Dear Rosie:

I had too much to say on the topic you brought up that I might have not said the potentially helpful things, so I will try to do it this early Saturday morning:

“I feel weighed down by the problems of others. I am someone who cares a lot about family… I love my family and I want the best for them. My mother is in her 60s she suffers from arthritis. Her bones are weak and she has to walk up stairs to get to her second floor apartment every day. She works at a factory and doesn’t make much money… I worry about her (younger sister) because the last relationship she was in was abusive and sometimes I think maybe she’ll go back…”-

– I am not at all religious, but there is a prayer that I find very helpful, it’s called The Serenity Prayer, it says: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference“.

Here is how I see this prayer relevant to you: there is absolutely nothing you can do- and nothing you (or anyone) can ever do- to cure your mother’s arthritis, to strengthen her bones, or to make her be younger than her age. So these things you have to accept, to make peace with in your mind and heart, simply because there is nothing you can do to change them. If you make peace with these items, they’ll stop weighing you down.

You can’t do go back in time and change your mother’s childhood and younger adulthood so to see to it that she gets an education or training that will make it possible for her to have a better paying and easier job than factory work, and that she’d be retired by now. You were not born yet when she was a child and a younger adult. So, you have to accept and make peace with her working in a factory. Make peace with it, and it will stop weighing you down.

When I say make peace with it, I mean, however sad you feel that she has arthritis etc., there is nothing positive about you suffering over things you cannot change: it is of no help to her- or anyone- that you suffer over things you cannot change.

So, be Sad about these things, but do not Suffer.

There is very little, if anything, that you can do to prevent your younger sister from resuming her abusive relationship. Tell her what you think, offer her specific things that you are able and willing to do to help her, and then let it go: accept that there is nothing else that you can do and come to peace with it. With acceptance and peace, it will stop weighing you down.

There is a term in modern psychotherapy called Radical Acceptance. It means to really, totally accept.. to accept all the way.

Instead of wasting your energy aka suffering over things you cannot change, direct your saved energy toward things that you can change. If I was you, I’d make a concrete list of the things that I can and should change at this time in your life for the benefit of all. If you would like to, you are welcome to make the list here or otherwise post again with your thoughts and feelings. I would like to communicate with you further and I wish you well!

anita