The Breaking Point
I think one of the biggest challenges of my adult life has been unlearning the pattern of behavior that told me my well-being and value are found in putting the needs of others above my own. This pattern insists that in order for me to be safe and happy, I must, above all else, do everything I can to heal, help, fix, and caretake other people. Even if (and oddly more so because) they aren’t open to or interested in my help.
This has been powerfully highlighted during the past 6 months of living with my Dad, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
It seems like my entire life I have wrestled with creating healthy boundaries around how much I give to others. I am not talking about simple kindness and compassion. I am talking about a belief that told me time and time again, that if I just cut off a bit more of myself in service of another, then I would finally get what I needed. Although this way of moving through the world, which in many ways felt like an endless act of martyrdom, served me at one point in my life, as an adult it ultimately amounted to me depleting myself to the point of destruction.
This pattern became painfully acute when I moved in with my father in July of 2024. When I arrived here, I knew he was having some issues with memory and cognition. These issues were one of the reasons I came. What I didn’t expect was the mental health conditions that exacerbated his struggles. His depression, anxiety, tendencies for hoarding, and compulsive spending created an unforeseen storm of circumstances that have proven to be nearly impossible to fix without professional help.
He’s aware that his memory is failing and understands that while he doesn’t yet have an official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, it’s inevitable that over the next few years, his cognitive health will steadily and rapidly decline. Not surprisingly, the fact that he probably only has a few good years left has made him even more determined to deny the help available to him. Mentally he’s clear enough that he can mostly care for himself and despite the best efforts of myself, my sister, and his brother, he’s dead set against assisted living.
He agreed to grant my sister and me power of attorney, which has given us some ability to support him in his financial and medical affairs. We’ve helped him manage his debt, set up direct debits for his bills, and ensured his medication is on track. His brother, a financial expert, created a plan for him to save for emergencies. I even convinced him to donate a lot of his “stuff”, which was no small feat. Even with all of this support, his choices and behavior have gone essentially unchanged.
The hardest part of all of this has been to accept the fact that he doesn’t really want help or to make big changes. He wants to stay in his home and live on his own according to his terms for as long as he can. Despite many arguments, buckets of tears, and mountains of aggravation and frustration, in the end, I have no option but to accept this. I am not in charge of him; the power of attorney grants me access to help manage parts of his life, but it doesn’t grant me authority over his choices.
Honestly, if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t want to give up my remaining years of independence either.
There have been layers of pain I’ve unearthed through this experience that have nearly destroyed me. The most painful part of all of this however has been dealing with the old pattern that tells me I have to save him in order to be of value. The objective facts of the situation are that he’s an adult who is capable of making his own choices. He has, in fact, chosen and the narrative created by this old pattern said it was up to me to disregard these facts and somehow change, fix, heal, or save him in spite of himself.
Another delicious aspect of difficulty has been the realization that the seeds of this pattern were sown by my relationship with my father himself. He is, and has been, emotionally unavailable for my entire life. I’ve finally arrived at a place beyond judgement about this. He simply lacked the tools and understanding to be vulnerable and connect with me in a way that nourished me emotionally as a child. My time here has been the perfect environment to trigger the wound of being raised by a father who is emotionally avoidant. I have often felt driven to desperation to solve his problems in the hope of being seen as valuable and important in his eyes. The truth is that he is simply being himself in the only way he knows how. Add to that the cognitive decline, and I don’t think that even if he wanted to change, he would have the ability to do so.
When I am able to pull back and observe my situation without attachment or emotion, it actually makes me chuckle. Spirit and Self really are the best scriptwriters of all time! I mean, how perfect is it to create a scenario where I am guided to take care of the very person who was so influential in creating the toxic caretaking pattern in the first place, only to have my offers of support and help be rejected at nearly every turn? How sweetly flawless is it to put me back in a living situation with the one that I have been desperate to receive love and approval from my whole life, only to come up empty-handed once more? You really can’t make this stuff up.
There have been many heart-wrenching exchanges over the past few months, but the other day, on Lunar New Year, I finally reached a breaking point. We had another petty argument that ended with me bawling my eyes out while sitting in the car, alone in the garage. That day was one of the most challenging in recent memory. I felt so much anger and frustration and hopelessness. My energy was heavy and dense and all I wanted was to run away and escape. I spent the bulk of my day either crying my eyes out, cursing God for having brought me to this place, or pleading with the heavens to please show me a way forward.
That evening, while cooking dinner, the clarity I so desperately needed finally landed softly in my awareness. It arrived without fanfare or drama. Like a downy feather gently floating in the breeze. It was the simple and quiet realization that I couldn’t save him and it wasn’t my job to. No amount of fawning or depleting myself in his name was going to change him. He was, for better or worse, exactly as he had always been. Say what you will about my father, but he has always been 100%, unapologetically himself. It’s actually what I admire most about him. I also think he’s been a huge influence in developing my own radical sense of independence. I finally saw in that moment that I was the one creating my suffering. I was the one showing up asking over and over for something that simply wasn’t available. I thought I was coming here to help him, but I was the one who needed help. I was the one with the wound that needed healing, not him. I was also the only one who could heal that wound. It was my insistence that he owed me something, or that he had something I needed that kept me showing up trying to drink from a well that had long since dried up.
This insight cracked me open. I felt a grief emerge from within that was ancient. It brought me to my knees in the kitchen, crying in pain that was almost too much to bear. I struggled to catch my breath as the tears and grief poured out of me. A voice spoke quietly between sobs, saying, “I don’t want to give this up. I can’t give this up.” The pattern of being dissatisfied and denied was so familiar it had come to feel like home. It was the way I had been living for the past 50+ years. In many ways, it was all I knew, and the thought of giving it up terrified me.
Who am I without the compulsive need to sacrifice my own well-being for someone who doesn’t want it? Who am I without the insistence that I am incomplete in the absence of someone else approving of me? Who am I if not the one who is constantly creating a pattern of being rejected by someone who is incapable of giving me what I truly need in the first place?
More than all of this, the hardest thing to accept was that in all likelihood, I am going to have to move on from here and leave my father to live out his final days as he wants to. He won’t be totally alone. He’ll have the neighbors to check on him and I can arrange for home care to come by a few days a week. Even still, he will be mostly on his own until he can no longer care for himself, and that’s how he wants it. It pains me to accept this, but it’s not up to me to fight it. He has made it clear time and time again that these are his wishes. I must trust that his divine guidance is ushering him forward just as mine is.
In the end, it is my task to find a space where I can love him unconditionally, as he is, and to let go of the pain and anger I have been holding on to.
This has been one of the most challenging chapters of my life. I had no idea what had been woven deep into my being until my circumstances perfectly revealed it to me. The choice to let go and create space for my own healing and for my father to live as he chooses has not been easy. Yet I see so clearly now that they are necessary if I wish to proceed in my life free from these toxic patterns.
As always, it brings me to the place where once again I say “I thought I knew what healing was.”
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