2004 The pain of this day is still present for those of us whose bonds with our parents were severed by abuse.
I have reread the posts and notice how much I missed. Had I been able to, sickpuppys initial post could have helped me realize how I tried to force my kids to honor their mother for my own reasons (see other post Mother's Day 2002-2003-2004)
I remember last year on Mother's Day my uncle wanted me to go visit my mother in prison and wish her well. I refused and he was annoyed with me for a while. This year he hasn't suggested it at all, I suppose because now he knows what she did to me.
Our discussion continued examining the lack of bonding search for replacement need to rely on ourselves in adulthood. We learn so much from each others paths to recovery. I thank each of you.
Now I shall make a Journal entry for this day to allow myself to speak as much truth as I can and perhaps I will look back next year to see something helpful about my journey.
My own journey brings me to face with the way in which, as a child and as an adult, I have never allowed anyone to get close to allow any bonding. I struggle with it even now, as I am trying to accept my T as a person to feel her compassion and to build trust with her. It is a slow process. I am living with the hope that once I have accomplished even this little bit of letting someone in, I will be able to allow it with others in the rest of my life.
I am overwhelmed in therapy as I begin to discover the depth of ways in which I live in disassociation Almost total inability to be in the present using the protection of altering my sense of time physical self awareness (almost non existent) or avoiding feeling anything. I never see myself as an adult. I difficult to feel emotions from the present. I have no sense of my body. A total system of protection walling out life, any hope of relationship/bonding and being facing the realities of the present.
I believe this is the hardwiring of my brain from my childs mind effort to survive the unacceptable world I lived in beginning at infancy and lasting throughout my whole life. These defenses served me then. Nowthey are like the considerable extra weight around my middle which I carry around comfortable habits used as armor against the feared discomfort of reality I can not allow the childs rage toward his mother to surface to place the blame from its suicidal focus on me to my mother. I would surely kill her for what she did. Then I would truly be a motherless child and the complex world view of myself to which I desperately clung, would tumble down into nothingness. I would be cast into the abyss a desperate child with no sense of self with no family-parents-self on which to rely. This is the true harvest of parental sexual abuse of this infant which destroyed his/my sense of self. It is so frightening
But nothing could be more wrongno amount of pain in the present could be worse than the cumulative effects of this denial system on my life. I will push on. I have no choice. My brothers here will listen, my therapist will listen and so must I to the hidden truths beneath my tenuous facade
It feels good to speak this truth and it is the truth of this day, in the present. Mothers Day, 2004.