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The writer asks: "How do I talk to my sister? How do I deal with my mother? How do I help my family heal? And is there really no way I can help my mother get well?"
I've been there, and my answers are: You are not a shrink; you are not a saint; you are not the family savior; and, yes, there really is no way to help your mother get well. Love does not conquer psychosis.
My late mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who was finally diagnosed when I was in my late teens. Luckily my "collapse of optimism" and "surrendering the dream" happened shortly thereafter. I'd hated her so much, but when I found out she was ill, and that neither I nor anyone else in my family was causing her to become irrational and cruel, all my anger and guilt dropped away. I think this is why I've never felt the need to participate in a support group, because I've long accepted the reality of Mom's illness and the fact that, no matter how much I wished it, I could not make her well.
Self-preservation led me see Mom as little as possible. She never took her medication. Our visits were always brief and cordial, and I somehow succeeded in never saying anything that might provoke her. The price of that level of self-control was that it would take me a week to recover my equilibrium, and at some point I realized that my love for her had turned into mere coping.
And when I say I loved my mom, I mean the sweet, kind, and beautiful mother I had as a small child, before her illness overwhelmed her true nature.
It's forty years since Mom was diagnosed, twelve since she died. I have my own family now (and I'm now a grandmother), and it's the family I wish I'd grown up in. I married a man who, when we were first dating, didn't flee screaming into the night the first time he was cornered by my articulate, raging mom. He's been my rock ever since.
I wish the letter-writer happiness and some peace in her life, and above all, that she will stop expecting herself to heal those things that can never be healed.
