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gottahavehope, you give me hope, you know that.
--To other posters, please understand that I am responding very specifically to ghh's situation as well as my own and am not in any way generalizing or stereotyping.--
In your situation, like mine, you have many valid reasons for having at least mixed feelings. Some of those if you didn't have, you wouldn't be a responsible parent because this person is capable of harming and actually already has harmed by way of terrible threats and disruption of your household, your child.
Unlike you, I have far less anguish, especially guilt, about setting boundaries stronger than what would be ideal in an ideal situation. The thing is, we are not in ideal situations. It can be hard when the need for pushing away and the feelings it takes to do the pushing gets tangled up in the idea of what a "good" person "should" think and feel and do for another human being who is clearly suffering. It is not that I don't care about fd's birthparents, who are, after all, actually part of my family, or wish them well, it is that I learned many years ago to detach with love. Of course, I still can get exasperated, angry, resentful...then even more resentful for not being who I want to be when I think of their inability to be any different. Still, as much as possible, for me, detaching is the only healthy way to have any contact at all with addictive, abusive, or otherwise toxic persons.
Al-Anon, the 12-step support group for families of alcoholics and addicts, is a wonderful resource for learning this and, more importantly, actually transforming one's reactions to others, letting them be who they are with dignity while caring about them without being enmeshed in either their issues or guilt over them or our feelings about them.
As for the other part, separate from the issues, of just wanting to be mom without all the "extras," so many of us are there with you. It is not a character flaw, it is a human trait. Thank you for giving it a voice.
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