How to mourn a difficult mother.

[getinthesea]

My mother died in February. We had a fairly distant relationship - I hadn't lived with her since I was 8 (lived with father and step mother) and while she went through some good patches she was often depressed and alcoholic. It turned out when she died that she was living in a pretty grim way too - she hadn't let me in the house for ages but always seemed OK on her infrequent visits here. We did speak on the phone once a week, but not about anything important.

I've spent the last six months sorting out her estate and doing a piece of work rather maniacally. I thought I was coping quite well and it didn't matter that much.

That's all done, it's the summer holidays and I'm not OK: my moods are up and down, I'm crying about all sorts of strange things, have low level depression, high level anxiety and clearly it's all not OK. But I do not have a single idea how to cope with this.

I know that there are repressed emotions to do with my parents divorce (not cleverly handled, but hey, it was the 70s, no one knew how to do these things) and my feeling that my mother abandoned us, but I have no idea what these are and how to process them or what to do with myself at all. I did have a couple of years of therapy about 12 years ago, but don't really have the money to go back (and to be honest it would take months to explain my family to a new therapist and I don't think I've got the energy for that).

So what do I do? I'd quite like to go to bed for a month, or even a week, but it's the summer holidays and I can't. So if anyone has any coping strategies, or even ways that I can find out what I am feeling and get through it, I'd really love the help.

Yes, lots of things are coming to the surface. In some of my odd/tearful reactions I can see old patterns of behaviour and emotions coming up. And I suppose I really do just have to sit with them and acknowledge them.

Twentyten, the insight almost seems to get in the way sometimes. I do think that if I understood my mother less I could get angry with her/the whole situation more easily. But she had a grim childhood - her older brother died, cot death, in a family that favoured boys in a big way. She always felt it should have been her instead.

But my childhood wasn't that great either. I blanked out the whole year after the divorce and can only remember 2 or 3 things at all. And I don't honestly think I was happy from then until I left home (I was the scapegoat, it would be much easier, everyone felt, if getin wasn't there, then we'd all be happy). I was ecstatic when I left home, for years and years, almost crazily so, and it was the same feeling that returned when my mother died.

Yarp, I know you are right, but that child bit is stubbornly inarticulate, or at least that's what I've found so far.

That's where I think a psychotherapist would help, or maybe even better a medium that could access the child part of you, like art or drama therapy. I don't know much about it, but I know exactly what you mean.

..by medium I don't mean a psychic (!) I mean 'type' of therapy. Just realised how that sounded!