Dear Tiny Buddha People:

This is a tough time. I just lost my mother about five months ago after a year-plus illness and difficulties around her (third) husband of 16 years, who contributed nothing to their marriage but debt (no job, either). In that sixteen years I slowly lost her to her own world of codependency and toxic behaviors. She was the calm in the storm but also liked to compartmentalize her three children. Now I realize that was because she didn’t want us to come together because had we known more, had necessary conversations about her life (two of us were living more than 1,000 miles away because of the estrangement caused by her third husband and her choices) and compared notes, that we would have stepped in a long time ago as a unified force.

Ironically, in her death we have all united again, a bit tenuously because a lot of hurt was based on lies from another family member, and my mother’s last husband, mainly directed at me. A long time ago I chose the high road but I realize in doing that, an entirely different narrative was created within the family and that every time I expressed concerns (about my mother’s sister or her husband–mainly from things from his past that he had not shared with my mother), there was only further distance.

This isn’t to say that we weren’t in touch — my mother wrote and called and I did, too, and I made an effort to get my kids back to see her when we could (but we were never welcome to stay at her house, which also made it difficult — access was hard).

Now there is estate aftermath that is worthy of a soap opera. I won’t detail it here but at this point, after my mother is buried in a few months (her cremains), I want to go through her things (which may have already been ransacked as he got EVERYTHING) with my siblings and head home and never look back.

But I’m a nostalgic person and very attached to memories, esp good ones. I’ve forgiven my mother, more or less, but just want the past 16 years BACK because I feel our family was hijacked by an emotionally crippled alcoholic paranoiac. (Strong words but it is very much the truth). I’ve also been processing, at last, my mother’s second marriage — which was by and large her best one and which ended because this man just left her, and left us, too, even though we were in our late 20s/30s. And he wants contact again! Meanwhile, my own father, whom I loved very much, died a year before my mother married her last husband — so in a very real way I lost both of my parents at about the same time, right around 40.

Now I’m in my mid-50s, my youngest has one more year of high school, my career is rather stalled, my health is “eh,” and I just find myself spinning with so much. I miss my mother but felt we never had resolution to our relationship, even though I more or less have been missing her (we all have) these past sixteen years. I’m angry at her sister and her last husband for their behaviors–and lies–around our mother’s estate and so very much “spin” over the years (note: this sister also fueled her brother-in-law’s drinking and we are now suspecting an affair or just wanting access to our mother’s money).

So around and around we go and I just want to get off the roller coaster, focus on my health, my own family, and the rest of my life.

I’m already on a great antidepressant and have been for many years so now how do I stop the insanity? And how do I mother my own self without going to food and obsessive thoughts about the past that will never change?

Thank you so much.

Midlifer