SoaringSpirits

I haven't posted in a while, but read here often and always find so much hope and strength here.

I'm the former wife of an A, but today I'm really struggling with my parents and my mother's insistence on keeping herself in my personal affairs and creating a lot of unnecessary drama. I'm really struggling. For the most part have had a good relationship with my parents over the years and they've been balanced and supportive, so this is a little unexpected.

Long story short, in June I had a fight with my 19 year old daughter that became physical. Since then she has hardly seen me and won't attend counseling at this point, and tells everyone who will listen that she "doesn't feel safe" with me. My daughter has significant emotional issues as she was in foster care until she was 10. It has not been an easy road raising her. I have two younger biological children, 16 and 13.

My parents, mom in particular, have taken on this role of "rescuers." My 19 year old bounces around between her dad's house, my house, friends' houses and her grandparents. She often stays with them, my mother 'counsels' her, and my mother seems to see herself as this conduit between my daughter and us (the parents). My daughter stays with my parents often, citing that she feels so unsafe with either parent that she can't spend more than a night with us here and there. We are reasonably decent, loving parents --- despite our flaws --- and this feels incredibly manipulative.

I have asked my mother repeatedly, calmly, and very straight up to please back away from her close involvement with my daughter so that my ex-husband and I can work toward some sort of resolution and plan to move ahead. My mom agrees to do this, but then a week later is back in the drama fray, basically saying that she needs to be involved because as parents we're falling short. It's all very frustrating and it's creating HUGE wedges in relationships that I fear could be permanent.

For the record, I'm a reasonably well adjusted, divorced mother of four with a job, a house and a few years of therapy and Al Anon under her belt. I'm hurting but basically sane. This whole situation feels like Crazy Town. My daughter will have very little to do with me, she goes to my parents to complain about how I don't love her equally, and from my perspective they are jumping into this drama and adding a very toxic element to an already difficult situation. It's like trying to work on a floundering marriage with a mistress in the wings.

I've always loved my parents, but today I am feeling like I want to shut them out of my life. I have already detached quite a lot from my mom since all this started earlier this summer. They are 75 and 84 and live 10 minutes away. I am exhausted.