missyj32Casual Contributor
Complex PTSD & Sole Parenting
Hi all,
New to this forum. Am a socially isolated single parent to a little boy & little girl, aged 4 & 6.
My formative years were incredibly unstable, one of four offspring to a single mother with drug & alcohol dependancies and only vocation employed to date in working history in the XXX industry. We were severely neglected and rarely received adult supervision/attendance within the home. Often we were left alone there, while she was out or sleeping through most of the daylight hours. We were in and out of crisis & foster care continuously, with my closest sibling and full blooded brother sporadically spending periods of time in the care of our father's parents.
The four of us were separated, only my closest brother and I remained together in our final placement with our Grandparents at ages 7 & 8 after we were officially ruled under the guardianship of the minister until we reached 18. Our grandparents were strong and structured members in the community & the church, taking active voluntary roles while devoting their lives to seeing my brother and I grow into healthy and happy adults. It was a life rich in all that our beginnings had lacked, attending to our needs. They gave us a beautiful childhood and family to be part of, and many of my memories before this renewed existence are long gone and out of my reach. I have desperately sought to find these loose fragments in order to knit myself into an integrated and functional human being, feeling like there was a monster inside waiting to get me. No success.
becoming a mother has been the most important and nerve wracking experience I could undertake. I have far surpassed many abilities in parenting them that I haD ever experienced from my own mother.
yet in itself, they became triggers 😞
