embracing change

[flowmom]

So I had a somewhat intense conversation with my mother yesterday. She has always been rather vague about my early years. I think she wanted to convey a positive image of my deceased father. But as the years have passed she has dropped bits of info that hinted at the problems. Yesterday I got more of the picture. Before she left him he was extremely ill (dying of pancreatic cancer but they didn't know that) and basically rested all the time when he wasn't working. She finally came out and said that he used to hit me and that I wasn't very attached to him because he was so ill. She left him (because of the emotional abuse and hitting of me) when my sister was 3 months old and I was 2.5 years old (earlier than I thought). Then she began a period of travel, boyfriends, etc. One boyfriend who I remember well is a man who we travelled for many months with through Mexican and Guatemalan villages. I was very attached to him and it was probably very hard when he disappeared from our lives when mom took up with the man who became my stepfather.

My mom also talked about how I seemed last time we visited her (June 09). She said that she was amazed at how calm I seemed in spite of everything that was happening (marriage problems, kid problems).

She emphasized that she thinks that my H has a big heart with a big capacity for love, but that he has a lot of issues and that I can't take responsibility for them. She talked about how bizarre it seemed to her when I would try to get some time to myself or space from the kids (leaving them with H) and H would chase after me demanding that I deal with them in a somewhat neurotic way. She said that she felt that there was something abnormal going on for him there.