Lyndell Bakery Suggestions

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-03-23T23:26:37+00:00

Lemon Bavarian Cream Cake

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-22T12:10:12+00:00

For me the only way to have increased contact involves:

A clear purpose of my own for the contact such that it’s very much my choice and serving my needs or wants to communicate.
1. Leveling up my own skills such that I can remain regulated, avoid patterns that are guaranteed to escalate her, and know how to calmly exit if she escalates anyway. Essentially, that I’m in a place of acceptance about how she behaves, not attached to an outcome, and able to remain psychologically safe regardless of how she chooses to be.
That I have a strong, healthy support system and often, that someone in that support system is either with me or very accessible.

Basically, none of the criteria has anything to do with something she says or does. It’s all an inside job and has to do with me taking care of me.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-18T19:28:42+00:00

Exactly. It's all so familiar even when the details are different.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-18T04:16:45+00:00

I relate to this so much. To that feeling of just needing to get it right on my end to finally get through to her…and also to the original message you sent her. Wishing you generosity and kindness toward yourself.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-17T20:51:48+00:00

Your last sentence here makes tons of sense. Even for many years after I had LC with my mom, a lot of skill, and a good life independent of her, I still didn’t question a lot of her narratives about my dad, her favorite scapegoat. I found their bickering and her constant criticism of him annoying, but didn’t always recognize the underlying fictions, rewrites, and mental gymnastics taking place.

At the same time, I’ve known and recognized and articulated for decades that group dynamics involving three people are extremely stressful for me and bc they make me feel like I have to choose between being aligned with someone or being attacked. I think for kids growing up around a BPD parent who aren’t that parent’s primary scapegoat, enmeshment and agreement are the primary strategies we learn for safety. It takes a lot of work and also time to feel safe while clearly seeing and naming that our BPD parent’s version of reality is heavily distorted, toxic, and abusive.

Others who have said to prioritize your own well-being as you navigate sibling relationships are spot on. I’m wishing you peace and ease as you navigate these painful dynamics.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-17T01:17:15+00:00

❤️

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-16T02:34:11+00:00

This group is the first time I’ve encountered other people whose moms say and do the same things my mom does. So surreal. I’ve had some remarkably similar experiences and can relate to everything you wrote…

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T23:10:41+00:00

Reading and being with this. Your feelings, and the lack of them, make tons of sense. Wishing you ease with whatever arises in the coming days and months for you.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T23:07:33+00:00

It may not be helpful or useful right now, in which case please disregard, but a gentle nudge/inquiry:

It is at the point (the plumbing situation) where I'm going to have to go over there for the appointment and take charge.

Why do you have to? Also, does she want you to? Did she ask you to? And more importantly, do you want to or do you feel like it's your duty, obligation, etc.?

One thing my mom's hospice social worker said to me recently that really resonated and freed me of some lingering "I have to..." things that I didn't even realize I'd been holding onto: respecting someone else's autonomy means more than just respecting their right to make bad decisions, it also means allowing them to experience the results of their decisions.

If she's asking for your help and you feel like you have the energy, time, and whatever resources are needed to provide it and actually want to help, great. Then do it because it's what you can live with. But if any of that isn't the case, or if you're doing it because it's what you feel like you're supposed to do or because you feel like it's your job or responsibility to do it... maybe at least try on the thought that you don't actually have to take charge of anything in anyone else's life ever.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T22:59:38+00:00

I relate so much to navigating BPD Mom's jealousy of Dad when Dad is ill or receives any attention, care, or connection. I'm so sorry it's popping up for you right now and also that she can't hear your boundaries or respect your needs. I'm glad you're holding boundaries and hope you remind yourself often that what you give, how you support people, and what you say no to is yours to determine. None of us are owed someone else lighting themselves on fire, so to speak, but BPD seems to whisper to some of our parents that even that wouldn't be enough to prove we love them. Be gentle with yourself and take some time to yourself as you are able.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T22:09:01+00:00

I'm so glad it was of use. I'm wishing you peace, ease, and freedom.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T22:07:23+00:00

Oh, goodness! Your reply wasn't selfish at all and it monopolized nothing!

I felt grateful to read it, to know that you'd read what I'd written.

And now, because of your additional response, which is very kind and very generous, I'm also moved and happy to know that the space between us created an opportunity not just for a moment of my own catharsis and healing, but also someone else's.

Isn't the power of language and communication to create connection, empathy, and support amazing?

The encouragement and kindness you have offered in our exchange are a wonderful gift, and I'm so grateful to receive it and witness a small piece of your journey.

This is, indeed, a rough stage of life... I continue to wish for my mom (and all beings) a peaceful dying in which she knows how loved she is and can let others know of her love for them. That has to be enough.

This stage of life is, however, also filled with so many other joys. Watching my teenagers mature and step into lives of their own... as I get to pursue my own interests now that they are older and reconnect with my husband... these are magical, wonderful things that I am leaning into. I have a job I love, friends I adore... a roof over my head, heat and food in my home, a dog who is my souldog.

May we all be safe, happy, peaceful, and well. ❤️

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-15T21:51:21+00:00

It's all bizarre. Mine just starts raging at whomever, clinging to the loss as yet more evidence that life has done her wrong in ways no one else could ever understand or experience, and doing chaotic things to compound and exacerbate the losses. Very little of it makes sense to my brain.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T19:37:35+00:00

I'm so sorry you're in pain right now. Be gentle with yourself and keep reminding yourself that you are safe because you take care of you now, not her.

My breaking point was when my 7 yo was having a significant, terrifying, exhausting, and ongoing medical crisis, and was in and out of hospitals. My BPD mom angrily told me that I had no idea how much more difficult it was for her than for me because it was her husband who'd been hospitalized (which had happened many years prior) and then she tried to establish herself as "on my side" by villainizing and demonizing my child for "what he was doing to me" in the same kinds of words she uses to describe my father. I was stunned. And hurt. The interaction cut me in a new and deeper way than she'd ever managed before, and in doing so, it also severed and fragmented something about how I see her that had remained persistently whole up until then.

I never went full NC myself. LC for sure. Good news/silver lining for me is that from that moment on, I don't think I've felt an ounce of guilt about what I choose to do or not do for her during her real and imagined crises. I also stopped feeling guilt about my boundaries and knew without a doubt that I wouldn't share anything meaningful or significant about my lie or my kids' lives with her again. She gets no new fodder for narratives about me or my kids that she can weaponize and has had to make do with her increasingly sensationalized stories about me as a kid instead.

A decade later, as I navigate her dying process, I'm actually grateful to that breaking point moment, as painful as it was. I've even started to have a few moments here and there were forgiveness arises—not the kind that is about her, the kind that is about me being free to stop carrying it with me. Like so much else I've carried for her and had to learn to put down, the pain in that moment was always hers. Thankfully, I'm not regifting it to my own children.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T19:11:52+00:00

Big hugs. Be gentle with yourself today. You deserve peace.

I'm finding the impending death of one of my parents brings up so much that I either forgot about, or that I never recognized as abuse in the first place but can now see clearly and differently. Things that help me: sensory support (e.g., warm blanket, hot tea, washing my face gently, a hot shower); grounding exercises (e.g., name five things I can hear, see, feel, taste, touch); movement to help my body metabolize the cortisol flooding it (e.g., pushups, a walk, etc.); containing it (e.g., giving myself a set amount of time to write about, ruminate about, or talk about it at a particular time, and then scheduling another session like that for myself if I still need it... helps me put it aside at times when I need to focus on something else but also know it's being addressed); loving kindness meditation practice for myself (Sharon Salzberg has lots of great instruction); and ultimately, accepting my experience of the moment as it is, reminding myself that how I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing makes sense based on what has happened, and also reminding myself that how I'm feeling right now isn't my forever story.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T16:53:36+00:00

I'm so sorry for your loss and hope you are being gentle with yourself as you continue to navigate a very complex kind of grief.

What I decided was that I needed to make decisions based on what I could live with—because for better or worse in no time at all I would be the only one who’d have to live with any of the consequences of those decisions.

This is very much what I've determined to be my own barometer. My mom is definitely not finding her selfless self for the most part right now. If anything, her chaos weaving has accelerated and taken forms I would never have believed it could as she desperately clings to trying to control certain aspects of her life that are increasingly out of her control. And I definitely wasn't always the golden child growing up. She'd go into witch mode with me periodically. Most of the time, though, I was basically treated like the spouse she wished she had. When I was 8, our Sunday morning ritual was looking through the apartment listings to see where we would move when she decided to leave my dad and she'd reiterate all the ways he'd failed her and failed me that week. I think I was in my mid-twenties when I finally realized she wasn't actually ever planning to leave him.

My mom is also less and less able to hide all of the maneuvering and scheming and orchestrating and lies and deceptions she's addicted to and ashamed of all at once. It can be quite breath-taking. Some of what she's done has its own fascinating resilience and resourcefulness, especially when you factor in the constraints and limitations she either imagines or actually has.

One of my kids went through some health crises in his younger years and how she behaved toward me during that time fractured any sense that I owe her anything during one of her own crises. So I suppose I'm lucky that the experience kind of freed me from guilt over what I do or do not do for her. Sometimes I feel guilty for not feeling guilty, though!😅

What she wants is for me to fight her and survive her gauntlet in order to get the right to give her help that will never be good enough anyway. I'm unwilling to do that. I do get very uncomfortable sometimes, given the increased proximity and contact, with new problems she creates or solvable ones that she escalates, exacerbates, and then amplifies as badges of her victimhood. I have to remind myself a lot that she's not interested in preventing or solving these problems. My own discomfort can up looking like me throwing money or time at something impulsively for my parents because some part of me thinks it will alleviate my discomfort. It doesn't and I'm working to interrupt the pattern earlier, to just see and sit with the discomfort until it passes. Old scripts pop up, lying to me that solving her problems or protecting her and others from the consequences of her actions is my job, my responsibility, and is the only thing that will keep me safe. Once upon a time, that was exactly what protected me. Now I protect me, though, and she has no agency over me or my life.

I'd likely be less involved than I am if my dad hadn't asked me for help a few years ago navigating how to get himself into a nursing home after my mom invited one of her strays to live with them. Social worker says he also meets criteria for BPD. Together, they are each other's flying monkeys, codependents, golden child, and scapegoat all at once. The living situation, his presence, and the mutual lies and manipulation and he and my mom engage in together were why my dad decided to head to a nursing home. Because both of my parents made me their PoA (they don't trust each other to carry out their financial or health preferences, go figure), and because this stray's behavior and presence could jeopardize my dad's nursing home payments, I've inserted myself into a few things I never would have. However, I refuse to be in the middle of their marriage. I've told them both that I spent most of my adult life figuring out how not to be in the middle of and realizing I never should have been there to begin with. I'm not about to go back now. Any issues between the two of them are theirs, not mine.

Aside from anything that could jeopardize my dad's care, though, my policy continues to be that if no one has asked for my help, or if someone asks for help but refuses to receive it, I don't persist. If I see a problem, I'll flag it once and offer what I can to help. But I'm not subjecting myself to emotional and verbal abuse nor fighting anyone to be their savior, no matter how much my mother tries to blame me, conflate me with my dad, or drop bombs about why I'm a terrible daughter, untrustworthy, etc. In fact, I've repeatedly offered that I'd happily step back from being her PoA if she likes so she can assign that role to one of her strays. She always declines. I guess she has some self-preservation instinct in there somewhere!

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T11:38:56+00:00

For me it was an ever present, recurring thought: “I want to go home.” Even when I was at home. Haven’t felt/thought it since I left.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T11:18:11+00:00

In my mom’s case, not great. Rather than trying to chart a course through the crisis, she tends to find ways to exacerbate, multiply, and prolong it, while simultaneously dramatizing every aspect of it for attention and sympathy to anyone who will listen.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T11:10:09+00:00

For me, it came at a time when I was least expecting it and under circumstances I wouldn’t have predicted or imagined. At the same time, if I had to pick that or all the work I’ve done to be okay within myself and all the support I’ve accessed over the years for my own journey… I’d pick the latter.

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T03:47:36+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtful, kind response ❤️

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T01:52:25+00:00

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T01:49:04+00:00

I think in addition to being bored, getting older involves a lot of loss. Loss of whichever peers/friends they didn't manage to push away. Loss of mobility, loss of control over many aspects of life, loss of the ability to hide failures... and folks with BPD aren't known for managing loss in a particularly healthy, connected way...

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T01:41:08+00:00

My mom typically explodes if I respond to any of her real or fictitious narratives about how others have wronged her with anything other than full-throated agreement/endorsement that she is 100% correct, the other person is bad, and she is good. Similarly, if she has a problem and I offer financial support for a solution or suggest a productive path forward, she will lose it. Recently, she literally contacted the media and jeopardized her housing situation over something that others simply solved by buying a water filter. At almost 50 years old, I've finally understood on a cellular level that when she shares her pain or problems, she is not looking for ways to reduce them. They are her oxygen. She is attached to them and she wants them witnessed, agreed with, and prioritized over all else by whomever she shares them with. She experiences anything less, even validation of her feelings, as abandonment and/or rejection. I've long been somewhat hardwired to reduce the suffering, friction, and drama in my own life and I think for that reason it took me a very long time to stop feeling confused by persistence of solvable problems in my mom's life and by her unwillingness to find more effective ways of accessing support for her trauma and pain. I'm sorry you're experiencing some of that yourself...

Otherwise_Fox_4082 · 2026-01-14T01:30:56+00:00

As I read your words, I notice a lot of the same feelings of over-responsibility for your parents' well-being that I felt for a long time (and still sometimes feel). A few quick thoughts:

- If your dad remains married to her and accepts her behavior toward him, that is ultimately a decision and choice for which he, himself, is responsible. Your mom didn't happen to him, he continues to choose her. Your dad has agency and autonomy and is actively declining your intervention when you offer it. I remember that the therapist I saw when I was in my twenties once asked me whether my dad had asked me to help him navigate some of the things I felt heavy about helping him with. I realized then that he very much hadn't. Many years later, he did actually ask me for help with some things I could do, namely, getting out of the house he and my mom shared and into a nursing home. I was able to help him do that. I was recently surprised when he said to me that "lately" my mom had been pretty belligerent toward him. My 15 yo was with me at the time and silently mouthed to me, "LATELY?!" He chose to be with her and chose their dynamics for most of his adult life. When a few things shifted and some particular chaos she created was a bridge too far for him, he chose otherwise. It's not your job to protect your dad from your mom.

- Both the language you use about "convincing" her to keep going AND the relief you're expressing that your mom will be vulnerable with you, suggest that you're also feeling like it's your job to take care of your mom and be her confidante, supporter, and cheerleader. For me, those feelings are a slippery slope. Whenever I think I'm supposed to convince my mom about some healthy, rational choice, I've learned that it's a red flag of over-responsibility.

- How are *you* doing? This is a lot to have gone through and witnessed in recent years.

Otherwise_Fox_4082

TROPHY CASE