I am officially resigned as a daughter

Libra Horoscope for week of September 10, 2009




"My first demand is that you weed out the wishy-washy wishes and lukewarm longings that keep you distracted from your burning desires. My second demand is that you refuse to think that anyone else knows better than you what dreams will keep your life energy humming with maximum efficiency and beauty. Now please repeat the following assertions about 20 times: "I know exactly what I want. I know exactly what I don't want. I know exactly what I kind of want but I won't waste my time on it any more because it sidetracks me from working on what I really really want."  From Free Will Astrology

When I was 13 I faced some pretty hard decisions.  In looking back to that time in my life, I realize in a lot of ways how much easier it was to be clear in what I wanted.  I wanted to be free from the extremes of my mother's existance.  Well I got what I wished for.  I left her home, her moods, her twists and turns of the truth.  I left abuse and neglect.  I left what little security I knew.  I left someone that didn't trust me, didn't know me, and didn't know how to put me first before her.

I was very clear on what I needed from her from then on.  Then I became a mother.  Very often I parented in direct opposition of what I had not been given.  I was very clear about appropriate boundaries, about putting my children first, and about trying to make the best decisions with less than desirable amounts of information.  I often operated from a place of pitch black.  I had no real relationships, whether partnerships or parenting to model from.  In many ways this out of the box thinking served me and I hope my children. 

After living in foster care, in a group home, with relatives I learned a few lessons very clearly.  It was always, and still is, important to really mean what I said.  Children know otherwise even when they don't know what something is called.  It permeates our psyche.  And if the adults in your world are full of shit, then that vast darkness of lies and deceptions looms like a behemoth in your home.

So we fast forward to a few weeks ago.  I received a package in the mail from a lawyer.  My mother had been put in an assisted living facility.  They were appointing her a temporary guardian.  She didn't pass the mental status exam.  She couldn't manipulate anyone into believing she could or should continue to live on her own. 

In my hands I had a certified documentation of her physical and mental status'.  For a moment it felt like a burden had been lifted off of me.  Someone else would finally know it wasn't my fault when I was 13 and left her home.  And the irony hit me full on.  I still cared more about her and being right than about what happened to me.  NO one blamed me for her neglect.  But that old tape of caretaking for her fragile self still reared its ugly head.

I felt lots of swirling conflicting emotions:  How could she be all alone at the end of her life, how could I not find a way to go and 'rescue' her, how could she have allowed her life to come to such a staggering desolate place?  It goes on and on within me.

And then the clarity comes singing through.  She is an adult.  This is the very clear result of her life lived on her terms and by her decisions.  When I was a child, helpless with no one to help me but me........she didn't base anything on what was best for me.  She chose to think of it as me betraying her.  She lost her slave, her housekeeper, her shopper.  Did she ever really feel the loss of losing her daughter?

My son said to me, very clearly, "She isn't your mommy!  Stop waiting for one"  And then when he saw the raw pain and shock on my face he softly added, "You are my mommy, and Samantha's mommy, and Ethan's Nana".  You chose to do the best you could and never turn your back on us.

Today is the hearing to determine the rights of my mother's guardianship.  I will not be present.  I will not be appointed guardian.  I will not be subjected to more manipulation by her.  She is in better hands by those more qualified to deal with her and her issues than I am.  I relinquish my rights as her daughter in my clarity unlike all those years ago when she gave up her parental rights for me.