I have been thinking about writing you for a long time. I’m just struggling to figure out where to begin and what my question actually is. When I was young all I really wanted was to be a wife and mother. I achieved that, but now that they are all grown I often question myself and I have been struggling for a few years to figure out what i am doing now. I am a real estate agent, but I don’t work very hard at it. The real issue that has been eating me up for about 10 years is my daughter. She is my youngest of 4 and my only daughter. At about age 12-13, she started spinning out of control.

She just made bad choice after bad choice. At age 15 she met a young man that was 5 1/2 years older than her. At first I didn’t worry about it because she never stayed with one boy more than a couple of weeks or so. However, this guy was not chasing after her so that intrigued her and she decided she would catch him. She basically left home at 16 . He got out of the coast guard not long after and after about a year they were deep into some serious drugs. She came home at 17 seriously strung out but he had also abused her.

He finally hit her in the face with a gun at which point we filed a police report, etc. Long story short, she got straight but pretty soon he was back. He put on all the right faces as if he had it together now too. She married him at 18 and 11 months later they had a son. She works for her dad, my husband so they had an income, but he did not ever go to work. He stayed home with her baby, which would have been fine if he had actually been doing something. Last october she announced that she was pregnant again. At the end of December he left .

She found out he was cheating and she finally got tired of the drugs and abuse which had never truly gone away. She decided that she didn’t want to raise her children that way. Fast forward a year and they just recently went to court for the first time. He never signed separation papers. In Virginia, you have to be separated a year before you can divorce. When they went to file the complaint, it should have been smooth if he didn’t show up, but much to our surprise he did without representation. Now they have to go to court in May. In the year they have been separated, he has not seen the boys. The oldest is now 3 and the baby is 7 months. He has never seen the baby.

He called the older one a few times, but during that year there was a 3 month and a 5 month period of silence. My daughter just found out that his girlfriend is now pregnant. All of this breaks my heart, but most of it I can do nothing about other than support her. My husband is an architect and she does the marketing, so she has a good job and she has been able to buy a house. She is doing well on a lot of points. However, she has a friend, a young man whom she has known since she was 12-13 . He lived around the corner. He, also, made a lot of bad choices in his teens. He has a son but never married the mother, but he is in a custody battle for his son. He lives in PA because he went up there when he was still with his son’s mom.At this point neither can move until they get through their court cases and that may be up to the other person.

My concern with her is that she always looks down instead of up . This guys is a nice kid, but they both have tons of baggage and together it looks overwhelming. She keeps talking about moving up there which seems crazy to leave her home and a good job for who knows what. From a lot of things she says, he is still trying to figure out what he’s doing in life and here she goes to the rescue. Her ex had no clue what he was doing without her to tell him even though he was much older.

I’m trying to figure out how I can change my thoughts so that i am not constantly in fear.

Her actions caused a lot of issues within the family because her brothers didn’t approve at all of her actions. That has improved a lot since she and her husband separated, but if she turns around and makes more dumb choices I am afraid it will cause problems again. My family is and has always been so important to me. I just don’t want it to be broken. I have been trying for the last year to start working on individual relationships. My sons are all married as well, so i have all of their wives.

I decided that rather than try to make sure that everyone was getting along, I would just focus on each person individually and build a relationship with them.

I always feel stuck in the middle between her and her dad and brothers. I want to be free of this.

She drains me and it keeps me from doing other things I should be doing.

I keep her boys all day now which keeps me from working on my business much , but I’d rather her be able to afford her house than pay for day care and have to live here. I love my grandsons to death or I’d probably tell her to go do whatever she wants.

How do I get rid of this fear and set boundaries so that I am not consumed by fear, frustration, and anger all the time?

I want to love and support her, but I want my own life too. I am 51 and when I turned 50 I felt this huge since of panic that I had to get busy because life was going by fast. My husband has giant goals and a huge bucket list. I want to focus on him now. We already sacrificed everything for the kids when we were young. He keeps telling me it is our time now. I guess the big question is how can I disconnect and still love and support at the same time? What thoughts can I have about her that would bring me peace?

Sorry this is so scrambled and long. This is a monster thought download and probably only the tip of the iceberg.