Dear Sarawyn:

We often go back home when our lives don’t work elsewhere, because what we had, as unsafe as it was, sometimes felt safe. And we remember what did feel safe. The very way you saw your father when you were a child, “young and handsome”, that very viewing of him this way made you feel safe. Years later we yearn for those moments of safe feeling.

Only that most of the moments then were not safe and still aren’t. Nostalgia is a word for this selective memory. But when we are desperate, as you were in 2013, I suppose, we will grab whatever has the scent of safety, of rescue.

Is there anything you can do to change the real life circumstances so to bring about a better life experience for you, such as moving away or having your father move back to the family house, arranging for his care some other way, by someone else?

anita