I caught this mountain sheep lamb rubbing it's head last weekend and the photo turned out well.  Blogger would not accept it at first because the file was too large, but I remembered how to change it to a JPG and voila, Blogger was happy to accept it.  Look at me being all technical.  I still think the PDF means pretty dense file, even though I know it really means portable document format (and yes, I had to look it up because I couldn't remember), but whatever.

Jack's other guardians wanted him to have an unsupervised sleepover at his mom's this weekend and I said no.  I stood up for myself, and for Jack.  Every time his grandma and aunt have said, Jack's mom is fine, she's not and this has caused so much trauma for Jack.  I told grandma that and requested a guardian meeting before anything like unsupervised sleepovers happen.  My husband and I want to see Gracie's apartment, we want proof that she has changed, that she's capable of keeping Jack safe.  Haven't heard back.

When we went to my niece's wedding last fall, Jack stayed at his grandma's house and she was supposed to be supervising Jack's mom, but she went out to a Halloween party.  Jack's mom watched a scary movie that Jack saw as well, and now almost seven months later, Jack is still sleeping in our beds because he's too scared to sleep alone.

Stuff like this has happened again and again over the past four years and my husband and I are left to deal with the consequences.  I also said that to grandma, and the fact that I'm giving up my retirement to raise my grandson.  Jack's mom continues to lie to him about her drinking, drug use, and past behavior and has never apologized to him or us for all of the shit she has put us through.  Not to mention the huge issues Jack has around seeing any kind of alcohol.  We start seeing a new counselor next week to help Jack deal with his trauma attachment problems.  

I felt uncomfortable saying all of this but nothing I said was untrue and keeping it inside of me is leading to resentment, not towards Jack but towards his mom, his grandma, and his aunt.  It's so hard for me to do this but I'm tired of being everyone's doormat.

Otherwise, life is fine.  Katie has been fine.  My son was happy to report that he is now signing the hour cards for the temp workers at the construction company he's working at.  A year ago, he was the temp worker needing his card signed.  He's doing well and starts at NAIT in the fall to do his first year of carpentry.  I'm proud of him.  He's in his forties now and it would be easy for him to just lay down and feel sorry for himself, but he's working two jobs and sees both his sons now.  He still has work to do but it's a beginning and I'm thankful for that.

I'm reading a new book for our Pottery Book Club, "The Correspondent" by Virginia Evans and I'm enjoying it. It's a book of letters that the main character has written over the years so at first it seems one sided but when I started thinking about it, that's how we live our lives, one sided.  None of us really knows how other people think or feel, except what they choose to tell us, and even then, many people (myself included), don't understand why they do the things they do.

Self reflection is hard and uncomfortable and requires some maturity I think.  God knows I had very little self reflection as a young woman.  It was all about me, me, me.  After Katie, everything changed and even now, writing her name brings tears to me eyes.  My counselor asked me if I thought I had any PTSD and I'm going to go with yes.  Katie's diagnosis and my life since then changed me.  Maybe Katie and I are too closely enmeshed.  I found this article.

"The causes of enmeshment can vary. Sometimes there is an event or series of occurrences in a family's history that necessitates a parent becoming protective in their child's life, such as an illness, trauma, or significant social problems in elementary school. At this time the parent steps in to intervene. While this intervention may have been appropriate at the time, some parents get stuck using that same approach in new settings and become overly involved in the day to day interactions of their children.

Other times, and perhaps more frequently, enmeshment occurs as a result of family patterns being passed down through the generations. It is a result of family and personal boundaries becoming more and more permeable, undifferentiated, and fluid. This may be because previous generations were loose in their personal boundaries and so it was learned by the next generation to do the same. Or it may be a conscious decision to stay away from family patterns of a previous generation that felt overly rigid in its personal boundaries."

It was an interesting read and something for me to think about.  Certainly Katie and I are far too close because when she hurts, I hurt and vice versa.  

On the upside, I am practicing letting go of my emotions, naming them, feeling them, and then moving on.  When I'm very upset and ready to cry (often), I use techniques to quiet my mind, like naming things that I can see to get my mind out of it's rut.  It's been helping.  I'm learning new tricks:)