letting go...when do you realize?

[isabeau]

letting go of something, whether it be a friendship you have tried to salvage, or blaming yourself for something that happened a while back...when is it time to let go? for years i blamed myself for losing the babies..even the doctor at the time, after viewing our genetic report, said to hubby, "At least it isn't your fault". i mean after all it was my body that betrayed me..when do you let go of that guilt or blame? i know of course that i am not really to blame for the deaths of my babies, but still it haunts my dreams at night..and for some people, it can end a marriage..i've been fortunate in that my husband never ever threw it in my face that the fault lay with me..

when do you realize that enough is enough?

 

[milagros317]

Enough guilt is enough right now, Isabeau. Let go of your feelings of guilt over this.

 

[isabeau]

yea the thing is i don't dwell on it at all, but it invades my dreams at night..that's what i hate..that and still dreaming about mom as if she is alive again..that was another thing i blamed myself for, for the longest time..her death..i've come to realize she would die anyway, she chose to, but i felt that i could have done more somehow..

 

[Bugman]

When you go through something like what you did with your mother its normal to feel that way,for a time at least.I went through the same thing after my brothers death.I lived with him and took care of him with very little help for 3 years.And still after he died,i felt that i could have/should have done more.

It took a long time,but i finally came to understand i had done all that could be done for him.I hope you can come to understand that to,and i'm sure you will,then you can have some peace of mind again.

 

[isabeau]

When you go through something like what you did with your mother its normal to feel that way,for a time at least.I went through the same thing after my brothers death.I lived with him and took care of him with very little help for 3 years.And still after he died,i felt that i could have/should have done more.

It took a long time,but i finally came to understand i had done all that could be done for him.I hope you can come to understand that to,and i'm sure you will,then you can have some peace of mind again.

true buggy i realize that...

now about the babies, i've oftened and still wonder what was wrong with me that i wasn't allowed what is perfectly normal for everyone else? even our adoption fell thru at the last moment..

 

[Illtcklu]

true buggy i realize that...

now about the babies, i've oftened and still wonder what was wrong with me that i wasn't allowed what is perfectly normal for everyone else? even our adoption fell thru at the last moment..

Nothing is wrong with you. That's why your husband never threw it in your face. The Doctor was out of line to say it the way he did. That wasn't what he meant, I'm sure.

Lot's of couples don't have kids and they are perfectly content that way. No diapers...........or worrying where they are at night..... or police comming to the door.........


We'll just leave that last statement alone.

 

[DannyMc]

Melanie , when our bodies give out on us , whether in youth or old age are we then to blame ourselves for it ? For the things that are wrong with our bodies that are totally out of our control , for we have no say over them . We didn't cause them to happen they just happened ............ I've told you that you would be a wonderful mother , as loving as any child could wish for . That you and David would be great parents . I'm sorry for all thats happened to you , but remember that you will always be the mother for those babies , and that love , will never die ..........

 

[isabeau]

Melanie , when our bodies give out on us , whether in youth or old age are we then to blame ourselves for it ? For the things that are wrong with our bodies that are totally out of our control , for we have no say over them . We didn't cause them to happen they just happened ............ I've told you that you would be a wonderful mother , as loving as any child could wish for . That you and David would be great parents . I'm sorry for all thats happened to you , but remember that you will always be the mother for those babies , and that love , will never die ..........

o Danny..why is it that your posts make me want to cry? so well-thought out and expressive..and comes from the heart, i can tell..i know you told me that..this is not a feel sorry for me thread..i wanted to find how others let things go that have haunted them, sometimes for years..that's all..

 

[Mastertank1]

In my life there have been situations;

I won't go into the details.
Everyone else tells me I did all that anyone could have, and more than most people would even have attempted.
I blamed myself for not having done enough to prevent anyone from being harmed.
It took years, many many years, to accept that there are just some things I could not have affected or controlled, no matter what I might have tried to do, no matter how comprehensively I might have 'pre-thought' things out or tried to plan for every eventuality.
On situations like these, we all need to hear someone who knows the circumstances keep reminding us that it was not our fault. Someone who cares enough not to give up when we say "Yeah, yeah, I know." Someone who sees past that to realize that we haven't yet really accepted that it wasn't our fault, and still need to hear it over and over again until it penetrates all the way down to the emotional level.
I never had anyone like that in my life, but I've been that person for a few other people who needed it.
You have my number hon; call anytime to talk about this stuff and I'll try to be that person for you.
I'll start now; It was NOT YOUR FAULT that those babies died. It was NOT YOUR FAULT that your mom willed herself dead. There was nothing you could have done to prevent any of those deaths. It's not your fault.

 

[storyteller]

I rarely let go soon enough. That unfortunate habit causes pain for as long as I struggle with letting go and continues while I deal with the "what if I had..." thoughts. Guilt trips, especially self-imposed ones suck. I tell myself--and just about everyone else too!--that things, good and bad, happen when and how they are meant to whether we understand and like them or not. We can only control so much. Believing that helps--a little!

 

[cloudgazer2k]

izzy...i never knew you had to go through such an ordeal.
my more Christian friends would have said that the Lord did it because it wasn't in his plan yet.
me...it's just biology, and sometimes the body just doesn't always work for you.
my mom nearly lost me, and my dad nearly lost the both of us, when i was born. we were lucky, really. but my mom still bears the scars of my birth.
there are times when things we have no control of go the opposite way. things that we hope and pray to be positive go negative in a second. it's human nature to feel bad or guilty about such circumstances...but it is up to the individual as to when the time has come to move on.
i have lost family and friends. disease, war, crime, accidents...this world has taken away people i love dearly. all one can do is to hold them in your heart, your mind, and know that those people are with you. when it comes to losing someone because of an indifference, know that, when the time is right, there can be reconciliation. but, you cannot force it if the parties involved do not want it. that's when you look ahead, wipe away the tears, and go on.
when is enough truly enough? only you can know that. the real question is...are you ready to put it behind you?

 

[isabeau]

yes of course i'm ready to put it behind me..and during my waking hours for the most part i have...it's at night when i'm dreaming that it all comes back to me..how do you control your dreams? i know deep down inside that it wasn't my fault..my only regret now, and will probably this regret will haunt me forever is i was too cowardly to try one more time, even though considered extremely high risk..

and as for my mom, i have put that behind me..once again it's those damn dreams where she crops up..

Illtcklu, yup i have about the best husband in the world..

 

[GodlessTickler]

Well obviously I don't know you or your situation that well, and without much more detailed history than anyone would give out on the Internet, all anyone can do is conjecture. But from a psychological standpoint, often what this kind of thing means, when we "know" something isn't our fault, but we still have nightmares or such and in that we feel guilt, comes from the fact that we don't BELIVE it wasn't our fault. We hear people saying it wasn't, our logic tells us that, and we feel we should accept it for all these reasons, but for whatever reason we have some kind of internal conflict caused by some kind of usually unsubstantiated "but if I..." statement. Some times you need help resolving it. There are many ways to get that help be it friends and loved ones or medical professionals. Please don't take that the wrong way, some people take any suggestion 'maybe you need help" as "telling them they are crazy" or some such. I am just saying that whatever method you find you must COMPLEATLY resolve it within yourself to move on. Particularly with things of such an intensely personal nature, your never going to be able to ignore them so they have to be dealt with.

Also, you have to allow yourself the room to remember, that remembering these things is completely normal... that you more likely never move on from, you just want to move past guilt for something that seems to clearly be beyond your control. Another possibility would be that these dreams are merely mental simulations of an extremely intense time in your life, and at that time you felt guilty, and it is simply restoring that mental state as a part of the simulation. Dreams are very complex things.

As I said I don't know the specifics, but it is usually no more accurate to blame your body for the loss of a baby than to blame a baby born with a congenital heart defect for his own death. And as much as we like to pretend there not, by nature, we can influence other peoples actions but barring extreme measures we have no control over them whatsoever. Many things are just beyond our control. I would hope the doctor didn't mean what he said in the way you took it, if he did as a health care professional it is inexcusable, but it is also easy to read peoples words and actions in such an intensely emotional time in a slanted way.

Above all, I hope you do find peace, and obviously my deepest sympathy goes out to anyone who experiences such a losses.

 

[isabeau]

Thanks Godlesstickler..the doctor at that time meant it exactly as he said..he had ten children of his own, and probably more due on the way, and never tried to understand..i dumped him almost immediately after that..he was never encouraging or compassionate during any of it..

Mastertank thank you..i'll take you up on that offer sometime soon..

 

[chicago]

It depends on the situation.

If there is something that you did wrong, you should feel guilty for an appropriate amount of time, try to fix what you did, and then move on.

However, if it's something that was out of your control, yet you were involved in, and you feel guilty, you shouldn't. You should try to let go of that guilt as fast as you possibly can. Blaming yourself for a situation you're in, yet didn't cause, can make that situation that much worse.

I guess the first step is just realizing you weren't at fault, and go from there. I know it isn't easy as our intelligent selves and our emotional selves don't always seem connected. For instance, one can know it isn't their fault, but still feel horribly guilty.

It's not easy, but I think little by little it gets easier.

 

[isabeau]

true, i know that intelligently it's stupid to blame myself..yet emotions for me anyway, always take over the smart part of my brain..it's just that sometimes, even now, i will find myself saying..my body betrayed me..

anyhoo, thanks TG..damn i feel a bit sillly venting about something so personal on the forum..but sometimes getting a person's perspective that you aren't face to face with on a daily basis is a good thing..rather impersonal advice i suppose..

 

[chicago]

true, i know that intelligently it's stupid to blame myself..yet emotions for me anyway, always take over the smart part of my brain..it's just that sometimes, even now, i will find myself saying..my body betrayed me..

anyhoo, thanks TG..damn i feel a bit sillly venting about something so personal on the forum..but sometimes getting a person's perspective that you aren't face to face with on a daily basis is a good thing..rather impersonal advice i suppose..

I guess what you have to do is just know that that feeling is wrong. It may feel that your brain and your emotions aren't connected, but they do influence one another, so recognizing that you shouldn't feel guilty for what happened, and telling yourself that, will hopefully help you get over those feelings of guilt.

 

[Fire_Sprite]

A lot of people tend to blame themselves for things that aren't their fault. I've lost friends to accidents and disease and have been almost destroyed by their deaths. Always at the forefront of those dark times was guilt. The problem is that emotional problems don't have logical solutions, so there is no way to come to terms with it completely. The best you can do is try to put yourself in a positive place so its easier to heal.

 

[german]

I know for myself I stopped blaming people and myself for what happened to my knee when I found God and the Catholic Church...but I know thats not for everyone nor do I preach it.

What happened to you is tragic...I see it has if the man that loved you enough to start a family never brought it up and remains with you to this day and you yourself release it wasn't your fault; I say that is enough for anyone to let it go.

Torsten

 

[isabeau]

thanks again for your replies and support..and i'm always preaching that looking back is useless lol..and i truly believe that..it's just at times, thoughts come creeping up, say like around three or four in the morning..that's always a killer time to have to lie there and reflect..you can't help but do it..although i do try to think of something fun to relax me and help me drift back into dream land..

once again, it was rather silly of me to air such personal issues on an impersonal, for the most part, forum..however maybe my experiences can help someone else who might have gone through a similar situation.

 

[Eternal Tomboy]

Izzy, I was in a situation with my grandfather several years back that caused me a lot of guilt and heartache. He had lung cancer, and was living with my mother. She had been taking care of him for awhile and needed a bit of a break from it, so she asked if I would sit with him for the weekend while she went upstate. At that point he was pretty much self sufficient, so it was really no big deal.

Well, as the fates would have it, he plummeted that weekend, and went from self sufficient to not even being able to get out of bed. I was only 25 years old at the time and had NO IDEA what to do. Long story short, he died a few days later and I lived with MAJOR guilt that I should have done something more for him during the time we had together. Thoughts and memories from that weekend haunted my dreams for a few years afterwards. Guilt ridden, anxious, and horrible dreams, which like you, I couldn't control with mere logic.

Then an amazing thing happened one night.... I had a dream about him that was completely different in nature. I don't know what your beliefs are about life after death, but I'm of the belief that the people who die before us still keep an eye on us. Well, I think my grandfather knew I was completely twisted with guilt over that weekend, and came to me in the most vivid dream I've ever had....

He walked down a hallway towards me and gave me a hug. He looked down at me with a smile, and said "Okay.... you've got ONE more week to think about all that stuff, and then you're going to let it go!" And then I woke up.

I swear, it was like having him right there in the room with me. So, I did what he told me - for the next week I pondered all the things about that weekend that went wrong, and then tried to think about the handful of things I did that went right (something I hadn't tried before). And then after that week was over, I never had another one of those nightmares about him again. Weird, huh?

I think regrets are okay to have, they are one of the tools we use to learn by. To say, "okay I would like to do things a bit different the next time around" isn't a bad thing. But we can't let the regrets hang over our heads for too long because then they stop being a learning tool and start to make us afraid to try again.

I don't know the whole story with regards to your pregnancy, Iz, but it sounds to me like there wasn't anything you could have done to prevent the miscarriage. I lived through a miscarriage myself, and thought of a million reasons why I might have caused it, but when it comes right down to it, it's just horrible luck.

I only know you by your posts, but it is obvious to me that you have an amazing heart, Iz. It's my prayer that you can somehow find a way to glean some good memories from the painful ones, and let them fill your dreams instead.


Maggie

 

[isabeau]

thank you Daisy for sharing that painful yet wonderful memory with me and others..yes i do believe in life after death..and i'll tell you something also..after my mother died, (she starved to death), i went into a severe depression, blaming myself for her death, wondering what i could have done differently..i had been doing that to myself while she was dying also..i eventually got help for my depression, but still thought mom died hating me..she wouldn't even see me this time, and during her previous episodes,(she had tried this before, but i was able to step in) she always saw and talked to me, no matter in what condition she was..about two months after her death, i also had a dream..mom came to me, so i asked her why she had done it...and she answered as plain as if she had been there with me, that she wanted to go..and the depression left me..also the blame..even though i continued to wonder what i could have done, the blame had for the most part left..except when i would dream about her..but her death and dying were not something i could stop..and i finally came to that conclusion also..