My heart hurts

[Eyeamme]

I just need to get this out. I just saw pictures of my two grandsons at my brothers house for Xmas. My daughter and I have been NC for 2 months. How do I make myself radically accept that I may never get to kiss and hold them again. I feel like my heart is slowly being smothered. My husband and I spent Xmas alone.

I have gone NC because the abuse went on for 30 years and although I messed up badly because I had no idea that my daughter was ill. I just thought she was spoiled and mean. She did great in school and never got in trouble. I am terrified of my own daughter and she has gone beyond my boundaries of how I will allow her to treat me and her step dad. So I feel like I either can back down and or hold my boundaries. Holding my boundaries will probably mean not ever seeing my babies again.

I just want the hurt to get better and it isn't and I can not stop crying and I am so not a crier.

Just had to vent.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[Vivienne V.]

I am new to this concept of radical acceptance too, so here is my story about you and I practicing radical acceptance together:

Imagine that I am sitting next to you over a cup of coffee (or tea) and we are radically accepting together. We start sharing the wonderful stories about our children and remembering all the sweet, funny things that they have said and done over the years. We grit our teeth and get on with the business of accepting that there may be days, weeks, years that we do not get to see our children/grandchildren and we will say to each other that we are going to accept it (although we will both take a minute to agree that it sucks!) and then we vow that when we do get a minute/hour/day with our children/grandchildren we will embrace that time and experience it with all the joy that the experience has to offer us.

After you and I have shared all of this, we start making plans. We tell each other to have faith that we will see our children/gc again one day and we start discussing ways to use SET with our children so that we can start laying the groundwork for this to happen. We realize that we  love our children with all our hearts and we only hate the illness and the poor choices that it causes our children to make.

Then, at this point, you and I are feeling a bit more mellow and not as anxious, so we start swapping stories. Maybe we start sharing some of the bad parenting decisions that we have made over the years and we realize that we weren't the only ones making those decisions because we both have such similar stories and we both messed up in the same ways. We laugh in relief that, wow, maybe we aren't the horrible person that we thought we were; we were just human and we were doing the best we could under bad circumstances. And now we start to ease a bit because we are starting to forgive ourselves... .

You get up to refill my coffee and you bring me a picture of your grandchildren. You start to tell me about them, because not being with them is awful but being able to talk about them with someone makes it a bit easier to bear. This is what you say... .(can't wait to hear all about them!)

Your turn now... .

[Eyeamme]

My grandsons are my sweet babies. One is 2 and the other 5. I love them with all my heart. I live on the opposite coast from them now. I would love to babysit and keep them for the weekend.

Thank you so much V. What is you story? I would love another cup of coffee :--)

[Vivienne V.]

Ahhh... .2 and 5 are such wonderful ages. Thank you for telling me about them. And I want to tell you that I believe with all my heart that you will see them and hold them again. You and I are going to keep talking on this forum and we're going to keep working at laying the groundwork with our children so that we can continue to be in their lives.

As for my story... .well, I practically wrote a novel on it two posts down from this one. LOL.  It's under "Two daughters with BPD" or something like that. You'll need that cup of coffee to get you through all that I wrote! Only recently have I reconnected with my two daughters, but this was after weeks/months of zero contact and me constantly imagining the worst. And I totally know that my future holds more periods of disconnect with my girls. But, I accept that (radically! ) and I feel peace today because I got to spend time with one of my daughters yesterday. It was a true gift!

[Eyeamme]

-V

I did read your post. My heart is with you and we will watch out for each other :--)

I am so happy that you got to be with one of the girls.

Xx