Perfect Parent

I’ve had insightful weekend.  Much of which was spent being lazy and stupid by speaking to my family.  My adult family, may I clearly say.  This adult family I refer to as my parents or sisters.  Not my children.  Definitely not my ex.

I’ve managed, for most of the past few years, to get along with my mother.  My father is easy to get along with for the most part.  He doesn’t like conflict, even more so these days since his third stroke.  He’s still the dad I always knew, but a bit more fragile.

Mom, on the other hand, has always been difficult for me, and I expected, as such, that I would perceived the same with my children.  But there is a difference.

One:

I do not believe myself to have been a perfect mother, and I admit I was not and to my mistakes.

Two:

I could not be like my mother.  She called us hypocratical.  She is.  She still thinks she did the best she could and that we have nothing to complain about.  STOP… true.  But to be perfect means we would not have anything to complain about and every child, for the most part, has something to complain about … about their mother or their father…

What bothered me the most the other night while have a great conversation, but that went sour, was at the end of it my mother asked if I was drunk.  Question was because I called her on telling me I was a failure for not graduating from University with a career oriented degree.  I told I understood that.  She then denied she ever said it.  OK… I continued to say she did… and that DAD went upstairs to my room where I was crying and said she didn’t mean it in that way.  At that age “that way” doesn’t mean a thing.  I graduated.  With a BA.  In Art History and French Minor.  It wasn’t really where I wanted to be to begin with.  I wanted to go to a University to take Journalism.

I did end up with an Honours Journalism Diploma after my University, which I paid for with my own money.

All this was silly, but I just wish she would have admitted to remembering to say that.  Because it hurt.  So did mom and dad not showing up to my graduation.  But that then.

So I tried to explain this I understood why she said it because she wanted the best for me.  She would not listen to that… she only listened to the part that I told her she called me a failure.  SHE DID.  So just admit it.

But no.  She had to accuse me of being drunk.  I finally ended it with telling her I loved her and asked if she loved me?  She didn’t answer.  She hung up.  Nice.

I would never hang up on my children.. and if I did something they are hurting about, and I have, and they have told me… I apologize, and hope they will never duplicate my own failures as a mother… but they do know… biggest and far most… IF THEY ASK ME IF I LOVE THEM??? I would not hesitate to say YES… YES… I LOVE YOU TONS…

It ends a problem with a pillow that you can hold onto…. and know… parents and children will have their ins and outs… and that I likely said something to my children that hurt them… if they tell me?  I would say… I’m so sorry… and explain it if I can… or just be sorry if I can’t.  I like their honesty.  I like that they can talk to me.  Even if it hurts.  But we can’t learn to forgive ourselves for parental mistakes if we can listen to our children and say sorry, or as said explain… and resolve…. and let it go.

Perfect parent?… never… but we try… but we need to listen to our children when they become old enough to talk about their issues… listen, explain or apologize… it’s that simple.

 

Perfect Parent?

I’ve had insightful weekend.  Much of which was spent being lazy and stupid by speaking to my family.  My adult family, may I clearly say.  This adult family I refer to as my parents or sisters.  Not my children.  Definitely not my ex.

I’ve managed, for most of the past few years, to get along with my mother.  My father is easy to get along with for the most part.  He doesn’t like conflict, even more so these days since his third stroke.  He’s still the dad I always knew, but a bit more fragile.

Mom, on the other hand, has always been difficult for me, and I expected, as such, that I would perceived the same with my children.  But there is a difference.

One:

I do not believe myself to have been a perfect mother, and I admit I was not and to my mistakes.

Two:

I could not be like my mother.  She called us hypocratical.  She is.  She still thinks she did the best she could and that we have nothing to complain about.  STOP… true.  But to be perfect means we would not have anything to complain about and every child, for the most part, has something to complain about … about their mother or their father…

What bothered me the most the other night while have a great conversation, but that went sour, was at the end of it my mother asked if I was drunk.  Question was because I called her on telling me I was a failure for not graduating from University with a career oriented degree.  I told I understood that.  She then denied she ever said it.  OK… I continued to say she did… and that DAD went upstairs to my room where I was crying and said she didn’t mean it in that way.  At that age “that way” doesn’t mean a thing.  I graduated.  With a BA.  In Art History and French Minor.  It wasn’t really where I wanted to be to begin with.  I wanted to go to a University to take Journalism.

I did end up with an Honours Journalism Diploma after my University, which I paid for with my own money.

All this was silly, but I just wish she would have admitted to remembering to say that.  Because it hurt.  So did mom and dad not showing up to my graduation.  But that then.

So I tried to explain this I understood why she said it because she wanted the best for me.  She would not listen to that… she only listened to the part that I told her she called me a failure.  SHE DID.  So just admit it.

But no.  She had to accuse me of being drunk.  I finally ended it with telling her I loved her and asked if she loved me?  She didn’t answer.  She hung up.  Nice.

I would never hang up on my children.. and if I did something they are hurting about, and I have, and they have told me… I apologize, and hope they will never duplicate my own failures as a mother… but they do know… biggest and far most… IF THEY ASK ME IF I LOVE THEM??? I would not hesitate to say YES… YES… I LOVE YOU TONS…

It ends a problem with a pillow that you can hold onto…. and know… parents and children will have their ins and outs… and that I likely said something to my children that hurt them… if they tell me?  I would say… I’m so sorry… and explain it if I can… or just be sorry if I can’t.  I like their honesty.  I like that they can talk to me.  Even if it hurts.  But we can’t learn to forgive ourselves for parental mistakes if we can listen to our children and say sorry, or as said explain… and resolve…. and let it go.

Perfect parent?… never… but we try… but we need to listen to our children when they become old enough to talk about their issues… listen, explain or apologize… it’s that simple.

 

Sisters – Friend or Foe and the Delete Button

 

Sisters. I was trying to make sense of all of this.  Where did we start loving or hating each other.  So I made a grid.  I made a grid that I am still working on.  It starts off like this:

THOUGHTS by sister number.  1, 2, 3(me), 4:

#1 BOSSY #2 PUSSY #3 PUSSY #4 BOSSY

#1 MANIPULATIVE #2 NEEDY #3 FRUSTRATED #4 LIAR

#1 DELETE #2 WISH BUTTON #3 LOVE #4 HUG

#1 SLUT #2 KIND HEARTED #3 MIDDLE ROAD #4 CHARISMA

#1 SELFISH #2 GIVING #3 CARING #4 UNSURE

#1 DESTRUCTIVE #2 SELF-DESTRUCTIVE #3 SELF-SABOTAGING #4 LOST

#1 FAKE #2 MARTYR #3 DISILLUSIONED #4 BLATANT

#1 SELF-INTERESTED #2 SELF-INTERESTED #3 SELF-INTERESTED #4 SELF-INTERESTED

#1 TO A FAULT #2 TO MAKE HERSELF FEEL RIGHTEOUS #3 FOR COMPLETION #4 TO EXIST

#1 TRIES TO CONTROL EVERYONE AROUND HER #2 TRIES TO CONTROL HER HOME KINGDOM #3 GIVES UP CONTROL #4 LIVES WITH CONTROL

#1 DISGUSTS ME #2 LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY #3 LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY #4 LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

#1 LOOKED UP TO LIKE A DIETY #2 LOOKED UP TO AS A SECOND MOM #3 FELT ALONE BUT NEVER LONELY AND LIKE LOOKING OUTSIDE OF EVERYTHING FROM INSIDE OF SELF #4 WANTED HER TO LOVE ME MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE FAMILY – PROTECTIVE AND DIDN’T WANT HER TO FEEL WHAT I FELT – BEING LEFT OUT.

#1 FELL OFF A PEDESTAL AND CRASHED AND BURNED #2 ALWAYS A SECOND MOM BUT SADDER FOR HER #3 STILL IN THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT #4 ALWAYS FELT CLOSER EVEN WHEN SHUT OFF BY HER – ONE OF MY LIMBS

So that is my list to date.  I can’t really know where I am in my family until I truly feel what it is that I feel for each and everyone of my sisters and how it shaped my world growing up.

I know my parents, as they are aging, are feeling that it would be a sad thing to see the family fall apart after they leave us.  I can’t say that will happen, but my delete button is staring me in the face with #1 on it.  I have had to suffer the pain of being around this gigantic demon in my life for so many years of so many issues I can’t even begin to write here on this public blog.  She has been the most destructive entity in our family from the day I met her.  But there is no delete button at this time.  I understand my parents.  I have three children of my own.  I know how much my daughter loves her eldest brother and feels as though he is not feeling the same back to her.  I know the feeling of my sons towards each other and towards their sister.  I wish I could have a magic wand and say “hey you will all be good together when I die”.  But I can’t.  And I don’t know what destruction ensued my divorce between them or anyone.  It was an ugly divorce and they were torn.  Each one of them at a different age that would be affected differently and also differently as they grew up and tried to put it all together.

The gigantic delete button would have been my first thing to do as soon as I had a human understanding of life.  If that delete button was available, my children would not have suffered under the horrible acts of #1.

Suffice it to say, I have tried forgiveness in the biggest way.  I tried to list any or all of the good traits of #1.  I failed drastically.  I could only come up with her paying for a birthday dinner she took me out to one night.  That was it.

From her trying to drown my #2 and taking all her friends and boyfriends away, and sitting on the side lines and watching, to her using my #4 and making her do things she should never have had to have done in her teens to make her husband happy, to her having an affair with… many… and ending it with my ex husband.  She was also the one at when I was 16 and she was about to get married, told me I should fast and lose weight because I was too fat at 130 lbs.  I am not blaming her, but she did plant that seed that led to my then five day fast that she put me on, followed by diet after diet to bulimia.  I chose to keep watering the seed she planted, but nevertheless…. She is pure evil.  She is a demon.  I try not to think about it often.  But when I do, I still look for that delete button.

And the sister that would be the one I would call on that is quoted in the picture?  #4

 

There Is Never Enough Time

I heard this song and I realized that a big part of my life was lost to my bulimia, and to my self-centeredness and selfishness.  I didn’t realize I was any of those, buried in my addiction.  At the same time, looking back, I realized how lost I was through those years.  I never really knew who I was once my bulimia started.  I remember my mother telling me that I was not the Laurie she used to know.  She was indeed right.  I was not altogether gone, but a big part of that younger Laurie was – lost in the confusion of what it was that had taken over my life, and at times had sabotaged what could have been the most beautiful time in my life.

I won’t say that all was lost.  I did have some great times with my children.  Unfortunately, sometimes I have to look at pictures to remind me that I did have those.

I know I lost their teenage years to their father.  In hindsight, this was likely a good thing.  I try to resolve with myself if that was selfish of me to not fight the mammoth harder to have more time with them, but in the end, the fight to do so would have most likely just applied more scars to what already was a nightmare of a divorce and ending of a family unit.

Today I am very happy and I have forgiven myself for many things.  I do believe, however, the hardest one is the questions of parenting.  But I have to let those go.  My sons and daughter have advise me to do so, and to stop being sorry for what might have been.  So it is my duty to myself and them to move forward as I am doing, and enjoy every moment I have with them, however brief and few now that they are all young adults.

I end this with the song I was listening to that does make you think…. and realize it is so important to embrace the time we have with family and friends and even more so, with self.  For when the times alone are ones that you cherish, it makes it all the more magical to share the love you have for yourself with others you love.

 

Would Be 27 Years

Strange how I always look at dates.  In my time here, it is 8:36 pm on September 11, 2014.  I remember being President of the local Chamber of Commerce and just starting into my term when the September 11th disaster happened.  I remember driving my children to school and was listening to the radio and thought it was something of a hoax… could this be real?  Or Orson Wells?  Spent the afternoon with the new Executive Director we just hired watching in horror. That was 13 years ago.

Tomorrow is another date I remember.  27 years ago I said “I do” to the man I loved and had three beautiful children with.  We would have been together for 27 years, and on September 26th, would have known each other for 34.  Do I wonder sometimes what life would have been like if I had fought it out and stayed?  Sometimes, but rarely.  My only sadness is for my children, but they seem to be doing okay.

I love my little life now…. but it is incredibly weird how fast time goes by.  But new dreams, new life, new friends and old friends still here, makes this all worth my time on this earth.  Ask me if I would have even thought I would be married with children?  Never.  But I was, and did my part, and now back to what I knew I would end up like… loving architecture, knowing where I want to go, what I want, and working towards that dream… and best of all… bulimic free. 🙂

Do you have dates that come back in your mind randomly to remind you?  Feel free to share. 🙂

One of The Most Awesome Mother’s Day Gifts

One might think a Mother’s Day gift is wrapped in fine paper with a ribbon on top.  Mine is not.  Mine happened tonight when my youngest son spoke to me about my influence on how he wants to treat a woman and his apology for not responding to my texts.  I don’t mind no responses.  I send out I love you’s just because not expecting anything back from a University son.  If I do get response it’s a bonus.  It is just how I have learned to live life as a single rehabilitated bulimic.  I like my solitude, so understand theirs too, but doesn’t mean I can’t reach out now and again to say “hey, I am thinking about you”.  I am sure somewhere in my posts I noted that when I was 16 I wanted to be a successful architect in my future, and with a home by a river, overlooking the lake.  I saw the home I had once wanted to design at one point in my life, safe for the room with mirrors and bars to dance in.  I didn’t ever want to marry or have children, and I owned a Porsche.  It was my dream.  My dream that twisted in circles until I fell in love two years later, married him seven years later and had three children.  To this day I have no regrets.  I am single again living in a tiny barn apartment, with nothing but a paycheck and a beaten up 1995 Honda Civic.  And I thank God for the most beautiful gifts I have.  One is that I am a mother and am celebrating my quarter of a century of being on, albeit he was to be born three months later.  Didn’t matter.  I was a mom and he was six months in my belly.  I am having dinner with my baby tomorrow.  Money meant everything to my children’s father including a certain style of womanhood in front of the big wigs as his climb up the latter kept getting higher.  Remember, stress for a bulimic is not a good thing and that followed me.  But with every pregnancy, I didn’t do it.  Sometimes during those times I wished I could be pregnant my whole life.  But leaving him alieved that issue later in life.  Anyway, it was perhaps some strange futuristic vision that led me to want more than one child.  I had my beautiful daughter.  Then it seemed complete.  I was ready to close off the valves when it was too late and number three, my baby son, was born.  He is the story behind this beginning of the Most Awesome Mother’s Day Gift.  It means all three are what are the most awesome mother’s day gift, but it brought me to this:

Youngest said tonight I was his inspiration in regards to love, and how to treat a woman.

Daughter had said I was the reason for knowing why she struggles with mental health issues.

Eldest son just loves me and figures I am who I am.

Three beautiful thoughts.  I will take them all.  the Most Awesome Mother’s Day Gifts.  But more so, I love their insightfulness.  All three have spoken to appreciating my breakdown, my fears, my self sabotage, and then watching as I grow to be stronger, and love them more than money.  To appreciate each of their emotional baggage as children of divorce, and they too me of being a victim of one.

They all talk differently of their lives to me, and I see all of them in me.  That is being a mother.  To understand all their not only emotional, but intellectual, and investigative needs in this world that has so created a more beautiful next generation.  For everyone who at my age of 51 or older do not have faith in the next generation?  I so do.  I have been blessed with three children who are proving that.  Three completely different, yet bound by their sibling traits, wonderful and beautiful children.

Thank you God.  May you lead them continually on the path of a more balanced life, yet one still filled with the excitement and adventure I lived, even if it left me with not much materialistically.  It left me with a pot of gold in unconditional love.  The kind God, you advocate for us through your love.  Thank you!!

Happy Mother’s Day to all, both mothers and fathers who know what being a carelover and teaching out little ones that grow up how to know that love… unconditional.

I Thank God For Letting Me Be Blessed With Children

When I was pregnant I stopped my bulimia. It was like a present to me. I even stopped completely after my daughter (second) until the birth of my third. I became overwhelmed and didn’t know what I was doing and my coping led me back to bulimia. Now I like that my recovery makes me have to cope with reality. I want to hear and understand everything they are going through. They are back in my life almost everyday again after a period of not knowing how to deal with me. Can’t blame them. Four years was very empty for me. But it’s full again. I love being a mom and so happy to feel like one again over the past couple of years. It’s not worth numbing yourself with an eating disorder. So much can be lost and forgotten. I refuse to do that to me or them ever again!

Three Tears (Tiers) For You

Thank You To All – 23,000 hits!

I can’t believe it.  Two years ago I started this site and never would I have believe that I would have had so many people visit my site.  I did it during my recovery and I knew I was ready to be able to post without triggering a desire to eat and throw up.  It was a pinnacle in my life.  It was when I knew that I really never wanted to go back again.  All your comments, your likes, your posts I’ve visited have truly been a great journey towards a new life for me and a greater understanding of just how wide spread this issue is.  I always knew it was big, but it’s even bigger than I thought.  I truly do want to start a campaign “Quit The Skinny”.  I want to get together with some of you out there willing to take this on and start making it an issued that is recognized for what it really is!  We hide behind the internet, understandably, but I am willing to put my face out there if I have to.  I don’t need to hide anymore.  I would love to have a few of you willing to do the same to come out and say “enough is enough”!

Perfection is not about the body, but media keeps making it so.

I am willing to share this with someone, or someones who want to join me.  I really don’t want to do this alone.  Together we stand!  Let me know if you are interested.  23000 hits must be saying something!  Don’t you think?

Hugs to all out there.  For those fighting, keep up the fight towards recovery.  For those of you still in the midst of wondering where to go, keep reaching out.  For those who are recovered – speak out!

What is Love?

I always wondered how I would describe love if I had to.  Never really could until I saw this picture tonight…. all the while watching “Shall We Dance”.  Ironic the two came together.  Something I believed in for my whole life, but never was.  I’m 50 now.  Don’t know that it will.  But hope my children do find this kind of love.  The love between the two in Shall We Dance and this picture.  That, my friends, is what I pictured love.  Now, its me with my dogs.