Nancy Deren’s comment on my previous blog was also quite illuminating. I agree, it must be very difficult for Amy to observe Beth and think “I could have had that too.” And I would be the first to say that different genetics and different choices are what created such a diverse response in my two daughters. This gets me back to the age old chicken-or-egg controversy. There is no way I can adequately describe the Herculean effort I made to get Amy to understand what she was throwing away… what she was rejecting time after time after time. We had countless “conversations” (soliloquy is a better term, as she usually shut down and glassed over.) I tried “make nice” and “in your face” and absolutely EVERYTHING in between to get her moving, get her to make some changes. (Of course, we did multiple kinds of therapy with multiple therapists and as I stated in a previous blog, she said, "I know what I need to do but I don't want to do it.") She refused to do the work, to take the risk. I get that it was/is hard for her, but what else am I to do? So I have to admit, I have to state, it is really hard for me to have sympathy for where she is right now. And I appreciate that Nancy Deren acknowledged that sympathy was much easier from a distance.


I don’t have any magic answers for this. Believe me, I wish I did. How do I erase my feelings over having tried so hard to have a relationship with her, only to have her reject it again and again, and then be jealous of her happy sister who made better choices? For me to have no response to that, no emotional difficulties over that, would be Christian agape love to be sure… but I can’t do it nearly as well as I’d like to. I love her like a human mom, and as a human mom I am sorely wounded.


I must also add that I have made a concerted effort to not “muddle in her affairs” and have left any “dealings” with her up to her Dad. I don’t ask things she doesn’t want to answer. I try and ask the “nice things” and be interested. Of course, that pretty much means I can’t say much, because she reacts to anything I say… so we just “hang out”. There is no comfortable spot for either one of us. And as both Nancy Deren and my wise friend said… that is really, really sad.