Letter to my daughter….

Thinking is my number one problem….and there I was this morning, marching around and around the complex while thinking. Gets me in trouble every time. When tears came to my eyes for about the fifth or sixth time, I brought myself to a halt and shut my brain down.

It’s a gorgeous day out there. The sky is a clear blue, and the branches of the trees appear almost white against the power of the universe this morning. God is ringing my doorbell the best way he knows……color, and I was able to stop and reassess my world just for a moment. I need to communicate with my daughter, but it is hard to speak to someone whose barriers are firmly up and cemented in place. Instead of speaking, I will write. There is always hope.

I love you, yes I do. Even if you don’t believe it, I love ya. That’s what I want to say to my youngest, dear Lenora today and every day.

You were an easy birth with no anesthetic, and I upset the nurses and doctor’s by sitting up on the gurney outside the birthing room and singing with my guitar under my elbow till they had a room for me. I never fit the molds and neither did you from the very start.

You rarely cried. Oh, you refused to take naps, so we all adapted to you. You never liked to be hugged. It was a shame. You were very huggable. Your father was smitten from the moment he saw you and so was I. Your teachers loved you. One became my best friend.

You went your own way….always. Spanking did you no good. You would just turn your back on us and turn us off. Both your father and I were raised by Victorians, and we knew no other way to raise kids but by Victorian techniques.

Your father kept beating your sister, but you showed us an invincible wall we couldn’t crack. We tried other things. They didn’t work either: time outs, restrictions, all those sorts of punishments. You just shrugged them all off, put on your placating face, and went your own way. Then your father and I divorced. You stayed with your father, stayed there for your safety, and I moved on into madness and despair, cried for years.

I believe you must have loved me at one time or you wouldn’t have come back to live with me. Studies show that kids who live with one parent hate that one and love the other. You moved back with me and turned me off while loving your father. There was nothing he could do wrong. I didn’t argue. I loved you so much that I let you get away with murder as a child and teen. I was wrong….but I knew no better. Our extended family, therapists, and friends thought I was doing the best I could…but they knew no better either. And you were you. We all loved you.

Now today you say our long relationship has been dicey. I thought for a while when you came back and stayed with us after your divorce that we had made a fresh start into a friendship, but that start didn’t stay started. You learned from me to caretake early, and the after effects of being raised in an alcoholic home have left your clinging to the only sure thing you know every day….that you are in control. Instead of friendship, our mother daughter relationship devolved into you caretaking and me people pleasing. I and others have suggested therapy and Alanon to you. You rejected these ideas.

Many years ago my mother told me to make a choice between parents and husband. I chose my husband and this break hurt my mother terribly. She was never able to see her drinking and her behaviors clearly at any time in her life. She never could see how abusive her behaviors were to anyone much less me. She couldn’t see her anger. While my father was dying and my mother drinking heavily, mother’s priest asked me to get back together with her. I did it….and perhaps I shouldn’t. She never stopped drinking, and so I was never able to get to know her through the alcoholic thinking she lived with until she died. And I longed to know her. I longed to have a mother instead of an angry drunk.

I will keep on loving you, dearest daughter, whether you change toward me or do not. I will keep on communicating to the best of my ability no matter what. Why don’t I phone? Because I am afraid of you. I don’t want to be rejected to my face. I don’t want your anger. I don’t need to be hurt any more. I write. There’s a little dispassionate distance with the written word. I want to know you too. I long to have lunches and dinners and friendship. Share a cuppa and some shopping. I know this won’t be unless you reach out and learn who you are for yourself and for your codependency. Love does transcend family diseases but only if both sides let go and change.

I love you.