I've been taking care of my mom for at least 6 months. My sister filled her head with lies. She talked to me so disrespectfully. She fired me for no reason. I'm so sick of her & my sister gossiping about me night & day. What kind of mother treats their own daughter like this? I didn't do anything.
You shouldn't feel obliged to participate in their craziness. Sometimes we have to walk away so that relatives can get help.
I wish there was an answer on how to combat your mom and sister's accusations but unfortunately, some people never learn. They often run other people down to make themselves feel better and it is often their own family. It certainly doesn't make it right, but try not to let it control you.
Just know your worth and continue to prove them wrong even if they never admit to it. Live your life to the fullest. Surround yourself with people who support and respect you. Try to take a vacation when you can to just get away from it all. Good luck and God bless.
You should not take the abuse from your sis, and not from mom since she was not a good mom ever anyway. I've read that it's a bad idea for someone who was abused by a parent to take care of that parent later on - it's too easy for the bad parent to sound justified in accusing the good kid of bad things which seem perfectly legit to an outsider. And it would be easy to take out my feelings on my elder if I was tweaked just right!
Just step away and take care of yourself. There are lots of old folks in the world who will pay you to tend them and won't be mean like this. Walk. Make family about who truly cares for you. I don't know how you can walk around with that hole in your heart from losing a child, but you are a bigger woman than I am. Stay strong!
But why should you have to? I so agree with the others that say to just step away from these two abusers (which is what they are doing to you).
I, too, lost a child (20 y/o). Because of this, I have told my brothers that when it gets to be too much for me, I am walking away from our mother. There is TREMENDOUS stress on every single part of us when we lose a child. Things change forever. I will NOT put myself through the tremendous stress of elder caregiving more than I do now, particularly because my mother emotionally abused me when I was growing up and I never felt close to her.
I was given her car in exchange for being her driver. I put very firm limits on that, and only take her to Mass, medical/dental appointments and chair yoga (my idea) once a week followed by shopping. (She also finagles additional grocery stops after medical/dental appointments.) I will NOT do any personal care for her (although I did during one illness; it was so awful I will never do it again). I will not clean her house. (She finally hired a cleaning service.) I spend as little time with her as possible.
She tells people that I don't like to be her driver (true!). I suppose she thinks by shaming me that she will change my behavior. She tried that when I was growing up (one time yelling out to people in a store all of her perceived diagnoses of me). At that time, I just withdrew from her. And that is what I still do.
There are people who shouldn't be caregivers. I am one of them. So I do as little as possible. She should be in Assisted Living, and refuses to consider it. She should also hire some home help (she's a fall risk and needs help showering), but refuses to do that, too.
:) You can do that well. No drama involved. I would block them on FB etc, and probably on your phone. No point in allowing them to wake you up at night! If you can't or don't want to block, there's this trick of setting their ring tone to: silent! Then they can leave you voice mails, and you can handle them with one flick of the delete button. It's an awesome feeling when you see they've left a 5 min diatribe and you don't even hit play, but just the trash can. Power!!!
When people ask how your mom is, you can say, I don't know. Bro & sis are taking care of her now and I don't get a lot of news. Double win!!
I'm so proud of you. What a strong person you are!