artista, thank you for your posts. I feel as if each time I read them, I gain another bit of wisdom.
SH, my old friend and cheerleader. I so appreciate your positivity.
I have a very sad update, I am afraid. I am just going to journal a bit. My oldest D's father was recently found dead. She is 19 and had not heard from him in several years. This has brought up so many difficult and confusing feelings. He was a BF from HS and we were very on-again/off-again for many years. I dropped out of college, had her at age 20, and then left him soon after. These were difficult times. As he entered adulthood it became clear he was quite mentally ill. Or course this meant his relationship with our D was strained. About 7-8 years ago he had a psychotic episode and we didn't hear from him again. His family stayed away too.
I thought one day he would come back around, and maybe he could know her as an adult, and perhaps they could have a relationship. That will never happen. He also doesn't know that she herself has had similar struggles and that I was afraid I was losing her much in the same way. Things got especially difficult with her in her mid-teen years, and this was right after my father had passed and my H had left me for OW. I had to send her to wilderness and a therapeutic boarding school for 1.5 years. My beautiful, precious girl. She was only 2.5 years when I met my H, so she was again abandoned by another father. She has been through so much, and sometimes I can't even wrap my head around it...
She is now at home, working a job that she loves, going to college (she enrolled herself), and she is doing so well. And then this bomb was dropped on her. Her father will not be coming back. She holds her head up high and she keeps moving forward. She just amazes me. She is also the best older sister her 2 younger sisters could imagine. And she loves and appreciates her step-dad and how he has raised her, and even after all he put us through, she knows how to forgive.
So here I am thinking about her dad. I can't tell you the h3ll he put our family through for so many years. The custody battles, the missing weekends, the stories this little girl would tell after their weekends, and then he abandoned her and never came back. I thought I hated him. I thought I could never forgive him.
After the call last week everything changed. I have only love and sadness for him. That he suffered from this terrible mental illness. That he had to live knowing he left his daughter. And mostly that he didn't know this beautiful young woman. And I feel grateful for him in another way, because without him, I wouldn't have her.
So there it is. Things will always change. I feel like I still have so much to learn about love, forgiveness, and gratitude.
Life can feel unbearable, but it isn't. I truly believe as we overcome so much adversity, we become these more resilient, strong, interesting, and empathetic people. My girl is living, breathing proof of that.
Blu
“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.” – Nelson Mandela
