I love reading your substack column especially your recopies. Oh the mama wound. It's definitely not fair. Of her 4 children, I was the least favorite. However, guess who stepped up to take care of her? My saving grace was something I heard an AA woman say at the International Woman's conference in Cleveland Ohio so many years ago. "I have surrendered to become the best version of myself. In doing so I will take care of her better than she took care of me." I keep telling myself she did the best she could with what she had. Simple but not easy. Love, Kat
Powerful. Nadia I am so grateful for your wisdom and my ability to support you. My go to for 3 decades was a shot of dope. For the past almost 15 it's been the Spirit of the Living God. Thanks for helping me connect :)
I preached a sermon about just this thing. It was titled "Don't let it take away your Christianity." About how things that hurt us, or life that vexes us can turn us away from our core tenents of Love your neighbor as yourself. And Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. It was about my mom, who took care of her elderly stepmother after the stepmother had abused my mom's dad after 30 years of marriage. Mom said it was the most difficult thing she has ever done. Throughout the process, she kept saying, "Don't let it take away your Christianity."
It is one thing to say “love your neighbor” when the neighbor bakes you pies. It is another to say it when the neighbor once swung a hammer at your family’s foundation. Holding on to your faith in that kind of furnace isn’t naïve. It is stubborn holiness.
Thank you, Nadia, and ELISSA for asking the question. I, too, am caring for 94-year old distant and self-focused mom, who has always found it hard to show love. I do not have siblings to help, but thankfully, good friends. She fell twice this spring, I had to empty out her apartment, and now she is in extended living facility where I see here 4-7 times a week. EVERY visit I must find ways to buoy myself before and after. In
69 and have been her care giver for that many years. The Serenity Prayer helps as I make my way through what is mine to change, or accept. This post has many nuggets for me, and I will read over and over and pay attention to the grace moments.
So many perfect reminders for our imperfect human souls.
My mother, 91, could not show up for me as a kid— that’s intentional language that helps me now. She cared for my alcoholic father who took up all the energy in our house until my teens when, thank God, he got sober for good.
Now I help her and her bitter, complaining self as much as I can— knowing she can’t really accept it graciously because she was raised, herself, as a child of an alcoholic womanizer, and her needs as the youngest child were never seen or mended either.
We heal ourselves and move forward… we raise healthy children as best we can, moving all of us forward, generation to generation.
Thank you, Natalie, for always finding the words to turn our hard experiences into grace.
I’ve found that when someone is treating me poorly or displays behaviors that I consider reprehensible, finding compassion for them can help me to get to caring. I think about WHY they are acting out, what trauma in their history made them the way they are? None of us become mean or belligerent or cold without something causing it. Compassion helps ♥️
I had not spoken or communicated with my mother for two years before she passed. She was 95. My whole life was dedicated to her happiness and her financial survival. The two years of noncommunication were for me to heal. I passed my mother over to my two sisters who took care of her in the end. I didn’t get to say goodbye and maybe, just maybe, that was a mistake. A lack of grace on my part. It certainly caused a lot of nasty words to be said behind my back. But that is nothing new. I did not have a healthy or loving family dynamic.
I worked through a ton before deciding to have no contact with my mother. I find myself lucky and full of God‘s grace for having found my self-love at 65. I am not perfect, but I am now self preserving.
This may be grist for the mill, (or not) but I don’t believe we have an obligation to cruel parents in their old age even if they’re cruelty was because they themselves had cruel parents. It’s not their fault, but it has a chain reaction. It is certainly controversial. Not that anybody’s going to read this comment but I can’t help anyone if I’m dead. And dead I would have been had I kept up the façade through her last two years on this earth.
I am not perfect nor have I ever claimed to be. I don’t claim to be full of grace or always compassionate. My mother was not my enemy, but neither was she my friend. I tried for 65 years to receive some love, but two years before she died, I was suffocating to the point of having to make an unbearable decision.
There has been an estrangement in my family. I was unwilling to sacrifice myself any longer and for that I have been sentenced to being selfish. In that regard, I’d rather love myself than not.
Sometimes it looks like stepping back before you disappear entirely.
You didn’t choose self-love over your mother. You chose it over self-erasure. And while people will call that selfish, it might be the first honest kind of love you’ve ever been able to give—to yourself.
I absolutely agree with this. I think you made the right decision to walk away & not to play the martyr. Christianity is full of fake self sacrifice. Well done. I wish you well on your journey.
Since junior high (mid 50s), I had a hard time focusing on Sunday sermons, even though my sainted grandparents and parents encouraged me to find meaning in them. It wasn't until I had graduated from university (degrees in French Lit and in History) that I began some honest conversations with my favorite French prof, a WWII vet who fought his way up the Italian peninsula and learned several new languages in the process. He'd make time for me, a fledgling high school teacher) to listen to my complaints and to my questions. The rigidity of the administration's ideas at that time caused me once to blurt out: Why ME? Why ME? And this beloved man, an expert in seventeenth-eighteenth century French philosophy, returned a simple answer that I've always found so important: Why NOT you? As if I had done anything to escape or avert the struggles coming my way. I didn't have a voice in their creation, and yet I must find a voice to respond. Why NOT me? Well, that has stuck with me since (thanks, Marc), and it's become a somewhat comforting means to deal with life's frustrations. I'm not looking to be a superman, a stoic, a pollyannish puppet with no humanity; rather, I try my best to understand a situation, to look at my own response repertoire, and then select the one(s) that can best be used. I might be defeated (I'm expert at that), and I might succeed (also somewhat of an expert). I always try to find ways to do my best, to do so with love and compassion, and to be as open to the needs of the others. And, yes, working with Alzheimer's patients/parents is one of life's greatest challenges. Remember your humanity and her/his limitations. Hold hands, speak gently, recall their histories from long ago, enjoy a laugh from your childhood, focus on what is going on around them and not on their infirmities. Somehow, value them as human beings. Their reality is no longer your reality. And, limit your access )use a calendar) so that each visit becomes a 'new' experience. Finally, find a good friend who can listen to you uncritically. As we kids of the mid 60s liked to say: Keep on keepin' on.
Oh how I love this letter and your response! This was my exact experience during my mother’s 10 year battle with Alzheimer’s (she passed in 2024). In the beginning I struggled and railed against the unfairness of all of it… It was terrible to be responsible for the care of a woman who abandoned me at age 2. Why me?! Part of the answer is that there was no one else and I couldn’t put her out on the street. I eventually grew into the answer that this role that was foisted upon me was never about her or what she had earned or even deserved - it was about me. Who do I want to be in this world? What do I want to role model and pass on to my own children? I opted for kindness and compassion - even in the absence of love there can be found an empathy. For 10 long years the claiming of compassion for my own sake carried me through. With Alzheimer’s there is no “closure”, but there were moments which felt divinely guided. I feel closer to her now that she is gone than when she was here. Sending you love & prayers that you find your own way through this messy time of life to peace.
As the youngest of three, I carry the 'disease load' in the family. Addiction, diagnoses, and not a little insanity. Lost child. Abandoned child. Surrender is the only thing I have found that can bring me ever so slightly closer to being restored to 'sanity'. It helps to know that others have trudged this road before me and that I can sometimes help those who are not as far along on their journey as I. Acceptance is the key to my relationship with God today.
Thank you Elissa for asking the question that so many of us want answered. I have been my 94 year old mother's care taker for 20 years now. About 2 years ago I was at my breaking point, and didn't know if I could do it anymore. I broke down one night, after so many years of an unloving relationship with her I was just tired. But then the Holy Spirit reminded me of forgiveness. So I sat at my kitchen table and forgave my mother out loud for all the past I was still holding against her. It poured out in sobs and cries. And a burden lifted that only
God can do. Then a miracle happened, or maybe it was just her dementia, but I chose God on this one, but she changed and became sweet. Seriously, my Mom has never been sweet! Trust me, there are still some days that are tough, but I am quick to forgive her that night.
Thank you Nadia for your powerful words and wisdom. His grace is definitely my float.
What a perfect question, Elissa. We are not yet at the Medicaid stage, but otherwise i can relate. My mother cared for me the best way she knew how, but it was not in the ways I needed, so it felt like there was little care. At her age of 87 we have an understanding. There were ways in which I wasn't the daughter she expected, and she wasn't the mother I needed, and it's ok now because we've simply come to terms with being who we are now. I'm lucky to have endured some events that helped me understand that life is not fair (a phrase I, too, was loose with when my children complained.) Your journey sounds very fraught and one that leaves you feeling like a dry husk. I hope you can find a way to bear it. I'm headed there. My mom only texts me several times a day, but we're getting there. Wishing you peace.
Thank you for your wisdom and your heart. And taking the time to answer 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Dear Elissa,
I love reading your substack column especially your recopies. Oh the mama wound. It's definitely not fair. Of her 4 children, I was the least favorite. However, guess who stepped up to take care of her? My saving grace was something I heard an AA woman say at the International Woman's conference in Cleveland Ohio so many years ago. "I have surrendered to become the best version of myself. In doing so I will take care of her better than she took care of me." I keep telling myself she did the best she could with what she had. Simple but not easy. Love, Kat
All the very best luck to you dear in your situation!! 🙏🙏🙏
Powerful. Nadia I am so grateful for your wisdom and my ability to support you. My go to for 3 decades was a shot of dope. For the past almost 15 it's been the Spirit of the Living God. Thanks for helping me connect :)
Some people swap one poison for another.
You traded yours for breath and presence.
Fifteen years of choosing Spirit over the old escape hatch is its own kind of miracle, and you carry it every day you wake up and keep saying yes.
I preached a sermon about just this thing. It was titled "Don't let it take away your Christianity." About how things that hurt us, or life that vexes us can turn us away from our core tenents of Love your neighbor as yourself. And Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. It was about my mom, who took care of her elderly stepmother after the stepmother had abused my mom's dad after 30 years of marriage. Mom said it was the most difficult thing she has ever done. Throughout the process, she kept saying, "Don't let it take away your Christianity."
That’s a sermon you live more than you preach.
It is one thing to say “love your neighbor” when the neighbor bakes you pies. It is another to say it when the neighbor once swung a hammer at your family’s foundation. Holding on to your faith in that kind of furnace isn’t naïve. It is stubborn holiness.
Thank you, Nadia, and ELISSA for asking the question. I, too, am caring for 94-year old distant and self-focused mom, who has always found it hard to show love. I do not have siblings to help, but thankfully, good friends. She fell twice this spring, I had to empty out her apartment, and now she is in extended living facility where I see here 4-7 times a week. EVERY visit I must find ways to buoy myself before and after. In
69 and have been her care giver for that many years. The Serenity Prayer helps as I make my way through what is mine to change, or accept. This post has many nuggets for me, and I will read over and over and pay attention to the grace moments.
Can’t float if fighting,
remind us Nadia and grace.
Fight less and float more~~~
So many perfect reminders for our imperfect human souls.
My mother, 91, could not show up for me as a kid— that’s intentional language that helps me now. She cared for my alcoholic father who took up all the energy in our house until my teens when, thank God, he got sober for good.
Now I help her and her bitter, complaining self as much as I can— knowing she can’t really accept it graciously because she was raised, herself, as a child of an alcoholic womanizer, and her needs as the youngest child were never seen or mended either.
We heal ourselves and move forward… we raise healthy children as best we can, moving all of us forward, generation to generation.
Thank you, Natalie, for always finding the words to turn our hard experiences into grace.
I’ve found that when someone is treating me poorly or displays behaviors that I consider reprehensible, finding compassion for them can help me to get to caring. I think about WHY they are acting out, what trauma in their history made them the way they are? None of us become mean or belligerent or cold without something causing it. Compassion helps ♥️
You are such a powerful voice for the times we are in. So grateful for you! #changemaker 💪🙏💜
I had not spoken or communicated with my mother for two years before she passed. She was 95. My whole life was dedicated to her happiness and her financial survival. The two years of noncommunication were for me to heal. I passed my mother over to my two sisters who took care of her in the end. I didn’t get to say goodbye and maybe, just maybe, that was a mistake. A lack of grace on my part. It certainly caused a lot of nasty words to be said behind my back. But that is nothing new. I did not have a healthy or loving family dynamic.
I worked through a ton before deciding to have no contact with my mother. I find myself lucky and full of God‘s grace for having found my self-love at 65. I am not perfect, but I am now self preserving.
This may be grist for the mill, (or not) but I don’t believe we have an obligation to cruel parents in their old age even if they’re cruelty was because they themselves had cruel parents. It’s not their fault, but it has a chain reaction. It is certainly controversial. Not that anybody’s going to read this comment but I can’t help anyone if I’m dead. And dead I would have been had I kept up the façade through her last two years on this earth.
I am not perfect nor have I ever claimed to be. I don’t claim to be full of grace or always compassionate. My mother was not my enemy, but neither was she my friend. I tried for 65 years to receive some love, but two years before she died, I was suffocating to the point of having to make an unbearable decision.
There has been an estrangement in my family. I was unwilling to sacrifice myself any longer and for that I have been sentenced to being selfish. In that regard, I’d rather love myself than not.
Sometimes grace looks like showing up.
Sometimes it looks like stepping back before you disappear entirely.
You didn’t choose self-love over your mother. You chose it over self-erasure. And while people will call that selfish, it might be the first honest kind of love you’ve ever been able to give—to yourself.
It was my friend. Well met.
I absolutely agree with this. I think you made the right decision to walk away & not to play the martyr. Christianity is full of fake self sacrifice. Well done. I wish you well on your journey.
Since junior high (mid 50s), I had a hard time focusing on Sunday sermons, even though my sainted grandparents and parents encouraged me to find meaning in them. It wasn't until I had graduated from university (degrees in French Lit and in History) that I began some honest conversations with my favorite French prof, a WWII vet who fought his way up the Italian peninsula and learned several new languages in the process. He'd make time for me, a fledgling high school teacher) to listen to my complaints and to my questions. The rigidity of the administration's ideas at that time caused me once to blurt out: Why ME? Why ME? And this beloved man, an expert in seventeenth-eighteenth century French philosophy, returned a simple answer that I've always found so important: Why NOT you? As if I had done anything to escape or avert the struggles coming my way. I didn't have a voice in their creation, and yet I must find a voice to respond. Why NOT me? Well, that has stuck with me since (thanks, Marc), and it's become a somewhat comforting means to deal with life's frustrations. I'm not looking to be a superman, a stoic, a pollyannish puppet with no humanity; rather, I try my best to understand a situation, to look at my own response repertoire, and then select the one(s) that can best be used. I might be defeated (I'm expert at that), and I might succeed (also somewhat of an expert). I always try to find ways to do my best, to do so with love and compassion, and to be as open to the needs of the others. And, yes, working with Alzheimer's patients/parents is one of life's greatest challenges. Remember your humanity and her/his limitations. Hold hands, speak gently, recall their histories from long ago, enjoy a laugh from your childhood, focus on what is going on around them and not on their infirmities. Somehow, value them as human beings. Their reality is no longer your reality. And, limit your access )use a calendar) so that each visit becomes a 'new' experience. Finally, find a good friend who can listen to you uncritically. As we kids of the mid 60s liked to say: Keep on keepin' on.
Oh how I love this letter and your response! This was my exact experience during my mother’s 10 year battle with Alzheimer’s (she passed in 2024). In the beginning I struggled and railed against the unfairness of all of it… It was terrible to be responsible for the care of a woman who abandoned me at age 2. Why me?! Part of the answer is that there was no one else and I couldn’t put her out on the street. I eventually grew into the answer that this role that was foisted upon me was never about her or what she had earned or even deserved - it was about me. Who do I want to be in this world? What do I want to role model and pass on to my own children? I opted for kindness and compassion - even in the absence of love there can be found an empathy. For 10 long years the claiming of compassion for my own sake carried me through. With Alzheimer’s there is no “closure”, but there were moments which felt divinely guided. I feel closer to her now that she is gone than when she was here. Sending you love & prayers that you find your own way through this messy time of life to peace.
As the youngest of three, I carry the 'disease load' in the family. Addiction, diagnoses, and not a little insanity. Lost child. Abandoned child. Surrender is the only thing I have found that can bring me ever so slightly closer to being restored to 'sanity'. It helps to know that others have trudged this road before me and that I can sometimes help those who are not as far along on their journey as I. Acceptance is the key to my relationship with God today.
Doing the next right thing as much as possible.
Bless you all.
God's resistless grace. So beautiful 🥺
Nadia, this was a blessing to read today. There's so much I want to share-- perhaps another time, and place. God bless you. xx Steph
Thank you Elissa for asking the question that so many of us want answered. I have been my 94 year old mother's care taker for 20 years now. About 2 years ago I was at my breaking point, and didn't know if I could do it anymore. I broke down one night, after so many years of an unloving relationship with her I was just tired. But then the Holy Spirit reminded me of forgiveness. So I sat at my kitchen table and forgave my mother out loud for all the past I was still holding against her. It poured out in sobs and cries. And a burden lifted that only
God can do. Then a miracle happened, or maybe it was just her dementia, but I chose God on this one, but she changed and became sweet. Seriously, my Mom has never been sweet! Trust me, there are still some days that are tough, but I am quick to forgive her that night.
Thank you Nadia for your powerful words and wisdom. His grace is definitely my float.
Peace -
Barb
What a perfect question, Elissa. We are not yet at the Medicaid stage, but otherwise i can relate. My mother cared for me the best way she knew how, but it was not in the ways I needed, so it felt like there was little care. At her age of 87 we have an understanding. There were ways in which I wasn't the daughter she expected, and she wasn't the mother I needed, and it's ok now because we've simply come to terms with being who we are now. I'm lucky to have endured some events that helped me understand that life is not fair (a phrase I, too, was loose with when my children complained.) Your journey sounds very fraught and one that leaves you feeling like a dry husk. I hope you can find a way to bear it. I'm headed there. My mom only texts me several times a day, but we're getting there. Wishing you peace.