The conversation with my parents did not go well, right. Which left me with two options. The first was to fight back, stand my ground, force the issue, make my point. The second option was to continue my Forgiveness Practice, as well as meet them with love, vulnerability and openness. The second option, for me, is scary. I want to fight. I want to have my say. I want to prove my point. I want to win this power struggle.

This power struggle has been ongoing for decades. It is not new. Their reactions are not new. My Dad being silent. My Mum using silence to command her dominance. In short, they are hurt little kids inside. Just like my initial approach to try and meet them where they are at when they first got here, I didn’t logically think through and decide this approach. No, it came to me in the form of: I will just keep being myself, I will show my love and kindness, and if they want to reject me in spite of that, then so be it. That will be on them, not me.

Turns out this counterintuitive approach for me actually caused some change, some movement. Firstly movement below the surface. I didn’t broach the issue when I woke in the morning. Instead I asked how they slept, “Good.” Second, I asked if they wanted to play some cards. Nothing like a little bit of friendly competition and a bit of table talk to get the winner out in everyone. I think it went a long way for me to lose in a drastic fashion. When I play cards, I turn up the chat whether I am winning or losing. I like being dramatic and over the top in cards, maybe in life. Nah, not in life. I guess I experience so many ups and downs in life, it is fun to be playing a role. A chance to not be my regular self. Oddly, am I being my regular self when I am doing this? Does my depression and anxiety get in the way of my playfulness? Of course.

So after the card game was approaching the end, I decided to broach the subject of the hangover from our Difficult Conversation. I admitted I did not want to be trigger happy with the approach. Yesterday felt like all the suggestions were coming out guns blazing, tearing everything down. I was raw yesterday. Very raw. Before the Difficult Conversation I was physically shaking from the emotions I was feeling. I can’t even name how I was feeling, that’s how intense it was. I said the things I was most afraid to say. The things that I had forgotten to bring up in our previous Difficult Conversation. When I get into these discussions, or honestly any discussion, I forget so much. I forget what I have said, I forget the point I was making, I forget the point I just made, I forget where I was going. It’s for sure the symptoms of Word Vomit. My memory is currently under reconstruction, after all. This rephrasing of my usual, decades long mantra of ‘I have a bad memory’. My memory isn’t bad, I don’t want to talk down to it, shame it. I am longing for it to return to me, whole, complete, functioning. Still not sure if it is false hope holding onto this longing for it. I won’t give up on it. I can’t give up on it.

See what I mean by Word Vomit. What am I trying to say here?

Oh yeah, so I don’t want to be trigger happy. I want to go slow. I need more time to think. I want to make a plan together. I want them to think about what they would be comfortable actioning. I could see their thinking faces at this point, the defences came down a little. We then talked about a pause button. I was explicit in saying what we were undertaking was repair, and there is no pause button on repair. We can pause on the Plan of Attack. We need more information for the Plan of Attack. We found common ground, finally. A small, fractured piece of solid footing where we could rest for a moment.

We went to lunch and while waiting for the hostess, my Mum asked me to ‘come here’. She wanted to hug me. The night before when I had asked her the same, she had rolled her eyes and barely touched me in return. I cared of course about her lack of response. I wanted to give my Mum a hug, and I did. I did it warmly and embracingly. I took the course of action I was most proud of. I cannot control her responses to me. I am only just realising as I type this that I didn’t know that was what I was doing. I didn’t know I was accepting her response as her responsibility.

What can we control? Only ourselves.

Repair is possible. Repair is only possible when two sides are willing to sit as equals at the same table. If you don’t have that part of the puzzle, it’s not actually repair. It’s trying to be right. It’s trying to be above the other.

I don’t know.

Today turned out way more expansive than I imagined it would when I woke this morning. Maybe just trying ‘the universe is conspiring *for* me’ mantra holds a lot more power than I realised.

Does everything work out in the end? Asking for a friend.

Lots of love,

Kate