Brandy, first of all LOVE your Christmas tree, that is fannnncy!
I think that the 'helping her get on her feet' thing is the same as taking care of her for six weeks anyway. The reality of the situation is that she is in a very transient state, she can't stay with her mum, her grandma is too far away from her children, she is struggling with social services to get her children back, she doesn't have a stable home that is hers.
She asked that we help her a bit during the pregnancy, which we are doing, and then to help her to get an apartment, she wanted financial help to do this. We are just doing what she has requested.
Maia, I see what you are saying, it could look coercive, couldn't it? I am just trying to do the right thing. Honestly the whole thing stinks and I try and walk around and hold my head up, but I feel low because we aren't made of money, although compared to our expectant mum we are loaded. The reality is that she is poor and ill-educated, she has hurt her existing children through neglect and 'lack of patience' as her mother rather cryptically put it when we met the other day. I expect that if she'd been born rich she wouldn't have ended up depressed and miserable and ill educated and all that, and then maybe she would have a happy home and a lovely loyal husband, and all that. Instead it is what it is, and my guilt and richness is compounded by her helplessness. I feel like a vulture again.
I somehow thought that in this whole mess of her fourth pregnancy, being stuck, all that that we could help, and she would bless us with her child that she can't raise anyway.
Brandy, I don't know. I feel rotten now.
