Glad she’s thinking about it. Pretty responsible for a young adult.
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She sounds like a great young lady. Glad things seem to be going well for now.
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Didn’t even take the Mail Truck!
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Long-term effects are a lack of logical thinking skills and increased gullibility.
The Godmother of all holidays!
My parents are Christians, I don’t think less of them for it. I’ll let her believe what she wants if it doesn’t hurt her or others, even if I think it’s make-believe. If she asks my opinion, I’ll give it. It’s not my place to convert her.
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But the real question is, if she votes for Trump, then where will she live?
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Exposure to life outside the extremist family unit can open up her horizons.
Sounds to me that she is experimenting with things now that she can (vs before in the family unit which would have likely been punished). Its simply happening at a later age (20?)vs what you usually see in non-fundie families (tween years).
She is going to have a lot of questions over the next few years when she starts questioning the “truths” that were told to her growing up. Thats where some objective knowledge and advice can help guide her, but she will have to make the journey herself.
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Right. She just got out of an abusive situation where she was told demons possessed her, among other things. I can’t be surprised she fled to a belief system that among other things claims you can protect yourself from demons by doing the correct rituals.
Now is not the time to tell her that her beliefs are stupid and wrong and here’s why she should feel bad for believing it.
She’s earning good money at work and is signed up for her first semester of classes. I’ll take the silly with the good.
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We had a breakdown this weekend, but it was ultimately the good variety.
I asked Partner to step away from the couch, where they and Goddaughter were watching TV, and join me in the bedroom for a moment.
Then Partner departed while I first used the restroom. When I returned, Partner was holding Goddaughter who was sobbing on the couch. Turns out for the last month she’s been dreading being inevitably kicked out again - thinking that once summer ended we would tell her that she needs to find her own place, and that we talk negatively about her behind her back. She said, “I’m not used to receiving unconditional love. I’m used to my parents only loving me if I obeyed them well enough.”
Partner asked me, “Can you tell Goddaughter what we were doing in the bedroom?” and I responded, “You were popping a zit on my back.” Which was true.
Lots of hugs and sincere love expressed, we ended up all falling asleep on the couch in somewhat of a cuddle at 1 AM.
College courses are signed up for, now we’re just waiting on the glacial pace of a FAFSA with unusual circumstances while the government frequently pings her to say they need her parental information.
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My parents helped with a teen once and had a similar experience. They were “arguing” about something, and quickly resolved their disagreement, and the teen got really anxious and her mood immediately changed. My mom talked to her about it after a little and the teen admitted she was just waiting for the yelling and throwing things, etc. to start.
It’s hard to see people who have never had a healthy relationship modeled for them, or been a part of one. So glad that you are able to be there for her.
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m got a letter from [credit card company] stating “we’ve reviewed your claim of fraud, we think your account is still valid.” This is news to us, because while I called on May 31 to assert fraud on the account the company never sent anything saying hey, we hear you think your account is fraudulent, please fill this stuff out.
I finally had time to call today to see WTF is going on. Phone number to fraud department wouldn’t connect. Wtf. Had to go through the main line, then navigate through departments, get the POA re-verified, then finally landed with someone in account verification. Oh, we don’t handle fraud claims, that’s the job of fraud investigation. Cool, can you transfer me over? No, they don’t talk to anyone over the phone, they only handle inquiries via mail. Wtf, I’ve talked to the fraud investigation department, that’s how I got the info I have. Oh, yeah, that’s a new thing. 
I did get slightly more info, though. That fraud dispute I mentioned? It was logged as a “general dispute” but not an account dispute. Which, either way we should have received something hey, you’re alleging fraud, can you give us some details about it? Allegedly, now it’s an account dispute. But, I’m going to have to guess on what will be enough to prove it because I can’t talk to anyone to be proactive and get it all in one shot.
[Financial institution mentioned on May 31] dropped the ball on getting us the letter we asked for. [Someone there might know I’m not happy about this.] We’re discussing what it can and can’t say; I wanted it to say that the kids have never had an account there, Legal says “we can’t say never unless you get a court to compel us to say that.” I’m hoping they’ll agree to say “no, no account between [date 1] and [date 2]” though I’d really like “no, no account since [date 1].” That’s a next week problem.
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We were watching another episode of a serial Dungeons & Dragons show we’ve been binging with the god-kiddo.
In D&D games, if somebody even considers their family as part of their character backstory, it’s often something like dead parents, or they were captured or evil, etc.
In this show, Goddaughter remarked, “That’s two seasons in a row that somebody just has a super supportive family! I love that.” Then had kind of a sad, kind of weird look on her face. “I was just going to say I don’t have that… but I realized, I have you guys!”
Y’all I can’t remember the last time my heart felt that way. Along the journey with my partner I’ve surely felt that strength of emotion, but it hit differently.
We’re still not sure what her future relationship with her birth parents will be. I’m trying my hardest to not talk shit about her parents, but neither do I want to push them back together. Former mother (FM) has gone to 4 virtual therapy sessions and recently asked Goddaughter to go to therapy with her. I openly told Goddaughter, you can make your own decisions, I am not ordering you, but like hell would I feel comfortable doing that now. That is absolutely too soon. Personally I might consider that more like… 6?.. 9 months from now? Depending on FM’s actions since then.
FM contacts Goddaughter on Facebook Messenger but does not have her phone number nor our address, and does not know where she works. FM messages at length pretty much daily and Goddaughter replies every few days. Sometimes the texts are bordering on crossing a boundary - like mentioning that the special needs kids from the school where Goddaughter quit a teacher’s aide job miss her. FM already tried more aggressively to use the kids to manipulate Goddaughter into staying. However, mostly the texts have been only excessive in frequency and length, but not too bad. Goddaughter hasn’t offered to show me everything and I haven’t asked, but she’s shown me a few messages and not minded if I scrolled to get more context.
Goddaughter doesn’t know that she let slip this past week that she vapes while at work. I knew that she started this while working at another restaurant job. She used to smoke cannabis about once per week or two when she had a stressful day, but she was caught by parents, and they began drug testing her weekly. Nicotine doesn’t register, so she switched to vaping. Prior to her slipping up, she’d told me she used vape but stopped, and I shared my own experience with ceasing nicotine - the noose that gets tighter the more you use.
I truly think she might only be using while at work. She has her dysautonomia that wreaks havoc on her heart rate. We also truly think she needs a diagnosis to get anti-anxiety medicine - coming out of her home environment she is doing much better, but she is diagnosed with ADHD and I understand anxiety is a more likely comorbidity. Anyway - if she tells me that she only vapes on work breaks to manage her anxiety, I’m going to believe her. But I’m going to have the talk again, more seriously. I’ve told her that I don’t want to ever need to give an ultimatum, because that means I feel she’s being recklessly irresponsible. This is one I’d need to seriously discuss with Partner how to handle, if we put our foot down.
Perhaps I’m being unreasonable. We allow her to have a causal drink with us at home, which she does about once a week. I’m not sure she’s even had a second drink in a night, probably has but not more. I just have a sense that casual use of a little bit of nicotine has a higher addictive “factor”. A little use of a vape is also easier to hide from us, too, as I feel she won’t stash a bottle of Boone’s Farm in her bedroom. Just rambling now, it’s something to discuss with Partner and probably our therapist.
Good news, to close a loop from earlier, I have no concern about her having an eating disorder. She told me she did because of her mom micromanaging her weight and diet, and I’d been worried for a while. She was just worried about eating our food, what we’d be mad if she took. It took a while to convince her that we own the house, we bought all the food in it, so we like all the food in it, so if you eat something we like we have a whole house of other food we like.
We’ve had multiple talks to convince her that we’re not going to get mad and kick her out. It’s becoming less of a response to her having a breakdown/nervous-depressy moment and more of a “Hey, remember, we love you. That’s not gonna change. You’ll never be homeless as long as we aren’t homeless.”
She keeps mentioning little things that just strike me as, you grew up with truly weird and bad parents. I truly believe what she went through was emotional, mental abuse. None of the following were emblematic of abuse, but just things like:
You just look at what you have leftover in the fridge and maybe grab something from the garden and make food out of it. You don’t have to buy all the ingredients fresh and organic just for that meal, and then half of it goes to waste, or it sits in the fridge and all of it goes to waste. It’s just so nice.
I love that you talk to each other about money stuff, like buying things. You talk about how much it costs and how much you want it. It’s not like an argument every time where you’re trying to get your way.
You function so weird in the evenings. You each pick two or three things you want to get done after work, and then you do it, and relax. And you’re not mad at each other over a bunch of things that didn’t get done and we just hang out.
(She only sees the bigger tasks and not the three dozen little daily chores that just happen, but lol it’s fine)
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Goddaughter is seeing a chiropractor regularly, which I disapprove of. It’s for a few gymnastics/dance related things, but basically she has a bum tendon in her knee, causing her to walk more heavily on one side, which threw her out of alignment.
I told her that I personally dislike chiropractors and I think she should be seeing a physical therapist immediately instead of this “chiropractor for something like 20 sessions, then PT” plan. However, she seems happy with the chiropractor and it’s not costing much, so I said my brief peace and dropped it. I believe a chiropractor may offer her true benefit, I just have my opinions that are beside the point.
On the topic, FM may have convinced Former Father to leave Goddaughter on the health insurance. To be determined. We’re prepared to explore a few avenues to get her insured if needed, haven’t done deep research because we hope it’s handled.
We seem to have a good, open communication style. I don’t often tell her what she must do, but I will remind her, “Tomorrow would be a good day to fast for your blood draw.” She generally follows my suggestions depending on how much emphasis I put on it - I am sure if I firmly requested something done today or now, she would do it. But she’s being her own person and sometimes, “I didn’t feel like doing that today, I’m going to do it tomorrow before work” - and no big deal.
But she’s not being lazy. I feel we will encourage her into more housework as the months progress, but she’ll load up the dishwasher and kick it off, feed the cats, she’s still scooping the litter. As a group effort we cleaned up her disaster of an “I just moved everything into a bedroom” bedroom, got a nice shelving unit in there with all her trinkets and stuffed animals, things in a manageable mess instead of everywhere.
She’s honest with us about - her interests in boys and girls, her period cramps, her finances, her beliefs in hoodoo that I disagree with but it harms me none, her political opinions. She’s refreshingly honest. I thought I was honest, but no, I just don’t lie. She’s honest. Except, apparently, the vaping. (editing and) Thinking more, it makes sense. I talked to her about it, she’s scared of being kicked out. She doesn’t want to tell me that she’s still doing it, she thinks we might kick her out.
She got her shift off work this past Saturday. We went to the farmer’s market and played putt-putt golf. She paid for something for the house at the farmer’s market. We paid more than that for her at putt-putt without saying anything, but it was nice of her. I feel that she’s being respectful that we are spending money on her, and we’re willing to, it’s not really a problem, but she is existing comfortably eating our food and such while being respectful to not be wasteful or overly expensive.
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Wow… this hits home for me. STBX, who traveled a lot for work, would be absolutely enraged if I finished … anything while he was gone. Like if he left for an trip and there was a half-serving of potato chips… he’d be furious with me if I finished them during the two weeks he was gone.
I was at my mother’s house a bit ago and I was like paranoid to eat anything. I kept asking her if it was ok if I had a little bit of this or that and she was like “Child EAT!!! We are three quarters of a mile from a grocery store. If you eat something we will just buy more. That’s how stores work!!!”
And like… this is my mother. A woman I lived with for 19 years of my life. And I was terrified of eating her food. So if your Goddaughter’s hang ups about food are at all similar to mine I can only imagine how hard it is for her.
Also over time it’s dawning on me just how unbelievably f***ed up my relationship with STBX was. I was afraid to eat food in my own kitchen. If I finished the chips while he was on a trip I would go to the store and buy the same kind and eat the exact same amount so there would be the right amount left when he came home so that he wouldn’t know I’d had any without him because that was easier than dealing with the inevitable fallout.
And there was a point in my life where I mourned the loss of this relationship.
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Oh, and hide the bag of course. I got caught one time because of that. I remember another time frantically driving home from work in the middle of the day to fish a bag out of the trash before he got home so he wouldn’t see it.
Good Lord… just typing this out feels ridiculous.
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Oh lol, I just remembered. She bought a subscription to a Misfits box. Every week she has a menu of things to accept or reject. They’re all random things that mostly I don’t want, but she is enjoying contributing to the house, so I’m finding ways to pick the least objectionable and work it into our meals.
Got some Misfits eggplants and made eggplant parm. Got a Misfits lemon ricotta pasta sauce and Misfits zucchini and added grape tomatoes and made pasta. Nothing complex, but I pick the ones most convenient for me to make food in my wheelhouse from, not the radishes.
She’s enjoying contributing to the house. I’ve gently indicated you really don’t have to! but I think it’s her way of alleviating guilt for the cost of her food.
I baked in about $100 for food on top of the monthly insurance premium she pays me back for (as we cotitled her vehicle and insured her.) I don’t track our grocery expenses but I figure she might cost us around $300 more in food accounting for occasional takeout we just cover, and with the Misfits box she’s getting close to paying for food. It doesn’t bother me, but she doesn’t need to. She’s offsetting her cost already, and we felt that $250 was a good total to say “We are being generous, but it’s not a free ride forever, tick tock.” We’re good to support her for two years through college or however long she needs to move forward. We’re just expecting forward progression, and college is the plan.
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Crikey! I thought that would be doing him a favor. “Honey I finished that opened packet of chips that you left before it went stale.”
Just typing this makes me feel like a half packet of chips.
You are right to be concerned. This is classic hoovering on the part of FM. She will layer on the guilt and obligation as much as she can in her communications.
I would definitely not encourage the virtual therapy at this point in time as she needs to emotionally detach in order to see her entire situation a bit more clearly. It does sound like goddaughter is slowly figuring this out which is generally a good sign.
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