What is love, conditional or unconditional. A personal blog.
We love people, for what they do for us or others. So should we not ‘un love’ people for what they do to us or to others? I am beginning to think so. I spent 57 years loving the woman who gave me life, 57 years of getting nothing back and as a child, this hurts. I tried everything to have her love me and forgave her every time she showed she didn’t. The last 2 years of her life I thought she had changed, she pretended love for me whilst bad mouthing me to others. This is one kind of conditional love that is misguided on my part, the love because of who she was, my ‘mother’. That died after her death, when I discovered that she had lied and betrayed me, news happily given to me by my youngest sister Trisha, her favourite and her protégé. How many years did I waste loving her when it wasn’t deserved or I suspect even wanted. I didn’t learn.The love from and for your mother should be one of the strongest and I hope it is for most of you reading this.
Another love, that I had as a child, was my love for God, or Jesus. Love of my church, where I would escape to when life was tough. This is going to make some of you angry but as I have to write how I feel, I can’t apologise. All of my younger life I prayed to God to help me. To stop the horrors that were happening at the hands of an ‘uncle’ and to make my mother love me. He didn’t listen. But I didn’t stop that love. I religiously prayed at the side of my bed for years and years but it was futile. I am not writing any of this for your sympathy, just exploring what this thing called Love is. After losing a baby boy, years later , my dear Dad William, said. ‘God is testing you’. He said ‘He will only give you what you are able to take. Each test you pass will show you this’. Well after the few years I have had, sorry Dad but I am all ‘tested out’. I don’t want to be tested anymore because I must keep failing. I just want to live a life without being tested with those who love me for me.
So what is this thing called Love? I hear about it. I know it myself in my own home. On my Prostate Cancer groups I read of complete commitment, real love of women for their men in extremely difficult times. People can change under treatment for cancer and if the love between a couple has been waning, not as strong, PC can often destroy it completely. That saddens me. I also read of women at the end of their tether, not recognizing the men they married after treatment or even diagnosis, love is again tested. We need all the strength, courage and love to face this horrid illness and survive. I am lucky to have David, he is almost back to his old self and our love, already tried to the extremes is enduring, strong and true. It has passed every test sent and we are still standing close, loving and happy. I am one of the lucky ones. I wish this for all of my friends on here. But as I have said in many earlier blogs, PC changes us, this is how it has changed me and my outlook on life and love.
At this time of my life I ‘should’, a word I don’t encourage clients to use, have the love and support of my siblings. Sadly my eldest sister to whom I was close, is no longer here, I do have the love of Tony my beloved brother but he is terminally ill so I will lose that very soon. My middle sister June, has had her head filled with the circulating lies about me and is not psychologically equipped to know what is true and what are lies. I thought she knew me well enough to know the difference but it seems I was wrong. As for the baby of the family, Patricia, I hadn’t seen or heard from her for over 40 years, so we don’t know each other as who we are today, but that hasn’t stopped the lies and stories she has made up about me, being spread to anyone who will listen. I love my brother and sisters but I don’t like the youngest, one little bit. Why should I. Growing up in a dysfunctional family like mine I should not be surprised at the family estrangement and dishonesty. Love was selective within it, as we grew up, dependent on how ‘Mother’ felt at the time; she loved my brother and sisters but not me, so they would have been affected by this. Sibling love? Sorry but not always there.
Love should be given freely for how we perceive the person and how they perceive us, it should never be given forcibly, never taken for granted and never given out of duty.
Unconditional love for your children. Now we broach an entirely different kind of love. When does this allow ‘conditions’? How many times has someone told you of really wicked treatment of a child to their mother? When questioned the person will say, ‘I can’t do anything because she is my daughter’, or ‘because he is my son?’ How much do we have to accept as mothers? How often do we have to let our children treat us badly? How often do we have to let them chip away at that love until it is gone for good?
Would you allow others to sell things that were yours and not theirs? Then do nothing? No.
I have had comments when mentioning all of this in earlier blogs , other Mums have spoken of things done to them by their children and the guilt they feel at not feeling love for that child any longer. That guilt is unfounded in my book, after the years I have had. How many times can someone use you and then you have your kindness thrown back in your face before it dawns on you that they are unworthy of your love? Does that make you wrong? Does it make you less of a person? No. It makes you human.
Would you still love friends who betrayed and lied to you? No.
Would you still love your child if their lies have turned your grandchildren against you and your husband? No.
Would you still love someone who has cheated you out of your writing career, or tried to, by telling lies and ruining it for you, just out of spite? No of course you wouldn’t.
Would you still love people who turned others against you with horrific stories and lies that defamed you and hurt your reputation? No. So why do we let those we love do this?
If this is what unconditional love is, the rules need to be changed!
How much love does it take to keep taking the blows, the nasties etc. before we can say, enough’s enough.?
When I had my first child, my daughter Lisa Jayne, during my first marriage, I was overjoyed. She was my blessing, my life, my child. The best thing that had ever happened to me. Now life was good. As she grew she was a delight, a funny, kind loving little girl whom we all loved. As a young woman, she began to do things that hurt. She got married to her first husband of whom I was very fond, and them told me, after it was all over. There was no reason for this, I had been with her on the Tuesday excitedly,talking about the day she would marry her then fiance’. She married on the Friday of that same week.. I was mortified as were my husband and her sister. But we forgave her after a while. Over the next few years she did many things that hurt me, stole from me, lied to me but each time I forgave her. I have bailed her out as parents do, let things go that have hurt and always taken her back into my life. But I think my ‘unconditional’ must have run out, after the last 4 years of a vendetta of hatred towards me. During that time she has shown how nasty, cruel and vile she can be. How much ,like her wicked Aunt Patricia(Trisha) and her grandmother she has become. It breaks my heart. If anyone else had done to me the things she has done, I would have acted and taken things further. Why didn’t I ? Because I am her Mum. And mums don’t do that to their children, do they? But things have to change. After knowing my husband had cancer, she still did not let up, that to me, is a step too far.
As you know she has done the unforgivable to my dying brother, making these last months of life for him and his family, more painful and unhappy that they could have been. For that, ‘unconditional’ doesn’t get a look in. If I had read in the news, that a young woman had ‘conned a dying man’ out of thousands of pounds, I would certainly not have liked them, let alone loved them whoever they were. Why should I? How could I? So why should a mother’s unconditional love keep me loving someone so cruel, dishonest and without compassion?
She has told my grandsons and anyone else who she feels would be interested, that the man she was told is her father, is not her father and that as I slept around, she has no idea who he is. This is libel and I can’t let this stay around the internet, on social media, in the form she has taken on sites under her pseudonyms, any longer. She has also told then I tried to stop her adopting her little girl Hannah, I didn’t. I just told her,the truth about another child whom she was treating, in my eyes in a cruel manner. I wanted her to adopt the baby girl she was fostering but couldn’t lie on an official statement that said we were ‘very close, and that I was her ‘pivotal support’,when after my comments around the foster child, she shut me out of her life and blocked any way I had of communicating with her. That is the truth and Lisa knows this.I value my reputation and have worked hard to keep it honest and good. I begin my Professional work again tomorrow ,so have to put this evil to bed as soon as possible. I have taken enough. Three years of enough! Do I still love her? Yes. Or rather I love the child I gave birth to, the child and young woman I raised, although I failed somewhere, obviously, as she was like her sister, brought up honest, caring and kind. Marie is still a loving, straight talking, open and honest young woman who shows respect for others. As for Lisa,I love the daughter I raised, who I saw through motherhood, who gave me grandchildren. I still love that Lisa. But I don’t even like the person she is now. How could I when she is so destructive, so uncaring in what she does to others. Who lies, steals and maligns me. Why should I even consider ‘unconditional love’? Should it at least go both ways? In the past few weeks I have tried to give her a chance to make things right as I have written in earlier blogs but all I had in return were more lies and abuse. So that tact doesn’t work. I need to change.
Today after another sleepless night I decided it is time to act.
‘If you always do what you have always done. You will always get what you have always got!”
I am having to play the game their way. Not lie, I don’t mean that but to stop the bullying and the lies I have to take steps to stop this. I don’t like writing this, but telling myself this is the only way to stop them from making me ill again and to redress the things she has done to me and others I love. Maybe, like them, no holds barred. Hit them where it hurts! Stealing my love of writing, although I worked hard to get it back, maybe I have to do similar to her, take something from her and her aunt that they love. Spoil their ‘name’ and help Karma on its way. You think that wrong? That no mother should think like this?Lisa has told the world that I am no longer her Mum. That she hates me. So now maybe I have given her reason to hate me but I have to do something. After talking to my brother today, I have to act now. For those of you who have a belief in God, the bible says ‘ An eye for an eye’. I have allowed too many ‘eyes’ being damaged so now need to fight back. As a child, as I have told you all before, I was never allowed to say ‘It’s not fair’. When David was first diagnosed with PC, I said it. Talking to Tony and knowing his suffering has been made worse by my daughter’s lies and cheating. My having put up with constant bullying and verbal wickedness for many years, afraid to open my computer in case she has verbally abused me on social media. Today I shout it from the roof tops. ‘ITS NOT FAIR’!
I have now to take a stand. I have begun, I have to. Fight back with everything I have to gain some normality and peace ‘here on the farm’.
Fo those of you who think this wrong,;either to think as I am thinking, or writing as I have written, I can only talk and act as I think right. My way. I don’t like who I have become, for today at least, but I have to stop this and stop future pain for myself and those I love. Those of you who are able to keep your ‘unconditional’ love for your child, I envy you. It means that maybe you have not suffered in the way my family have. I wish you all the very best and hope nothing like this happens to change that love for your child. I still have it for 2 of mine and they for me, but as you see, the third has wavered under the strain.
Thankyou for reading x
carolannwright 