We had a family of nine live with us for three months. It kept my mind off of myself. I did continue with the counseling until my 12 year old stepped on (really jumped on) a pickax. At that point I was focused on getting his foot healed and didn't go anywhere for a while and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then winter kicked in with a vengence and I couldn't drive the hour to my counseling sessions.
Spring has arrived and we are busy with all the details of building a house. My husband is also looking for a job, so that figures in. I whine around in my mind and on this blog about not having the time or money for counseling. I am homeschooling my children and tutoring 2 others. So that does take up time, but the real thing is that I'm just scared to face up to how I'm allowing what happened in the past to still mess me up in the now. I function as though I was hatched as an adult and am disconnected from my own self. Maybe I'm just thinking weird here. I try really hard to live now without the past intruding.
My 11 year old just figured out this year that the grandma she thought was my mother wasn't really my mother. She added up the grandma's and had too many. I only tell them the good stuff from my childhood. Sometimes I slip and say something along the lines of, "You have no idea what it means to have to be perfect all the time! I don't expect perfection!!!" My 14 year old was complaining that I expected her to be perfect all the time and if she wasn't she got in trouble. The "trouble" she got into is that I give her a short lecture about why she should have done x the way or when I told her to. She says I yell at her. I told her that I have never yelled at her in a glass throwing volume. That was a slip. I've never told my kids about the screaming and dish throwing my mom did. I've never even told my dad.
I was really mad when my daughter said the same things to me that I thought about my mother when I was growing up. I am not the pyscho my mother was! Proof point: I calmly discussed her complaints, but inside I was furious. She couldn't tell how mad I was. My husband couldn't either. I did good.
