5 golden years

my thoughts

  • interlude

    I am finding re-living this traumatic time in my life to be more emotional than I anticipated. However, I am also finding sharing to be therapeutic and healing. And, it occurred to me I haven’t shared what precipitated my moving nearly 2,000 miles across country, escaping care of Mother during the last weeks of her…

  • memories

    “Recollections May Vary,” brilliantly coined by the late Queen Elizabeth II, in reference to disclosures by royal family members, is such a perfect descriptive phrase, I have it emblazoned on a t-shirt.  Similar to varied accounts of people witnessing the same accident scene, each member of a family unit stores memories of past events, influenced…

  • treatment of family members

    It is important to set the stage regarding Mother’s Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) with narcissistic components. Caring for Mother the last five years of her life, I have previously covered: living in borderland, hoarding, addictive families, all about siblings, crazy making, personal tips towards recovery. Here is a sample. Causing me much confusion and distress,…

  • sabotaging happy times

    I would be remiss if I did not share happy memories from growing up. Although Mother often tried to dampen or subvert pleasurable times, I did not, and have not let her crowd out good remembrances. The happy times came about mostly due to Father’s love of celebrations, which Mother joined in and indeed reveled…

  • all about siblings

    Sibling relationships can last longer and be more supportive than any other connection. That is, of course, if the adults are able to move past childhood relationships and perceptions, recognize, interact and celebrate the adult each sibling has become. Unfortunately, releasing childhood conflicts and animosities that occurred among siblings is difficult in most families, and…

  • mother’s backstory

    As I watched Mother suffer multiple hospitalizations due to congestive heart failure, pulmonary fibrosis and stenosis, resulting in stroke-like brain injuries, she shared details of her life which I had never known before. Growing up during the depression, Mother’s childhood was one of depravity in multiple ways. Her family was very poor, her father being…

  • clinical aspects of addictive families

    [This is for those interested in the psychological underpinnings of families living with addiction; focusing on abusive relationships, and on etiology and treatments, drawing on my personal and professional experiences as a family therapist, along with current research.] “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”(Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy)…

  • addictive family effects

    Mother was terrified of alcoholism and regularly regaled us with its evils. We often heard about her friends who became alcoholics after cooking with wine. What is more plausible is the story of her father, after WWI, in a drunken stupor, almost died, saw hell, quickly reformed and became a “hell fire and brimstone” circuit…

  • dissociating

    Where do I start? Throughout my childhood I was just surviving, not attempting to make sense of what Mother was doing or why was she doing it. With all of the physical and verbal abuse, I quickly learned to distance myself, dissociate, although I was not able to label it as such until as an…

  • hoarding: a psychological perspective

    First, let me say, I found it very sad and pathetic; her whole life, Mother stressed over getting organized, but accepted no help, nor self-reflecting as to the causes. Several years before my moving to care for Mother, I attended a week-end seminar to gain more understanding, finding hoarding is one of the most difficult…