EJCasual Contributor
Thinking of walking away from daughter and grandaughter
I am new to this forum this is my first post and I feel terrible even posting this but this is where I am at. I am hoping there are other people out there who may experience similar.
I have a 25 year old daughter who has a history of suicide attempts, drug use and abusive relationships. I have held a lot of compassion for her and understanding around this being a trauma respnse to her history including childhood sexual abuse. I have had to set very strong boundaries with her in the past to keep her safe and myself to the point she was homeless because having her at home was no longer safe due to so many things including her being abusive and high risk taking behaviours and associating with high risk people. We both come from a long history of trauma in our family so she has no one else but me and I have no contact with other family either as its not safe to do so and they are very judgemental towards her struggles.
She now has a 2 year old daughter who she struggles to care for and is consistently trying to get me to take on more care of brcause she frequentlyneeds a break. . Im happy to go to her house and help with cleaning and bathing the night time routine but if I dont have my grandaughter every week overnight my daughter becomes unbearable to be around. My grandaughter is also in full time care so my daughter gets a break 5 days out of 7. My daughter tells me she doesnt have to thank me for what I do that Im her mother I should just be doing these things. That she shouldn't have to care about me because Im the mother I should be caring more for her. Im sure other people have experienced the years of attending to crisis situations to being in their childs good books then being the focus of their childs rage and this is the situation I have been in for so many years I just dont feel I have it in me to keep supporting her anymore. I eat well, I go to the gym go to therapy but have no friendships at present every time I try to start a friendship or relationship my daughters needs out weigh everything and I find other people dont understandthe situation. . My daughter will threaten to self harm to get me to respond immediately. She had child protection involvement previously so she wont allow me to phone emergency services to get her support she tells me I will never see my grandaughter again if I do. As hard as it would be to walk away from my granddaughter who I just love so much and daughter I just feel like I want peace I want a life where I dont have to keep responding to her crisis its incredibly draining I feel exhausted.She has been in therapy for about 6 months which has been good for her she is now engaged in TAFE has stopped using drugs as often but she still targets me frequently.Im sick of having to withstand her abuse I have a history of being abused and I work in domestic violence and sexual assault which I love but I dont want to be abused in my own life anymore. I really need to focus on work Im 50 I need to think about setting myself up for some type of quality in retirement in 17 years. I have been in therapy for around 20 years and was a yoga teacher Ive tried very hard to set up good things in my life but I can't maintain it. My daughter can be verbally abusive and extremely manipulative its just never ending. I feel like my daughter would take anything from me with absolutely no regard for me or my feelings and genuinely think that this was her right to have it because Im here to serve her. Is anyone else going through anything similar? If so Id love to connect or hear your insights. Thankyou for reading this 🙏🏾
