I have so much in life to be grateful for. My husband is supportive and has encouraged me to do so many things I was afraid to do or thought I couldn’t do well enough. My gratitude to him is endless. <\/p>\n
I am grateful for my health and even more so than usual after being miserably ill for a month and a half. It feels so very good to feel normal again! After you are sick, being healthy feels extra good. I am extra appreciative of my health.<\/p>\n
I’m also extra appreciative of the warm and comfortable shelter I have in the form of a house, especially at a time when natural disasters have taken away that kind of comfort from so many thousands. I am grateful that I can do anything, even if only send money, to assist others.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then there are friends. What would the world be like without
\nfriends? Friends are warm hugs and emotional support and smiles and
\nsometimes tears and shared stories and shared experiences. We can share
\njoy and sorrow with friends.<\/p>\n
I never express enough gratitude to my mother-in-law for her being
\nwho she is. She has inspired me too, encouraged me in art, been
\ngenerous with her heart, and has lead by example. I need to thank her
\nmore and communicate with her more.<\/p>\n
While today is beginning as a cloudy gray day, it is within 48 hours
\nof a Halloween party that I am going to as a clown! Yea! I have been so
\nlooking forward to this party! I can’t recall ever going to a Halloween
\nparty. I have the opportunity to dress up for this one. I am cooking
\nfor it too. It is a fundraiser for a nonprofit that I do volunteer work
\nfor. I will be the official photographer and take photos of people at
\ntheir request and for a fee which will go to the nonprofit. We have
\nsold tickets. I have my costume which I found at an auction. It is an
\nold Halloween clown costume. I have been having such fun with this.
\nFriends will be there. <\/p>\n
I am making a cake in the shape of a pumpkin and a pumpkin nog. I hope they come out all right. <\/p>\n
A friend sent me an email this morning and shared a saying that she
\nhad heard somewhere. The saying is, "Rejection is God’s protection."
\nHmmmmm. There is probably a lot of wisdom in that saying. To make it
\nmore appropriate to me, the saying might be changed to, "Rejection is
\nyour Higher Power’s protection." I’ve often wondered about that idea
\nover the last 10 years. I’ve seen others hurt worse. I hadn’t heard the
\nsaying until today but the concept has occurred to me. So I guess this
\nis time to say Thank You to my Higher Power. "THANK YOU, HIGHER POWER!"
\nTony might not be so fortunate. Maybe if he started to pray now? Pray
\nhard, Tony, pray hard!<\/p>\n
There are several stories about things that Robin says I said on her
\nwebsite. The bottom line is that they are fictions. If someone said
\nthem, it wasn’t me. I was and still am proud of Robin. I did love her
\nand still love her although I do NOT like her. It is possible to be
\nproud of someone you do not like. I did like her years ago. I adored
\nher. But I definitely do not adore her any more.<\/p>\n
I am proud of her accomplishments as a business person, proud of her
\nmaking a change in career. I was proud of her at her graduations, both
\nof them. I am proud of her concern for the welfare of dogs. Although
\nmaybe it is a matter of semantics but I almost hate to say that I am
\nproud because expressing pride seems to have an element of taking
\ncredit for someone else’s accomplishments. I give her full credit for
\nwhat she has achieved. Maybe my being her mom helped create a backbone
\nthat assisted her in accomplishing these things but I don’t know. I
\nthink we all have a core of something that makes us go forward and get
\nwhat we want in life, regardless of who and how our parents were.<\/p>\n
About the fictional stories. one of them, the one about telling her
\nthat she was best when she was five years old, was said by her father
\nto her. I should say "allegedly" said because I don’t know if he really
\nsaid it. I only know that Robin told me he said it back when she still
\ntalked to me. <\/p>\n
I don’t know where the other stories came from. Years ago when I
\nread what she wrote to me, I thought that she had me all mixed up with
\nmy mother. I am not like my mother except for my thyroid problem and my
\noccasional clinical depression which is like an ant hill compared to my
\nmother’s clinical depressions and other psychiatric problems. There
\ncertainly is a vulnerability in my family to certain physical and
\npsychiatric ailments. I also have high cholesterol as both of my
\nparents have had and I cannot drink alcohol as I invariably would get
\ndrunk and embarrassing. I haven’t had a drink since1972. I do have
\ncousins on my mother’s side who have bipolar illnesses for which they
\nget treatment. I don’t really know them and never see them but have
\nbeen told that they are very creative people in the sense of creating
\nart.<\/p>\n
Some of the fictional stories may have come from my mother and maybe
\nsome from Tony, her father. I don’t know. I don’t know why Robin
\nbelieves them or remembers them as being done by me, assuming that she
\ndoes believe them and is not lyiing. The reason for why she tells the
\nstories about me may be at the heart of whatever Robin’s problems are.<\/p>\n
I have attributed some of Robin’s reactions to me as
\nsupersensitivity which does happen between mothers and daughters. I
\nhave been guilty of it too. Look at how I react to her stating her
\ndisappointment that she had no photos around the pool at the wedding. I
\ntook this personally as I was the photographer but maybe she didn’t
\nmean it that way and was just making a statement of disappointment. If
\nwe were normal people having a normal conversation and not a mother
\ntrying to be in touch with her daughter in some small way by reading
\nher website, then I might have expressed my dismay that she was
\ndisappointed and she might have told me that she was not referring to
\nmy performance as the photographer when she talked about the pool at
\nthe wedding. Since we are estranged, we cannot have normal
\nconversations. The bottom line is that I wanted her to be happy with my
\nphotography of the wedding and if we were normal people in a normal
\nrelationship and not a mother estranged from her bitter daughter we
\nmight have been able to have that conversation and it wouldn’t have
\nbeen any big deal. If only if only if only if only …<\/p>\n
Thinking about the if only’s makes me sad and brings tears to my eyes.<\/p>\n
I still don’t know why things are the way they are and I am sad that
\nthey are this way but I do accept it. And I thank my friend for the
\nsaying, "Rejection is God’s protection." That may be so very true.<\/p>\n
I know that it is impossible to have a relationship with someone who
\nattacks me and then refuses to allow me to talk WITH her. I wonder if
\nshe has asked herself what would she do if she discovered with
\nincontrovertible proof that I am NOT the person whom she thinks I am
\nand that I am someone who many people love? What would she do if she
\nfound out that she was WRONG? Not in the sense of me being right and
\nher being wrong. I am not saying that I am always right about stuff.
\nBut what if she discovered that her entire image of me as a self
\nabsorbed joyless person incapable of acting like a human is ABOUT AS
\nWRONG AS SHE COULD POSSIBLY BE? Would she change anything? Or would she
\njust go on as she has? Self righteous right up till the day I die and
\nbeyond. Continuing to project every nasty thought and fiction on me
\nthat she can? Would she ever be able to admit that she has been cruel
\nand vicious to a mother who loved her and was kind to her and wanted
\nevery good thing in life for her just as she was? Would she be able to
\nadmit that my love was true and my motivations always sincere? Would
\nshe? <\/p>\n
Well enough of this sad digression from the rest of my life,
\nalthough this is indeed part of my life. Happy Halloween, all you
\nghouls and ghoulies! I am off to bake and make myself cheerful again!<\/p>\n
Snicks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have so much in life to be grateful for. My husband is supportive and has encouraged me to do so many things I was afraid to do or thought I couldn’t do well enough. My gratitude to him is endless. I am grateful for my health and even more so than usual after being…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-parents","category-weblogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}