way.  Thank you for being on the other side of this conversation.

It’s so, I can’t find the words, so something that I feel such a connection to your words.  I’m here for you too, close with only an ocean or two separating, but literally a heartbeat of internet speed.

Did you have children?  I find myself wanting to know the life you.  How you spend your days, because for now, I just imagine you walking down rarely travelled dusty roads, foxes and wolves and eagles living their lives around your wanders, golden sunset light stretching your shadow ahead of you.  I wonder if you have a dog who walks with you, or a cat who welcomes you home when you return, and I wonder if you’re a tea drinker because tea doesn’t got with chocolate cake!

You just inspired me to look at the news, something I avoid, and I’m hoping what I read is a development since you last posted and the reports were actually mistaken. I read Iranian officials were saying it wasn’t a missile.

If you don’t have a dog, a neighbour’s dog is the next best thing. My neighbours have a lovely little dog.

Occasionally I wonder if having children was a mistake. If I’ve passed on the cycle of abuse somehow. I’ve read that a mother’s emotional state affects the foetus. I’ve read abuse affects DNA in bad ways. That is true the sins of the parents being passed onto however many. generations, although it’s genetically, not biblical. But maybe they feel abused. I’ve read lots of people who have issues with their parents for things I would have loved to have from mine, so I guess it’s relative, not just something that can be classified by one for another. Hmmm. I might have done them the biggest disservice ever having them. But oh how I love them.

Red wine goes with nothing other than cigarettes and I don’t smoke anymore so I don’t drink red wine anymore 😂

Loll I don’t mind if you reply to it. I’m struggling not to reply to you in it, but you’re doing amazing.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>You’re doing a good job with your mud. I never used to think anything like that, I used to think everyone was well intentioned and lovely, and I couldn’t understand why they did horrible things. I’ve become a bit cynical since so much has come my way these last years. My younger self stepped in a bit just now to say, ‘No! We’re not born with mud on us! Every one is born perfect! And beautiful. Lovely and deserving. Not everyone deserves the crappy life they get though. We owe it to our loved ones to do our best to be love to them though, no matter how crappy a life we got.’ I’m not arguing your point just totally contradicting it 😂 I miss the young me that thought everything was beautiful even though it was not. It protected me from lots of hurt. Old me doesn’t want mud to be all there is 😢</p>
I did an amazing thing today, it took some skill and amazing amounts of courage, strength, perseverance, and patience. I’m in pain now 😂 I’m not all that strong or fit. But I did it and it wasn’t a failure!

I quit smoking a very long time ago. Ha. 15 a day. I was more like 50. If I get cancer I deserve it. I also quit red wine at the same time. Unintentionally, just because the next couple of times I tried it, it tasted awful, and I couldn’t have a ciggie to fix the problem. There were many false starts with quitting, resulting in allowing myself to smoke with a glass of red, ending up drinking a few glasses of red every night so I could smoke 😂 ended up thinking I had two vices to deal with 😂

– my point was not that we were born corrupt. But that we are born into a corrupt world, and we end up- eventually- with some corruption in us, and passing it on. At least at times, to one extent or another. And it is every person’s personal responsibility to identify those corruptions/ mud and remove it from our words, expressions and behaviors. I am still working on it.

This is beautiful. I don’t disagree with the mud thoughts either, just don’t want it to be true, and there needs to be the perfect cheeky emoji face so you can see what I’m thinking when I’m being cheeky. But it is beautiful what you’ve said there and the mud is sad. And no one deserves the childhood they get. I never looked at it like that. I Only thought abused children don’t deserve the childhood they get. But neither do the lucky ones, they just were lucky. This too is sad. People with nice childhoods do not seem to be able to comprehend how we are. But why would they? If you never got broken you can’t understand the scars that hold another together, how there are still places under the scars that the healing isn’t complete, severed spirits that found found ways to reunite the cells of themselves, but not in the way an unbroken heart gets to beat its happy song.

No! No skydiving 😂 a much more practical chore that I usually have to pay someone to do. It’s very hard work physically and requires some expertise. I think I’ll get my expert fellow to do the next go though, just to ensure I’m on the right track. Plus I don’t have all the tools so it may require his excellent work if it gets out of hand. Ha. Very secret squirrel 😂 oooh I’m in pain today though, so many muscles I didn’t know I have.

I went abseiling once. I felt so empowered but the feeling didn’t last, my fear of heights returned the same day, so this ate away at my ideas of going skydiving. I used to think I’d do that after I’d filled my duties to my children, just in case I died, but I realise that although doing something scary helps you in the moment it can be short lived, and also what’s the point of shortlivingly facing my fears at the end of my life anyway? 😂

One day I’m sure we’ll converse and share ourselves. But for now the internet doesn’t need to have that much info on me.

I quit smoking a lifetime ago. The friend that was there for everything. That’s what it felt like. I lost the thing (friend) who say with me in the good, the bad, the normal. Oh well, cancer sites with you through all those things too!

It is raining cats and dogs here. The weather is telling me to be still! I love it. My linen is getting soaked though. Oh well.

Well, dear Anita, I’m about to make a pot. There’s no lemon tea or poppy seed cake – although we’re lucky there’s none of that after the last one – so let’s put our feet up and enjoy the rain that is falling in bucket loads.

You’re all g.  I’ve been working the small hours of the day away.  A job that somehow got a gremlin in it and I had to re-do it, unpaid, as it’s I’m a contractor on this one.  Suckyyyyy.  I hope you sleep well.

PS I didn’t proof read any of that so I am sorry if it’s a muddle and in the spirit of honesty I have actually replaced a washer and a tap so yeah I’m a full blown plumber!!  Sorry, I had to tell you that because when I thought about it I have done vague plumbing and I felt like I lied.