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Motherless Mothers
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Anonymous
| There are often times I miss having a mom. Both MIL and mom are detached, non-participatory and selfish. [Yes, I've tried reaching out, that is how I know.] Anyone else? How do you cope? What do you tell the children about their grandparents? Thanks. |
Anonymous
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With MIL, I blame the gap on distance.
Thankfully, my mom is close by and completely supportive and loving. |
Anonymous
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OP, I mean this kindly, so please don't take it the wrong way. I am an actual motherless mother--my mother passed away twelve years ago. You still have the opportunity to repair relations with your mother; you are not truly motherless. As someone who knows what it is really like to have no mother, literally, please reapir things before it is too late.
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Anonymous
| I don't mean to be snarky but I think you need to remember that you are the one with issues with the grandmothers, not your kids. You're kids don't know any better. How you want your kids to feel about them is entirely up to you. If you're matter of fact about the distance (physical and emotional), then it will be no big deal to your kids. As my own grandmother said about living through the Great Depression - they didn't know there was one because they weren't living any different than they always had. My father is an incredibly violent alcoholic and I have no contact with him. My kids don't miss him at all because I give them no indication that they're missing anything. |
Anonymous
pp, I'm sorry for your loss. I just recently loss my father and it's so difficult when your kids were close to the parent. While I think your advice was good, some times no matter what you do there is no way to repair the relationship and sometimes it's not repairing that needs to be done because it's simply a matter of the parent/grandparent being a selfish person that will never change. My grandmother was this way and my mother did try to get her to spend time with us I realized as I got older it was always about my grandmother and she was never going to change. I was right, she didn't up until the day she died. |
Anonymous
pp here, and to the OP, I don't have much advice except that my mom never spoke bad about my grandmother until I was old enough (like late teens) to make the observation myself and initiate the conversation. She then simply agreed that she had always been that way and if anyone pointed it out to her she would go off on you and not speak to you until the next time she needed something from you. |
Anonymous
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OP it is so hard. I struggle with it constantly. I have no one to lean on. I get so jealous of my friends with moms who babysit, send care packages, bring soup when they are sick, let them be a brat every once in awhile and not judge them. I'm trying to be the mother I never had, but it is draining. I would love someone to love ME like I love my kids. It wasn't in the cards. I don't know how to tell you to cope, but know you aren't alone.
And to the poster with the deceased mother, I am so very sorry for you loss. I hope your happy memories bring you some comfort. I have none of those. Believe me when I say there are things in life worse than death. |
Anonymous
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As an ACTUAL motherless mother, I expected this post to be about what it was like to raise kids when your mom is gone. There is a book Motherless daughters, and a later book by the same author, Motherless Mothers. That is what I thought this was about.
OP, you are not motherless. Some of us actually are. So why don't you try and repair the relationship and be grateful that you are not stuck telling your kids about the Grandma ___ that lives in heaven, but loves them very much from up there. |
Anonymous
| 19:02 why don't YOU be grateful that you had a nice mother worth remembering. I'd take 5 years with one of those over the 30 I've had with mine. Do you even GET that some people have HORRIBLE parents? Like, abusive, thieving, crazy as hell parents? At least you had a role model. I have to figure out how to be a mother by watching movies and stealing moments I observe in others. Get your head out your ass. |
Anonymous
I'm sorry but that just struck me as funny. 
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Anonymous
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OP,
So sorry. Do you they do anything grandmotherly? Holidays? Birthdays? As for what to tell the children, it depends on their ages. |
Anonymous
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Wow. Settle down, people. It's not a competition to see who has suffered the worst loss.
I think 19:02 and the other poster were just suprised at the content of the post, given the title of the thread, and thought they would open a thread about their own experience--a deceased mother. I'm really sorry for your situation, OP. It sounds like it has caused you a lot of pain and struggle throughout your life and I'm sure you are re-living a lot of your childhood pain now that you are a mother. I have no advice for you, just sympathy. My sympathies to the posters with deceased mothers, as well. |
Anonymous
Yup, try having a mother who allowed her 5yr old daughter to be raped by her drunk father and lock herself in her bedroom with her sister while the brutality went on. Is that something to be grateful for. What do YOU think 19:02? Are those your memories? |
Anonymous
I can relate to this post very much. My mom is still living, she lives about 4 hrs from me and has been to my house once. I can literally count on one hand the number of times she has called me in my entire adult life (I'm 37.) She's like a stranger in so many ways. If she weren't a facebook friend, we'd have no relationship. I don't think she's an inherently bad person, just very detached. I used to feel lonely and frankly unloved or at least unlucky when I was a kid and the other kids had parents who seemed to care about them, would go to school functions and sports games, or just say "I love you" to their kids. When I was very young I'd ask why so and so's mom did such and such and mine didn't and she would just say that kid was spoiled and no one would like them when they grow up. I'm currently TTC and I seriously doubt my children will have any relationship with my mom and I'm even debating whether to tell her when I do have a baby. My step dad was somewhat abusive/neglectful growing up and my mom worked swing shift so she was never around and when I would tell her about what he had done the night before she would either say it wasn't true or if she quit we'd have to go on welfare and it would be my fault. As far as I'm concerned she hasn't earned the right to be around any child of mine. A couple of months ago I took the 2 kids I nanny to my friend's house and she lives across the road from my parents. (The kids parents were out of town in another state.) I had taken both kids on a train w/ all of their things by myself for 3 hrs, arranged for my friend to meet us and then my mom wondered if I was going to visit them. I had gone all that way and she couldn't even bother to walk across the road (it's a little farther than just walking across the street.) I didn't visit because 1. I thought she should make some sort of effort 2. There wasn't any point to bringing someone else's kids for her to meet and 3. I don't think they've earned the right to be around kids. So my kids won't have any grandparents (my dad died of alcoholism when I was 14) and that's going to have to be OK. |
Anonymous
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omg
Prison is too good for those sexual predators. Even death is too good.
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