Caregivers and Stress

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by girl_dee

a month later and my mom has decided to move from the living facility where she is to go near her sister, 50 miles away, who lives in the middle of nowhere. There are no hospitals near and she won't know where anything is.

She has told her sister that we have all just left her. So she needs to be *saved*. i know my aunt knows better, but whatever.

i know this is the biggest mistake ever, and i am struggling to check out.

How do you check out when its your mother????

Honestly, I have struggled with it for years.

What is "it"?

In a nutshell, I try to use the Serenity Prayer when it comes to my mother and until my dad died last August, with him, too.

I can not make my mother be different. I do not have the power to make her a kind and loving person. I can not get her to be happy that she has me for a daughter. She is 89 now so there won't be some miracle intervention happening for her.

My mom is who she is and who she will always be. My father was the same.

Then, he died.

The difference is that I have come to a place of acceptance with both of them.

It still makes me sad. I wish that things had been different for all of us. I have always felt like an orphan and when I was a kid, I did used to pray that something would happen to them so I could be adopted by a loving family like some of my friends had.

It didn't and we get the parents that we get.

You can't change your mom. You know in your heart that you have done the very best that you can. You truly have to believe that there is not one more magic thing that you could try. If you don't really believe it, you will feel guilt and feel torn that somehow this or other choices that she makes, are your fault.

Guilt is not productive and it can eat you up.

I have read your posts about your mom. You know that you can't change her. We really do not have power over anyone else's bad decisions or choices.

Even when we love them.

(((Femme hug)))