Dear Lily27:

You are welcome and thank you for your expressed appreciation and for telling me to take my time.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be ‘whining'”- talking about the most powerful experiences in your life (your childhood) is not whining. Some people will tell you  it’s whining because that’s what their parents told them when they expressed any dissatisfaction: stop whining!

Sometimes people whine, as in going on and on about the same thing while not being willing to resolve anything. But this is not true to who are: “I am ready to do what it takes, because I owe it to my future children and myself”.

“it is happening inside of me. Nobody can see what my mind is doing to me”- this is why it is important that you let people know what’s inside you. It is not whining- it is part of healing. But you have to be selective as to who you talk  to. Lots of people don’t want to hear what triggers their own unresolved issues.

“People often tell me that I’m actually lucky because I was so  young when they divorced and I don’t remember them fighting”- like I wrote to you in my earlier post, people think that because you didn’t experience the very same bad experience they had, that you are lucky, not realizing that you too had bad experiences.

Here is one bad experience you had, repeatedly: “My mom would start dating somebody and I would meet them and their kids and then I never saw them again”-

I imagine you sensed that your mother was hopeful regarding this or that man, hopeful to get married and have a combined family, and you hoped for that too. Every time the hoped-for family disappeared, she was terribly disappointed and so were you. You experienced your mother’s dating relationship by proxy.

“So in that way I am used to seeing and kind of always expecting relationships to fail”- your mother’s relationships= your relationships by proxy. Only you had no say in them, no power, which causes anxiety: “I never got a choice what my circumstances looked like. Which has given me anxiety”.

You didn’t have a say in anything much as a child: no say in who your mother dates and brings home for you to meet, no say in how she interacts with said men, no say in where you live at any one time (your mother’s, your father’s, grandparents), no say in whether to move to a new place or not, etc.

“One of my biggest fears is that my boyfriend is all of a sudden going to decide he doesn’t want to be with me anymore”- at one time it was good between you and him, but you are used to good things being taken away from you suddenly, without a warning or an explanation: “I often wake up and believe everything good is just going to be taken away from me without an explanation… I was always feeling like oh yes of course this happens, because that’s how it goes.. I am used to having things not going my way and seeing people leave my life”.

You know that your mother didn’t have to date while you were a child, and dating, she didn’t have to bring the men and their children home to meet you. What she did is part of the trauma we mentioned, your trauma. Don’t underestimate it because it is not the same as some other people’s traumas. It is worthy of the word trauma because how negatively it affected you, and still does.

You are welcome to share more about that experience, your mother’s dating life when you were a child, if you want to. Remember, it’s not whining; it’s part of healing. If you feel guilty sharing anything that makes your mother look bad (that’s how children think and feel), then remind yourself that you are here to heal, and what you share here does not affect your mother in any way.

anita