Letting go for my own inner peace

[Gerda]

Hi, Irish -- You sound like such an amazing dad, and a rock for your girls! I hope the tests all come back okay. Gosh it's so painful to be a parent!

I just wanted to say that no matter how disgustingly horrible and awful their mom is right now, they will suffer more if they never forgive her. And when my own mom died, that was what was most devastating to me, that she didn't know I was working on forgiving her and had a whole plan to start seeing her a lot more and loving her unconditionally. And I'm in my 40's, it still is a thorn.

I'm not saying they can do that right now. I'm just saying that the rhetoric of your narrative about it is very justice-oriented. I don't know what kinds of conversations you are having with your kids, but for example, removing her mom from her birth certificate makes no sense except as an act of despair and bitterness. I would plant tiny little seeds of forgiveness sometimes. Rage is way more damaging than sorrow. My H has taken money out of my D's wallet twice and while I of course counsel her about it and of course make a much better hiding place and opened a bank account so it won't happen again, I did also encourage her to forgive him enough that she has no anger/bitterness about it. It's different for her than your girls because she still really loves her dad. I am sure that when she is older that will hit her more, the crazy neglectful things he did, but I am glad that for now she can pray for him and also hang out with him without making it too complicated, I think it will make it easier for her to work through anger later. I am not comparing this to your sitch at all, I know your daughters need to be protected on all fronts from that amount of craziness and should not see their mom or share details of their lives if they don't want to. I just wonder about helping them understand mental illness to pave a future path toward forgiveness (even if they have no actual relationship with her) instead of trying to erase the connection entirely. As a woman, I have experienced much more peace about my mom with that approach than when I was set on the other path of always justifying my hatred/anger.

I just printed out something about mentally ill parents for my son, I will try pasting it here in case it could be helpful. I edited it down from something I found on a blog. It even helped me thinking back on my life with my mom when I was a teen.