I just want to thank you all that gave me advice during the last year with my anxiety and situation with my mother. I am now getting closer to a good place.

I became very unwell last year physically, turns out I have an underactive thryroid and I am now on medication. I had an anxiety disorder the last few years but it got much better until I became unwell last year physically it crept back on me. I guess it sees a back door open and sneaks back in. I felt so unwell due to my thryoid issue that I became agoraphobic again too and highly anxious. THe fact my doctor wasn’t listening and blaming my health symptoms all on anxiety and telling me i was depressed didn’t help. I have proved him wrong now 😉

My son in October last year told me he was suicidal. He had been bullied all year, it was the worst time in my life. Our doctor referred him to the childrens mental health team who offered no support, they told me I could deal with it seeing as I had anxiety experience, to which our GP was disgusted. It just put me under more and more pressure. I honestly thought I’d die from the stress and fear I was experiencing. Fast forward to now and I have a VERY happy young man. He is 12, and the happiest I have ever seen him. I gave him therapy myself and he even thanked me recently for giving him his life back. No more panic attacks or fear of school.

During this horrific few months, my mum continued to reject me and my children. Quick recap, my mother disowned me 4 years ago. My brother attacked my husband, and one day chased me in his car and I ran into a police station for help where he was arrested. My family all turned their backs on me, believing his lies and rejected me for cutting him out of my life. He has since tried to apologise and apparently is full of guilt for what he did to my family. I am now only civil with my 2 sisters and mum. I begged my mum to support me through that hell, as it threw me into an anxiety disorder and agoraphobia in 2013. My mum rejected me. She would visit every so often, be very stand offish with me and unsupportive. One time she visit she said to me ‘you seem happier at the moment, you went a bit weird for a while’. I was highly anxious and scared to leave my home after my brother attacked my family 🙁 So since then our relationship just grew further and further apart, she would occasionally cry and say I was cold and didn’t seem to want her around me, yet it was her treatment of me that made me hard and cold towards her. Her own sisters couldn’t understand how she treated me and wrapped my brother up in cotton wool after all he did wrong. Anyway. Last year when my son was ill she rejected him. I was speaking to her one day and told her about my son and what he had told me. I sobbed like a baby, it was me grieving the fact I had no mother and I said to her ‘I wish I had a mother who wanted to support me, just hug me to tell me she would be there and help me through this’. There was a long pause and she said ‘you know I would if I could’. She lives 15 minutes away. She is very hands on with all her other grandchildren, and very close to my siblings. She is with them daily and is a full time babysitter to my sister. She recently got married and rarely sees her husband she is with her children so much. So that hurts me as it’s not like she treats all her children the way she treats me and my children. Recently I have got harder and now to the point where after 6 months of ill health and not one drop of support from my mother, I refuse her duty visits every month. Once a month she will send me a text asking if she can visit. I now say ‘sorry but I am unwell and can’t have visitors at the moment, I don’t have the energy to entertain’. She saw me in a bad ‘crash’ as I call my bad days where my energy is rock bottom and I have to rest. I allowed her to visit. She didn’t help me out, she didnt offer support, she just left and I was out of sight out of mind again. I have been so unwell, to the point I have been bed ridden with chronic fatigue, weakness, dizziness… I have had to juggle 3 children, my home, all my pets…. all by myself as I have no support other than my husband and he works long hours, but we have got through it and now I am on medication for my thryoid I am hoping light is at the end of this horrible dark tunnel we were stuck in for so many months.

Now the issue I have is, my mother hasn’t supported me, she does a duty phone call every 2-3 weeks, it pains her to ask how I am, ask if I have medication yet.. you hear how strained it is in her voice to ask. When she does see me she is nervous and on pins because she knows damn well what she has done is wrong. She again walked out on me when I needed a mum. I have been let down alot in my life by my mother but in the last 4 years she really has been at her worst. I am her first born, we were close when I first had my children. She was my best friend. Then when my brother did what he did she deserted me and she has never changed, infact this last 6 months she is worse than ever. I can’t see us ever coming back from it. I am now protecting myself and my children and refusing her visits during the week, her duty visit once a month as my husband calls them. I just am not sure how to handle things with my children. They are 13, 12 & 10. They are all very angry at my mum, last October they asked her why they rarely see her yet she is always with their cousins and her response to them was ‘you know where i live’ I almost exploded and told her to leave, they are children. My 12 year old son who has just come through anxiety and is happy now, broke down crying in school 2 weeks ago. I was unwell that morning, my fatigue was crippling, I took them to school and he could see I was unwell, he asked why my mum wasn’t helping me. I just told him I don’t know. He went to school crying and his teacher called me. He is now having some counselling to talk out how angry he is with my mum. When he sees her he can’t talk to her he is so angry. He is the kindest, sweetest boy, I love him so much and I had no idea it hurt him like this. My daughter is 10 and she is also angry and when she does see my mum she barely speaks to her. My eldest is almost 14, he is upset with his nan but he craves her so much. He calls her alot and asks her when she will visit, asks her if she will come and be a mum to me etc… and she just lets him down. He craves her as a grandmother and he wants her to be a mother to me, but deep down he is hurting. WHen he sees her he is all over her excited, she loves it but it really pains me that he is so hurt and over excited when he sees her.

The children are aware that I say no to my mums visits now. I have had to explain that visitors during the week are tough on me because I have a thyroid issue and chronic fatigue syndrome. I tire easily, and also emotional stress and pain causes my CFS crashes, and seeing my mum certainly causes me to crash. I have to remain civil and happy when she is here, then when she leaves i crash for 2 days at least and then my anxiety kicks in and i feel rough for weeks after her visit because she walks away and never calls to ask how I am, or offer a little support. So it is easier for me to refuse her visits right now while I recover and my medication works. Is it wrong of me by my children though to refuse her visits? I find this a very tricky situation. If i had no children I’d never speak to my mum, I’d move away and start a fresh away from her hurt. As I have children I find this hard, I don’t want to hurt them more than they are already. They still love her and miss her. She is now playing the card of, well you won’t let me visit. She saw the children at their cousins party at the weekend, i didn’t go as my brother was there. My husband took the children, the first thing my sister said to him was ‘you can go home if you want, mum will drop the children off’. They take any opportunity for our children to mix with my brother so he can ease his guilt. My husband refused, all other aunties and uncles were there and staying. He said our eldest was asking his nan when she is visiting next and she was saying well I asked the last 2 weeks and your mum said I couldn’t. I told her I was very unwell and not up to visitors, big difference. I fear will my children resent me in the future for not allowing my mum to visit?

Sorry this got so long, I just feel in a very difficult situation. I am happy, my son is happy and I ca see that all that hurts him now is how his nan has treated us. Which is very sad. Their other grandmother walked out on them when they were young, she cut her own son off, for reasons we just don’t seem to understand and I am sure she will regret it some day as she is missing out on 3 beautiful grandchildren. The 5 of us are so close. My GP said to me ‘Julie you may have had to walk away from family that were toxic, your circle may be smaller now but it’s far richer and you are happier than I have ever seen you’. He is right 🙂

PS I am after a book recommendation again 😉 I read The Untethered Soul and The Power of Now. Oh and the Art of happiness. I loved them all. I am a yogi and newbie vegan. I am looking for a book that teaches me more about living a life of happiness and spirituality. I still have some anxiety, and am overcoming health issues. If anyone can recommend a book for happiness and spirituality I’d really appreciate. I feel I am finding myself again and starting a new life in the last few years walking away from the toxic people that destroyed my life. Life is now good and I love reading and learning more 🙂 Thank you.