For years, I’ve been trying to hide from Ashleigh. PTSD in full swing. Trying to make sense of the past in all of its glory. I witnessed and tried to help Ashleigh with everything that I had. Eric did as well. Mind you, as parents, we weren’t capable of understanding what we were faced with. The diagnosis changed with every visit. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) isn’t diagnosable until the patient/client is 18 years old. That way the brain has fully developed into the now adult person. Until that time, clinicians are tasked with diagnosing children and adolescents with whatever might temporarily fit the proverbial bill for insurance companies and families that’s loved one enters a mental health facility. Ashleigh went from Oppositional Defiant Disorder, to Schizoaffective Disorder, etc, blah blah. It was exhausting. Meanwhile, the mental health system struggles to tell parents how to do their job. And how to keep their client and the families the clients live with safe.

Our family lived under scrutiny from the mental health system for so long. Trying to live within the parameters. The only time we felt safe was when Ashleigh was inpatient for the few days at the psychiatric facility. And now, Ashleigh is a full grown adult. Well, so to speak.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with my Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety, and PTSD in the best ways that I knew how. When it came to Ashleigh, the idea of her caused me to regress into what I felt like was less than a parental figure. I felt incapable of dealing with the confrontation that would likely come. I would become this giant ball of anxiety and past traumas that enraged me, confused me, and conflicted my status as a parent and a moral person. I’ve also gotten messages from Ashleigh on social media accounts, telling me about how she misses me and loved me. Here was my process:

Why now? Is she manipulating me? Will she just change her tune once I contact her? Will she turn on a dime like she had in the past? What proof do I have that says she’s changed in any way, shape, or form? Can I trust that she wants to be my daughter and not who she was. All the while, the person I remembered was probably sixteen to eighteen years old and not diagnosed.

Ashleigh has dealt with homelessness in many communities. She’s experienced things that I can’t fathom. She’s had three children – two of which are adopted out to another or other families. One, sadly passed away before he was nine months old. Benjamin, the child that passed away, would have celebrated his second birthday yesterday. That, is not to be. I looked at my remembrance of Ashleigh and I didn’t conceive of what she’d been through. I just remembered what I’d been through. What Darrian had been through, and what Eric had been through. I could not in good conscience go through that again. I would become enraged when I would talk about the possibility of forgiveness when it came to Ashleigh. I couldn’t see a time of EVER forgiving her. I literally equated her to a monster. The last time she reached out to me though, something changed in me. I wanted to tell her my side. I knew that she potentially was demonizing who I was to others. I had a feeling that she might want me on her side. I mean, it had been years. I figured if she heard from me, maybe she’d accept my side of the story. And so I did. This was, mid December. It’s now almost mid January.

I’ve put down ground rules with Ashleigh. Those ground rules are: No video calls, I’ll accept text or phone calls from her, I work during specific hours so I’ll be incommunicado between certain hours (no texts or calls until my shifts are completed – unless during a break), I will require that she asks to put me on speaker phone, I need her to listen to what I have to say as I also listen to what she has to say. I am a mother, a person, and flawed. I do not specialize in mental illness – so I am inclined to make mistakes. She should not expect for me to be a therapist to “treat her”. If she wants a therapist, she needs to utilize those services through the medical community. In the meantime, I’ll listen. I will try not to mom her to death. I do not want to hear about my ex husband (her biological father) and I require that she doesn’t share things about me with her father. So far, with a few mistakes on our parts, we’ve been able to stick to them. And the mistakes weren’t even purposeful. I think the boundaries weren’t quite established to the extent until the errors were made. So, can they even be called mistakes?

During my phone calls with Ashleigh, I’ve been able to hear a side of her that’s led me to feel compassionate towards her. I’m still hedging my bets as to when the pleasantness subsides. If this is still the newness phase of our blossoming mother/daughter relationship. However, in this short span of time, I’ve heard a growth in her that I’d never heard from her before. It’s actually refreshing. I’ve heard her say things that don’t fit the way the Ashleigh I knew before would say. She seems to have learned from her life, to some extent. Certainly, she’s not completely healed – but growth has happened. I don’t see that it’s a manipulation. She seems somewhat competent to what she needs, realizing her personal issues that she needs help with, and introspection that she’d never had before. Everything was self serving. Now it seems like she has a concept of how others fit into her life and how she wants that to stay.

I have to admit, I’ve opened up to her quite a bit about my fear in dealing with her. To her credit, she hasn’t come back at me with agitation and blame. She seems to have accepted that I needed to heal so I could be a better mom. And with some of the things she’s told me about her life when we weren’t talking, I actually was proud of myself for not being the judgmental person that so many of the maternal figures I’d known might have been when learning similar information about their daughters. When Ashleigh told me what she did, I refrained from judgment and accepted her truth. I could see how certain things fit into her lifestyle at the time. How one thing seems to lead into another. I was not critical, I responded – I think, appropriately. And I think she respected that from me. So, that was a growth moment for both of us.

Nothing about this new adult relationship with Ashleigh will be easy, I have a feeling. I am just grateful that I do have my daughter back in my life. I’m cautious moving forward. I think that’s a reasonable thing to be, given the circumstances. She and I hopefully have a lot of growing to do together. For now, it’s good to say, I don’t have to hide anymore. Ashleigh and I have a future together, hopefully. Only time will tell.