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• Thursday, November 2, 2006 01:49 PM

  re; "saving yourselves"

  "Your father made a life-saving decision, and so have you by choosing to distance yourself. I have recently had to make this same decision regarding a manic friend: there is nothing I can do to change anything, nothing I can do to help. Distancing yourself doesn't hurt these people because they don't have the emotional capacity for visits or contact very often: 1 year or 20 can pass unnoticed by them, and very often as in your case, family members are regarded as the enemy plotters."

  "The cruel selfish truth...Give up as lost the mother you want or remember; grieve her; and then you can get on with living with the mother you've actually got, in whatever way you choose to do that."

  -- Della

  "distancing yourself doesn't hurt these people because they don't have the emotional capacity..."

  You know this? Really? How do you know this?

  While I happen to agree that in situations like this children may have to build boundaries that didn't exist before just to stay sane and not allow the illness to consume them as well, it sounds like you advise abandoning mum altogether. Is this your meaning?

  If you do this to your mom, as opposed to a friend, you will regret it. Maybe not right away-- maybe it won't hit you for 15 or 20 years, but it will.

  —Jonathan Versen Read Jonathan Versen's other letters
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