Post Estrangement - Coping Strategies - guest author Nina Wornham

I am devoting today's blog to my fellow author Nina!  

Here is her excellent post on "Coping Strategies" 

Coping Strategies 
by Nina Wornham

In Cognitive Behavior Therapy, the process of understanding our responses to various situations is best described as a triangle of having a thought that leads to a feeling which leads to a behaviour.

Therefore how we think directly relates to how we feel and then how we respond.

It's been said that shunning and cutting off another human being is down to passive rage. But so far no one knows why.

When I began researching estrangement almost 2 years ago, there was nothing on the internet except a silent wall of shame. I noticed the occasional parent had made a veiled comment but apart from this, estrangement was a mystery. I had a hard time finding anything concrete about the topic which is why I started this group.

Parents felt it was only happening to them and because of this they felt that they'd somehow failed.

They thought if they openly revealed their situation they would be judged and made to feel worse so they said nothing and hid away suffering in silence instead.

Slowly the floodgates began to open and while the finger naturally pointed at blaming the parents originally, even the few experts that were noticing the rise in EC cutting their parents off, began to realise that it couldn't be a simple case of just blaming the parents. Something else was wrong.

Today, the internet is overflowing with parents sharing their concerns and stories about their children estranging from them. A tide has turned, the stigma has retreated and now it's out in the open appearing somewhat worryingly as a new trend.

No one knows why. No one knows what's breaking the glue that bonds a child to their parents.

Originally divorce was an issue but even the traditional married parents that have sacrificed everything are finding their children are ditching them without a backward glance.

I have a retail business and hear it regularly from my customers. Respectable, solid, upstanding people that have been devoted parents only to watch their relationship with their children fall apart over the most minor issue such as not agreeing to a request, saying no to a loan, having a different opinion or simply not being available to babysit.

It's staggering the wrath that the adult child can inflict on a non compliant parent.

The few 'experts' that there are on estrangement, (I don't think there are any), are baffled. If they don't know, we're not going to know either. The whole thing is mind boggling.

There are obvious indicators such as parental alienation, we know this is a major problem in severing a child's loyalty and affection to another parent.

But it's hard to guess what other factors are involved in encouraging our Adult Children to make such drastic decisions when they cut contact with their parents. It's tragic because not only are the parents isolated and estranged, the Adult Child is also cut off and estranged although this probably won't dawn on them until much later in life if the estrangement continues.

What can you do? Immediately, there isn't much you can do if you've tried to resolve the issue without any progress. All you can do is learn how to manage and cope with the fallout of being estranged hence the reason for (support) groups.

One thing I would advise is not to get into right fighting (I'm right no matter what!), or a power struggle to control the situation. This only polarizes the situation further. I have listened to my daughter scream abuse at me and rant many times. I have stopped defending myself or trying to reason with her. Instead I've recognized that she has an anger problem and when she vents her anger onto me, I walk away. This kills the argument.

Many EC are angry and while they may feel justified in being angry, it may not be you that's made them angry. They've simply chosen to direct their anger towards you either by shunning and ignoring you or by sending you rage filled vents in emails.

Either way, one thing you can do is refuse to be on the receiving end of their anger. You do have power in this sense.

Listen to them by all means but don't be a verbal punch bag. Staying calm, explain to them that you love them and that you want to listen and make progress but they have to communicate with you calmly and in a civil manner.

Too often we get browbeaten into a position of being submissive and because we're parents, we accept a lot, far more than others would. Our love for our children and our emotional attachment often means we allow them to treat us unfairly. This is perhaps our downfall. They get used to treating us in this way and by accepting it, it creates a pattern of how we ourselves expect to be treated. This is not a healthy relationship and we need to resist the urge to tolerate this dysfunction simply to be on speaking terms with our children.

One coping strategy is to develop a healthy expectation of what you will tolerate (within reason).

Being yelled at, blamed, threatened or held to ransom is not acceptable. If you can learn to walk away from this kind of unhealthy treatment, or at least erect a mental barrier from it, you start to move the relationship onto a new footing even if it seems you are as far away as ever from a solution.

By setting down a boundary of expecting to be spoken to and treated with the same level of fairness and civility as anyone else, you are at the start of changing things positively.

And so going back to the thought, feeling, behaviour process, ideally you could begin to manage your situation and feelings better if you start to think...'I deserve to be spoken to in a civil manner'. This should make you feel slightly more stable and able to cope. Your response would then be if you need to respond to an email containing angry comments............'I love you and I'm sorry that you're so upset. I want to resolve things but I find it difficult to reply when I receive angry comments in an email. I hope we can find a better way to communicate and understand each other soon'.

Nina
(shared with her permission and acknowledgement) 

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About the author:

Nina Wornham is a life coach and is currently studying CBT.  She writes from experience as an estranged parent. She is a published author of "Darker Side of the Sun" available on Amazon.

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Nina's Author Page 

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Post Estrangement: a turning point.

hope blooms amidst the dreams unfulfilled 

The process of grieving in an estranged relationship has so many levels and variables to come to terms with.

Your child, the one you loved and nurtured from the moment they were conceived and born, until the moment they told you they wanted nothing more to do with you has cast you out of their present and their future.  

This child, now an adult, has chosen to withhold their time, their energy their affection and love and even their offspring from you.  You still love them. They are still a part of your heart, after all once a parent always a parent, but you are also very much alone.  You suffer rejection. You face abandonment.  Your worst fear faces you, loneliness in old age.

Gone are the hopes and the ideals of what you though would be.  Replaced with the irrefutable knowledge that it can never go back to what it was.

So you grieve the loss of relationship,

You grieve the loss of innocent belief in the future.

You grieve the words spoken and the words unsaid.

You grieve for the stranger who now inhabits your child’s mind and body and spirit.

You grieve the loss of your hopes and dreams.

Your child lives but so much else has died.

Some days you even fear that love itself has also died, especially on those days when your heart is numb because it can’t bear any more pain.

Inevitably in the process of grieving you grow and you change.

Change at first was forced upon you by your offspring.  The lonely days filled with unanswered questions, the self-examination and guilt and self-recrimination inevitably they change you.   They leave you feeling vulnerable, exposed raw and unsure.  These changes force you to take action lest they destroy your spirit and will to live.

Then in the course of healing you address and face unresolved issues from your own past.  You heal your own inner child that you shut the door on as you yourself became an adult.  You face those unresolved fears and self-doubts that lingered in the dark recesses of your mind.  You face abandonment and rejection issues, confidence issues, fear of doing wrong or not doing good enough and you even learn to face your own mortality. 

And everything you learn deepens your appreciation of life and the precious nature of those days that are given to us.

Then to try to make sense of it all you learn about psychology and character traits and personality quirks that make people do things the way they do.  And in the process of learning things you never thought you needed to know you start to understand things that you never expected needing to understand. 

You start to see your child through the eyes of this knowledge and you start to feel sorry for them and that in some way they have become stunted in their growth toward maturity. 

Somewhere within all the hurt you feel, a compassion starts to blossom.  Not an excusing of inexcusable behaviour, but rather a feeling that they have somehow lost their way. 

Whether or not they will ever learn or find a way back is not the point, rather the point is that you let them go, you give them their own future and their own regrets that will come as life teaches them lessons they never thought they needed to learn.

All of this happens slowly and gradually amidst tears and grief and anger and sorrow and desperation and all the other emotions that grab you on any given day as you struggle to come to terms with the loss. 

In between you start to build new aspirations.  You start to awaken old dreams that were put away so you could devote more of yourself to you children.  You start to dream again of a different future and you find a new purpose in life.

As you fill each day with these new experiences you start to experience joy and happiness again.  You start to feel content that even though you don’t have what you had hoped for, what you do have is, while not perfect, not bad either.

Then one day you awake to realized that you have put the dreams of what could have been aside.  Your grief for what you don’t have diminishes.  You realize that those dreams are not a part of your future and that holding on to them would be holding you back from healing and moving forward.  You realize that while they were good dreams, they were only your dreams and not your reality.

And that day you realize that you have healed a lot more than you ever hoped could be possible on that long ago day when your world disintegrated around you, when you first looked despair in the face and said “I don’t think I can make it through another day”

I had such a day recently, when I woke up and felt joy at being alive, and gratitude that I can do the things that I now love to do.

Will I still regret the loss of all that could have been?  Without a doubt.

Will I still sorrow for the relationship that was broken?  Indubitably.

Will I still wish things could have been different?  Most definitely.

Will I continue to miss my old dreams?  Assuredly.

Will grief linger in the recesses of my heart?  Oh yes!

Will I miss what could have been? Always.

But regret is not a place to live.  In that direction lies the lingering death of waiting for the shell of a body to die while life passes you by.

Life is embracing what is and making the most of it.

Life is reaching out and touching and growing and learning.

Life is going beyond sorrow to learn to love and trust again.

Life is letting go of the past a creating a different future.

Life is connecting with joy and contentment and gratitude and a different kind of happiness.

I find that I have reached that turning point.

I choose life.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2015 – 07 - 09

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Pondering the Concept of Forgiveness and Emotional Healing:

We are human.  We make mistakes.  Once we accept that fact about ourselves we also have to accept the fact that others will make mistakes also.  In our relationships with people we will make mistakes in our dealings with them and we will also feel the effect of mistakes that others make.

“To err is human, ”
~ Alexander Pope

Mistakes have consequences and one of the saddest is when a mistake causes grief or sorrow or pain. Now I am not talking about criminal mistakes like theft or murder.  I am talking about the mistakes that often happen in the heat of the moment.  Things like saying unkind or thoughtless words or spreading untrue rumours and gossip. 

“We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward.”  ~ Alison Croggon

The fact that these things happen is not a problem, the problem arises when there is no apology offered for the offending words. At the time of the incident, or shortly thereafter a sincere apology can quickly resolve the injury and the friendship can heal and move forward.

“More people should apologize, and more people

should accept apologies when sincerely made.”

~ Greg LeMond

 It is the silence and withdrawal following an error in judgment and hastily spoken words that changes the relationship.  When the person who has said damaging or accusatory things removes themselves from the relationship, when they refuse to talk things through, then the relationship suffers.  When gossip has been spread as truth, the consequence to the relationship is a withering of trust.  Suddenly someone who was close is now like a stranger, distant and unapproachable.  Something precious has died.

“A genuine apology provides so much benefit with so little cost,it is surprising and unfortunate it is not more common.”  ~ Leland R. Beaumont

This leaves an emotional wound.  In the absence of resolution, the hurt festers.  Some wounds are just superficial.  However attacks on integrity and character assassinations create wounds that penetrate deeply, to the very core of our being.  These are wounds that can last a lifetime. 

 “Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.”
~ Alice Duer Miller

To move forward we have to grieve the loss of what was once good.  The relationship has withered and died.  But the hurt remains.  We remember and replay the hurting event over and over. We cannot forget but at some point in time we have to forgive. We don’t forgive the actual thoughtless words or actions, but we accept that humans make mistakes and we forgive our ex-friend the mistake. We do not forget but rather we accept the character flaw that prevents them from offering restitution for their mistake.

"Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future."  ~ Louis B. Smedes

If we can forgive the mistake, we can move on.  It does not heal the relationship, because healing requires sincere apology from the offending party.  Rather, in the absence of an apology, forgiveness can create a sense of closure.  The open sore can become a healed wound or scar and the possibility of new relationships can be entertained.

"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were." ~Cherie Carter-Scott

Since healing and moving in on is what becomes important for your personal survival, it is important to work your way step by step through the stages of grieving, through forgiveness. The building of a bridge to the future becomes a lifeline.  Forgiveness is not absolving the other person of what they have done but rather an acceptance of their human frailty.  Forgiveness is not forgetting but rather a letting go.  A decision to get off the treadmill that has you living in the past with the hurtful event and moving forward with optimism to a new a different and hopefully better future.

 “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”
~ Suzanne Somers

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Post Estrangement: The Changing Nature of Hope.

I came across a question recently that made me stop and reflect.  An estranged parent asked: "are all estranged parents bitter?" and "is there no place for hope?"

These questions address some of my fears.  I often ponder whether I will always carry a trace of bitterness in my heart over what was done to me and whether it is possible to look to the future with hope. 

As I sat reflectively with the question, thinking how to answer this parent I found myself becoming more aware of how my journey toward healing has changed me. 

I am for the most part, beyond my being bitter days.  I strive each day to be better about my mind space and where my thoughts take me.  That is my place right now in my journey. I do not claim to be over the resentment I feel, but I control where I allow those feelings to take me.

I realize that living immersed in bitterness over what is being done to me, does nothing for the quality of my life.  I am alive under circumstances that I never envisioned.  And true there is a part of me that resents this!  

However, I remind myself that I am alive and that I have choices that I can control!  One of my choices is to see the gift of my life as precious. Once I choose to see my life as having value beyond what is being done to me I can determine where I allow my thoughts to focus.  

Therefore each day I choose to focus on this inner power.  I choose to not allow my estranging daughter to rob me of joy in life!  

• She has robbed me to time with her.  
• She has broken our family and the quality or family life I had envisioned.
• She has stolen from me the time I imagined with my grandson.  

Over these things I have no control.  I however determine to reclaim control over what is in my control.  I control my mind and my thoughts.  

• I do not have to live with negative self esteem, I can empower myself to reclaim that!   
• I do not have to live with guilt and shame, I can work through these and reclaim my rightful sense of value and self respect
• I can reclaim my right to joyful living and take actions toward that goal.

My journey forward in healing is always about what is my human birth right and reclaiming those emotions, values and feelings that I have the power to control.

Having said this, I realize that when I look back, I see in my recovery from the trauma of being estranged many days when the bitterness has tainted my peace of mind and I am not ashamed to admit that this was a part of my journey.  Yes I had many bitter, angry, hurt filled days.  

It was in accepting my feelings and giving myself permission to feel those feelings that I started down a healing path toward more positive emotions.  There is a process to recovery, and part of that process is owning the emotions and the feelings that sometimes threatened to overpower me. To deny those emotions is to deny my healing.  It was in facing them that I was able to accept the reality.  And in accepting reality I was able to chart a different course toward my future.  

As for hope, that too has evolved.

I believe we as humans can not live without hope. Hope is what gives us the strength to face each day with the optimism that things will work out.  Without hope there is no possibility for joy or anticipation or exuberance. Without hope we remain stuck in a "this is as good as it gets" rut.

I firmly believe that we need hope in our lives but we need to be aware of what it is we hope for.  If we hope for something that is unlikely to happen we set ourselves up for disappointment.  The path toward keeping hope alive is to learn to balance it with reality.

In the very beginning of the estrangement I used to hope that this awful thing had never happened, that was when I was still in severe denial. Over time I recognized that this was a self defeating place to be.  In hoping for the impossible I was denying myself the opportunity to move forward through the other emotions of grieving that I needed to deal with.

As time progressed I entered the second phase of hope.  I purchased a "hope" charm" that I wore on a necklace. During this time I clung to the belief that "one day this would end". That like the story of the prodigal son, my daughter would repentantly return and joyously and miraculously our family would be healed.   

unrealistic expectations 

It took a long time for me to realize that this hope too was not balanced enough to be either helpful or healing for me.  It was so filled with the fairy tale hopefulness for a "happy ever after" ending to ever truly be a possibility. 

And then slowly as the months lengthened into years and I gradually changed through my own efforts to heal, I realized my hopes had changed once again. 

I realize that now I hope for the strength to face whatever the future may bring. 

In accepting that something precious in our family dynamics has been broken and that there really is no going back to what was before, I have set myself free.  I realize that I can only hope to navigate whatever may come with dignity and grace. 

My hope now lies in my rising above what was done to me even while accepting that what was done was wrong. 

My hope is that I will be able to handle the challenges I will face should my estranging daughter return to my life without the anger and hurt resurfacing to disturb a possible reconciliation. 

My hope is that I will have the strength to stand tall and firm and proud in who I have become in the process of healing so that my estranging daughter  knows that I am no longer the easy target I was before and that if she wants a forward path together it will be as equals and not with her telling me what she expects.

Yes, for the first time in my journey of dealing with estrangement, my hopes rest squarely in me!   

• I hope that I become a better, stronger more capable, person. 
• I hope that I have learned from the experience and that I am becoming a more complex and well rounded human being.  
• I am hopeful that because of what I have endured I am more compassionate, more understanding and more thoughtful.

I see the changes happening in me.  I learned that I deserve to be loved as much as I love and that I deserve to be respected as much as I respect. This testing by trial of estrangement is leading me to be a stronger more confident more self aware person.  I really like who I am becoming!

Yes I am proud of who I am becoming!  I own the bitterness that was part of that journey of self discovery!  For without crossing that river of bitterness I would never have arrived at the place where I am now.

Is a reunion is in my future? I do not know. 

My faith is that what is meant to be will be.  What lessons I have to learn and what lessons my daughter has to yet to learn are unknown to me.  

Will we learn those lessons in time for a reunion?  That too I do not know.  I find peace in accepting that it is not my role to understand the grand scheme of things. 

My role is to learn and grown.  I will do my bit to the best of my ability to prepare for whatever the future may hold. 

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 – 05 – 28

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Bringing a New Focus to My Mother's Day

There are certain days each year that are especially difficult to get through after estrangement. These days can be triggers for great sorrow, hurt, anxiety and sadness.

Often after being estranged I have found myself trying to ignore the event.  But of course that does not work for the thing you don't want to think about seems to become the very thing your mind wants to focus on.

For this reason I have been striving to see mothers day differently.  My goal is to face the day with new thoughts and new resolutions that allow me to see the day as a tribute to myself. I don't know how much success I will have, but there is no harm in trying. 

The first events that I stated to reclaim for myself were the "Birthdays".  I now see them as birthing days and celebrate that I gave birth! I no longer celebrate the child that was born that is now an Estranging Adult.  I celebrating the birthing process and how that allowed me to grow as a person, I honour who I became after giving birth, a mom.

So this year, it is my goal to celebrate "mothering day" in this new manner.  

• I will celebrate that I gave birth, that I was a mom, that I was the best mom that I knew how to be!  
• I will celebrate that I raised my family to the best of my ability with the knowledge and skills I had at that time. 
• I will celebrate that I gave them the opportunities that I could with the resources that I had.
• I will celebrate that I gave them wings and I gave them roots.  

My job is done. I validate myself for raising strong minded, independent, capable people.  People that are able to make choices and decisions.  People ready to make their own lives and chart their own path in life.  People who have a right to their own opinions and values.  People I did not smother with my expectations for them, nor limit their ability to follow their own dreams. 

Being estranged has forced me to face that in giving them the confidence and ability to make choices I also gave them the freedom of choice to erase me from their lives, their minds and their thoughts.  If they do not see the value of what I gave them; this is their shortcoming, not mine.  It is not my responsibility to coerce them into being respectful.  That is their choice. What they choose to do with that freedom to choose and the future consequences of those choices is also their responsibility not mine. 

So from this day forward I will not sit and wait for validation from my offspring.  I will not wait for them to bring me words of praise or flowers or recognize me in any significant way.  I will not raise my expectations or hopes to be included in their lives in any significant way.  By not having expectations, I can prevent myself from being disappointed.  

Personal character building for requires me to change my way of thinking.  Just because they don't value my job or my relationship to them does not mean that I value myself any less.

It is time for me to learn to love and honour myself.


From this day forward 

• I will validate my accomplishments. 
• I will recognize the good that I did even as I accept my failings.
• I will honour my skills even as I accept my shortcomings.
• I will appreciate the sum of my experiences, with emphasis on the positive even while accepting my moments of failure. 
• I will honour that I do not need to be perfect as long as I always have acted with integrity, caring and compassion. 

These are my new Mother's Day rules for celebration.  I will celebrate myself and the way that I successfully completed a challenging task.  

Okay so this is new to me and I don't know how well I will do, but this is my intention!  

• Will I still feel sadness when I see mothers surrounded by offspring that include them in their lives? Of course!  
• Will I still wish that things could have been different? Naturally!
• Will I still feel an ache in my heart? Most assuredly!  
• Will I let that stop me from having a happy Mother's day? No, this I refuse to do!  It is my day, I am a mom!  

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 – 05 – 10

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Memories Distort our Perception

I had a thought about memories.   As I pondered this I realized that there is a huge gap between the memories I have of my children growing up and the memories they have of growing up.  What we remember creates our reality however distorted that may be. 

I remember my children best from the early golden years when they were gentle, loving and eager to learn and grow.  They were these delicious morsels of innocence and wonder.  I filled their days with learning opportunities and cherished their growing and changing into little persons.  I think back to my own childhood and realize I remember very little of those young years in my own life.  So how can my children remember their “golden years?”  

The adults my offspring  have become  have few memories of their own golden days, just as I do not remember mine.  Their history is distorted because all they remember are the turbulent teen age years when they caused trouble and we had to discipline them as part of our job to guide them toward a path of responsible adulthood.  They remember these battles as restrictive rather than instructive.  Now they base their opinion of me on those years, naturally not a time when I was at my shining best as I navigated uncharted waters trying to do right to mold responsible and good human beings.

As long as I see myself as the nurturer of the golden childhood years and they see me as the prison guard of their teen years, how can we ever possible see eye to eye.  After all a point of view is all about perspective! 

They must get to the point (if ever) where they realize that the golden years of childhood was where they were nurtured and cherished and that the teen years of rebellion are but a stepping stone to mature adult lives and not the sum total of their upbringing. 

If they never make that connection, they will always see me as the bad guy of their teen years and never see me as the simple human being, striving to do right, that I am.  

Maturity does not follow a chronological number. Rather, maturity comes when an adult is able to see the human in the parent and not just the mistakes of the parent.

When we arrive at that place, our own parents become people who did the best they could with the knowledge and skills that they had.  When our offspring take that step, we too become people in their eyes and not the evil characters they envision us to be. 

The problem is that in the absence of regular communication and relationship building, estranging adults deprive themselves of the opportunity to learn that in the end, we really are, only people.  It is so easy to ‘demonify’ us when they never have the opportunity to see us as humans with human virtues and human failings.   

They never get to hear the stories of their golden childhood years that leave a lingering glow even in the retelling.  They deprive themselves of opportunities to see themselves through our love filled eyes.  They miss out on these moments of storytelling recollections. They miss out on opportunities for hearing stories of validation and love.  They miss seeing that part of their lives which their memories have not preserved. 

At gentle nurturing moments like this, I realize that they lose as much as I do.  I miss the opportunity to give them these precious gifts and they miss out on the opportunity of receiving them.  The big difference is that I see it and feel the loss, whereas and they don’t see what they are missing because they don't see their lives as a collection of all memories, but rather as a holding on to the bad memories.  

The lesson to be learned is that relationships survive or crumble based on the memories we choose to hold on to and the actions we choose to take based on those memories. Now if only there was some way to teach estranging adults that life lesson.  Add that to my list of things I would teach my children if I had it to do over again. 

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 – 05 – 09

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The fight against becoming bitter.

Sometimes it is so hard to fight against the bitterness that tries to creep in.  I am aware that it is a choice I make and I make it every single day.  I do not want bitterness to destroy my inner peace. I deserve to move toward my future free of the burden of bitterness. 

What keeps me focused on not allowing this to overtake my life, is acknowledging that this is what estranging adult children do.  They become stuck in their anger and grudges and bitterness. Remaining stuck in that negativity serves no purpose but it is what prevents them from healing their inner wounds and hence their relationships with parents prepared to open their hearts to a repentant adult offspring.   

Bitterness is what stops them from resolving their personal issues and it prevents them from moving forward toward restoring relationship they have damaged in their anger.  They become entrenched in this rut of negativity and because they are stuck they continue to fuel their own anger towards their parents.  In essence, they have lost their way for harmonious family living because bitterness has frozen their hearts.

I acknowledge that I have been rejected, wounded and hurt.  It would be so easy to allow this to bear negative fruit and for me to remain embittered by the events in my life. 

And yet, even when hurting, I am clearly aware that I do not want to become like those who feel justified in hurting me through estrangement.  I do not want to get trapped with the feelings of negativity that is nurtured in a bitter cold and unforgiving heart. To become stuck in anger is my greatest fear.

Striving to be a better more forgiving more noble hearted person is what keeps me centered in my true self; the self that I know to be kind, loving, compassionate and giving. 

My fear is that my grief will bend and twist me into being the kind of person that my estranged daughter has become.  She is perpetually stuck with her anger towards me. She has become a person without pity or compassion or empathy towards any who do not agree with her stance.  She is stuck in waiting for / wanting me to solve her problems by absolving her of and protecting her from the consequences of choices she has made.

Every day I pray to find the grace not to walk that path that might lead me to become so entrenched in un-forgivingness that I become comfortable in hanging on to my anger to fuel in me a grudge, and filled with a need to inflict reciprocal pain. 

I will focus on letting go and setting my heart free to pursue the best future that I can, given the circumstances that I have been allotted to me .

Every day I will focus on staying true to the kind hearted caring person that I am.  

Every day I strive to:

• To constantly find a way to keep forgiveness alive. 
• To feel empathy for the sad place she has created for herself and her family, both those involved in her life and those cast out from her life. 
• To have enough compassion for her human condition, which is to make mistakes
• To leave room in my heart for possible atonement and reconciliation regardless of how small that possibility may be.

Every day as I process my grief and heal, I remind myself that I do not want to lose those very characteristics that are at the core of who I am regardless of what has been done to me.  The choice is mine and I will honour that choice by choosing to do whatever it takes to not become bitter. Instead I will focus on becoming better. 

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 – 04 – 28

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