Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Thank you to those of you who dropped by with a message of warmth, support, healing. I deeply appreciate...

My son will be discharged from hospital tomorrow or the next day, miracle that he is, and is going to stay at his Dad's for a bit until he can go into a rehab program. His Dad's is not an ideal place for him to go, and there is his Dad's girlfriend's son, who is not a good influence, but neither is my apartment ideal. While neither place is quite right or appropriate to his needs, I support his desire to go there, where he may find some inner healing from the unexpected, sudden and total rejection he received from his Dad at the turn of the year last year when he was banished and wasn't allowed to return even to pick up his belongings after the few days he was spending with me over Christmas. He slept on my couch for 4 months before we cleaned out a room downstairs. It hasn't been an ideal situation here, though we all tried to make the best of it that we could.

In many ways I felt helpless to 'fix' or 'heal' what the other household had done to him, and saw difficulties, or perhaps it's better to call them wounds, of the heart, of the spirit, that were scary and deep.

So, in a day or so I will bid him adieu with the hope that the 'other' parent may find compassion within to rescind some of what has passed so that this dear, intelligent, and sensitive young man may heal inwardly and find a greater peace in his world.
at

3 comments:

  1. Jean6:21 AM

    Makes sense, but how hard for you to let him go. xxx

    I think it is in some ways a good thing that kids tend to stay around their parents longer these days, isn't it, where most of our generation were expected to be living independently after 18? But also perhaps means it is harder to for them to stop carrying the complexity and troubles of their parents' lives as well as their own?

    I believe that for those who survive such a crisis it often becomes a blessing to have met the dark so directly (though god knows I would not wish it for anyone), rather than having it lurk permanently hidden inside you.

    For what my musings are worth - not much. Love is worth more than words and intellectualising in these circumstances.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Richard Lawrence Cohen3:59 PM

    Dear Brenda, What shocking news, and I'm so happy that the outcome is a bright one for Adrian and his family. I know he's a good person and I hope that this crisis is the signal for his life to turn in the positive direction he deserves. It could be a blessing that he's pushed into rehab so soon. I'm thinking of you all with affection and hope.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brenda Clews6:58 PM

    Oh, Jean... there are no easy answers and Adrian and those of us who are closest to him are surely sifting through everything trying to understand what happened, and why, and how to change in the ways that are needed.

    He knows darkness, indeed. His doctor at CAM-h said that he suffers from depression that is biologically-based rather than caused by life experience, and had him on prozac. Though, of course, the therapy was casting blame this way and that and I'm not sure that has been helpful to him.

    Let me go on for a moment with my diatribe on the psychiatric profession. None of us are perfect; therapists, psychiatrists and so on should not expect perfection and should stop the 'therapy of blame' too many of them slip into because it's easier than listening to what the person's saying about themselves. I think that's one reason why I've never managed more than a few months of therapy in my life. They negatively pin-hole you and then start on your relationships. I would want to talk about states of mind, emotional responses, desires and wishes, on memory and connections with others as ongoing, and they would shift things again and again to my primary relationships and cause me to attribute blame to those who, after all and at the end of the day, love me the most. In retrospect, I don't find the whole psychotherapeutic approach very helpful, and neither has my daughter with her tiny experience of it, and perhaps my son also is coming to this conclusion.

    Adrian met the darkness within and faced it directly, he certainly did that. He wrestled with it, and the spirit of life won, I am in tears saying this.

    But whether that success is a bulwark against it happening again, who knows.

    Perhaps each time you go in you come out stronger, a little closer to integrating it?

    He's gone to his Dad's; he may not ever come back here to live, and I may not see him for a long time, or I may see him soon. It's all up in the air.

    It's a time of relief, and a time of uncertainty as to the future.

    Thank you so much, Jean, for your deep understanding, for coming by. xo

    Richard, yes, we did make it through the crisis, though how it will be interpreted and what changes will come out of those interpretations are yet to be determined. Thank you so very much for your compassion and kindness, now and in the past, you have been such a dear friend I can't thank you enough. xo

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Self-Portrait with a Fascinator 2016

On Monday, I walked, buying frames from two stores in different parts of the city, then went to the Art Bar Poetry Series in the evening, ab...