Beginning now...

[AntoniaB]

IB your post is really heart-breaking and I understand your emotions. I think a certain amount of this is the holidays making it worse, but most of what you're talking about the pain your children are facing and not your own.

I'm not sure if you realize that or not. My suspicion is that as you have felt less pain and anguish for yourself, even just a little bit, you've latched on to their pain or rejection and it's sort of re-feeding the way you felt in the beginning.

Just like you feel it when your son is angry and you feel you have to talk him down, you also feel it when they are sad, and their depression is becoming yours.

The best you can do for them on this issue is support them with counseling if they will agree. They have to learn to process their own feelings and not inadvertendly push their sadness on to you. It probably just happens with no one thinking. No one is "at fault" here. But it's not healthy for you.

I feel like at times my family is still far behind me in terms of acceptance, and their lack of acceptance or disbelief of my sitch sometimes drags me backwards.

Another thing I might suggest is to sort of walk into that feeling of hopelessness or "the bottom" deliberately, head on, and face it for what it is, rather than to feel it as something you fear. I don't think going back to that bottom at thiz point in your life is going to make you STUCK in that bottom. I think we often assume that it will and we dread that feeling of depression taking over, so we fight it. But it can be a productive experience.

I know you're a Christian but I only really know the Buddhist readings that I've been studying in meditation group, so this might not be right for you, but I will say there is a Christian Buddhist in our group, so....you can look up this essay and read it or not. It's by Pema Chodron, called "Hopelessness and Death." It is basically on going to that very dark place and facing it and using it to learn the deepest things about yourself, and coming back out of it stronger and more resilient, because you stop clinging to the notion that "hope" will just lay a great life back in your lap, but instead, you'll accept living with the ground under your feet being very shaky and you'll "make friends" with that feeling.

It's a powerful essay that helped me when I was feeling exactly as you describe.