Dear Letticia:

I would like to share with you my experience following the following input:

We need to feel that we make a positive difference in the lives of those we love. As the child that you were, those people you loved were your parents. They (and other people) told you things that indicated that you indeed made such a difference. You took in any indication that you made such a difference and made the best of it.

In reality they were miserable then as they are now. It is only looking back that you think of that difference you made in your mother as a temporary distraction (when you wiped away her tears with your kisses). At the time, you made believe best you could that indeed you were making a real difference.

Now my experience: I had the same need as you, to make a positive difference in my mother’s life. She expressed her misery in no uncertain terms and more than anything I wanted to make her happy. As hard as I must have tried (I remember so little of my childhood), she reacted by telling me, and showing me, how miserable she was and that I was causing her misery.

I was not able to make believe that I was making her happy. No indications to support such belief. Therefore I was not the joyful, confident feeling child that you were. I was way deep in Misery.

It is that helplessness, that making-no-different- experience, that is so harmful to a child and to a person of any age.

There is hope, Letticia. Once you do make a difference, a real difference in a person life, you fill in that emptiness.

anita