I spoke on the phone to my mother today. She is still away and due to return tomorrow.

She asked what I am planning for daughter's birthday next Sunday. I remind her that I have said several times it would be nice if we could join her at her beach house for the birthday weekend, as daughter loves it there or otherwise I ask if she would like to join me in taking daughter to a particular restaurant she likes where they are having a cooking class and meal night, daughter would love it. "Oh no" she says. "I am going to the beach and my sister is coming so we can celebrate HER birthday. So I don't think you could come, there won't be room". Of course not. Her sister doesn't like me much now that I don't suck up and let her bully me. So this hurts, of course, and I go downstairs and can't help asking my brother (mother's golden boy) "why does our mother hate me?" and he says "I don't know but she always has and it seems to be getting worse. You just have to say &^%$ her and stop trying with her or you'll just keep getting hurt". 

I think on this and realise he is very right. For Christmas this year all of my siblings recieved their usual expensive gifts. I got nothing, look I didn't want anything and I don't need a gift but she made a point of telling me that "I was going to give you some money for Christmas but I spent it, sorry" and she also kept discussing her plans for my siblings gifts all the way up until Christmas so this is really deliberate and it has been going on for a very long time. Like when my husband left me with a baby and he took the bed and I was sleeping on the floor and she responded by buying my sister (who was in juvenile detention at the time) a $6,000 bed to come home to. I didn't expect her to buy me a bed but she actually invited me to go shopping and then asked me to help her choose a bed for my sister (who already had a bed). And I went home and slept on the floor which just sucked because I was still nursing my daughter and my back and body were sore already. Well if I start listing these resentments it won't help anyone and I wonder why I feel the need to do it? I think because I want to be heard and for people to say "you are right Mel that is awful and cruel". Sort of how it was in the beginning with ABF, I'm back at the stage of wanting people to validate me and feel bad for me, I need to move forward with this. So I figure I need to go back to the beginning and repeat the whole process and maybe I can eventually get to a place where I can accept and in some way love who she is and not have her impact on my feelings anymore. Because if trying to get love from an A is like trying to get bread from  hardware store, trying to get love from my mother is like trying to get orange juice by squeezing a rock really really hard.

So I guess I go back to the beginning because I think I need to do the whole process with this and really detach from her and do it properly, I need to remember how i did this with ABF and which bits worked and which didn't and get with the program in a big way.

I haven't had much of a program for a while now and it shows. So back to basics for me, and I got in the car and went driving around this busy little inner city suburb where I grew up, looking for a nice place to walk my dog. And I ended up in the big bushland area next to the golf course. One thing I LOVE about Melbourne is that even in the city there are big areas of bushland like little oasises (oasies?) where the gum trees are so thick and tall that you can actually forget you are in the city. 

So now that I have put down my big bag of rocks I  find I quite enjoy walking again. I ended up at the river, where I used to go when I was young, and I thought about how I had tried so many times to use fallen branches, old bits of tin and whatever I could find to make a treehouse down there. I was going t live in it you see. It probably wasn't a very well thought out plan because I was very afraid of the dark and would have run home in terror at the first hoot of an owl but, you know. And then I would go walking there with mother and her dog years later when I was being a single mother and living near mother. And whenever I was there before I would be hurting, so very much, over mothers unkindness, husbands abandonment, other people and their indifference towards me always eating me up inside. And today I was grateful for the stillness inside me, and the joy I felt to feel the warm sun on my skin, the cool breeze, the birds, the occasional smiling jogger stopping to pat my dog, just me, alone and not in pain. I realised that is where I began last time and that is where I need to pick up again, with gratitude and self love. And meetings. I must go to meetings, not talk about it or plan to do it but DO it. So it will be new people. So what. So it will be different people in a couple of weeks when I move. So what. 

So today I was grateful for this muddy river, and my equally muddy dog after he ignored my requests and jumped in to chase a duck, lol. And for the fact that no matter what is going on in my world I can stop , be still and enjoy where and when I am. I was never able to do that before. And for the great joy I felt when I decided today to get back to my program and grow some more. Because hat opens up limitless opportunities to me, I feel like I have achieved SO much since I began being able to care for and about myself and trust that I am worthy and will be cared for if I allow it to happen. 

Thanks for letting me ramble out my thinking

(((everyone)))