Dear San
I’m sorry you are going through such a hard time. I do really feel for you and recognize those feelings you describe about your grown up children and your sense of responsibility and even guilt.
But please remind yourself that you made the best choices you could at each stage of your life, in very difficult circumstances when you were not being well-treated or supported. Guilt today cannot help you or your loved ones. Can you ask yourself what you can realistically offer to your children today? – how would you respond to another mother in your situation? how would you advise her? (I put it like that because we are often kinder to another person than we are to ourselves.) There may be nothing you can do – if so, send them your loving wishes and ‘prayers’ (whatever that means to you) that they will get the right help from another source. Then try to treat yourself with compassion and kindness.
I would also share that I did not believe that my son could ‘survive’ at times in the past – it felt to me that he was not like these other gamblers, who were ‘worldly wise’ and tough and could ‘make out’ somehow; he was vulnerable and lost because of his ‘gentler’ life experience and because of his other health needs – in my opinion. BUT, when I ‘let him go’ (not a one-off event, but an ongoing change in my thinking), I found that even my son had his own resources and ways of getting by. This may well be so for your son, too – although, I know he has really gone to the edge recently.
Please take courage and do not despair.
With my very best wishes,
Monique