This is my third blog about my green world webpages. The first one was about my home Lyckebo and the second one about mothers and families. This one will be about my oldest daughter Magdalena and her son Vincent, but I will talk about really anything I feel like right now. This is the link to the page - World of Magdalena. The site has a few under pages linked to it with different themes. There is one about Vincent, starting before he was born and still inside Magdalenas belly. He was born too early and stopped breathing two times while still in hospital. So he really gave us a scare. He is born with a few mutations that had us very worried to start with. One is at his heart and the doctors wanted to operate on the poor baby, but we didn't want them to as that is very traumatic for an infant. He seems to do fine with his breathing now and can swallow his food alright, so now they are not talking about that anymore. Now they are more concerned about his brain damage, which most likely caused him to stop breathing when new born. He needs alot of training to strengthen his back and legs and I look forward to help him more with that as it's quite fun to cheer him on.
It's such a blessing for all of us to have Magdas little boy with us and whatever will happen I'm sure he'll make the best of everything. He's such a happy boy and so many just take to him instantly. You just want to hug him and love him and he shows that he likes you back by patting you like you were a dog. It's quite fun, how he likes to show his affection that way, and he even says he's patting them. That is cause when he was tiny he liked to hit you instead, so we taught him to be kinder and more gentle in his touch. I could go on forever about my little grandson, as I find him utterly wonderful. He might not be the most perfect child on earth, but to me he is. He has a brother nowdays and he lives with his new dad and old mom in the new dads house. Every second week his new brother lives there too and they are almost in the same age. Magdalena is still at university but will be done next year, and then she hopefully gets a great job and the family can get their own dream house, as they are only renting a quite boring house from the 60's right now. I do hope they will move out to the country side where they can have dogs and cats. At the moment two of Magda's cats lives with me, and one lives with her brother Zak.
There are many more pages on my site about Magdalena, then those about Vincent. There are pages with angels and fairies and unicorns too. Even a few older pages with Magda and her first boyfriend and their tiny smelly mice. She has made a few graphics, when she was a teenager, that I have added to this site too. I don't hardly write anything about her on the site however as I don't want to embarrass my children too much with my ramblings. I like more to express my feelings through the graphics and pictures so each one is given to a certain child of mine for a reason. As my daughter is romantic and would love to marry one day I gave her the first graphics on top. It's made from a tutorial. The second one I made myself with a picture I fell in love with. The girl with the balloons made me think about Magda. She's a bit sad and wild, but also pure and innocent. The balloons symbolizes all her dreams, all the things she wants to do.
Below are a graphic reminding me of her days loving gothic themes and vampires. The black hair and the blood red colour with the white and pale skin is all a reminder of those past days. It is done with a tutorial and when I found the graphic with the gothic girl I just had to make it for Magda. At that time she was still into this style, but by now it's all gone away and you would not even think she ever was anything like a goth girl. She's tanned and her hair has grown long and brown, with natural waves, and she rarely wears any make-up anymore. She's become very natural and very much alive since she had her son three years ago. At that time she was not sure if she'd managed, but since then she's grown alot, taken her drivers licens, moved away from home to a flat of her own, found a new boyfriend and moved in with him after a years of dating. They took it slow as they both had rushed it before and having both small children they wanted to be sure. Both boys call them mom and dad and seem to concider them their real parents by now, as they are there for them every day. The brother is with his real mom every second week, but he still is more acting like my daughter is his mom. Perhaps cause she's more acting like a mom.
Long time ago, when I was younger, I used to complain about things that bothered me alot more then I do now. I've been thinking about those days and that I used to be the same when I lived at home with my parents. But after I moved away from home I was not doing that as much, and I have wondered why. The thing is that when I lived at home we were quite many people in my family and there was alot of bullying going on. Thinking back I remember mother bullying my oldest brother most, but she also made alot of put down remarks to father in a high pitch annoyed tone, filled with ridicule. I remember hating that voice and really doing all I could to never be on the recieving end of it. But now and then she could turn it on me. I used to talk alot to my best friend about all things at home, that really bothered me, and I am sure she got sore ears by hearing so much bullshit. Lately I have realized it was alot of gaslighting and other bullying techniques used in my household, that made me really upset. At the same time alot of nasty kids at school tried to bully me, but I mostly ignored them. My best friend however didn't know how to, but somehow I had learnt how to pretend to be deaf towards bullies.
There was a few years I didn't hate living at home, starting when both my brothers moved away from home. I think it was all down to the bullying. Father used to talk alot to the boys too, and they were all so selfimportant that they seemed to not see anyone else. My oldest brother always talked alot and very loud, which was very exhasting. Now and then he and his brother, the second child, would start rowing and even fighting. The second brother knew all the buttons to push, whenever he felt like it. Mother loved to throw gaz on the fire, if she saw the arguing. So that's a big reason I felt a huge relief when they were gone. Atlast I could be seen and someone else then my baby sister might hear my voice speak. So in those years that followed it was better. Not perfect, but better then the 9 years before that. The years before I had a baby sister to look after all the time was more fun, cause I was free to do what I wanted. And the school days were not that long. So after I turned about 18 and the next four years I grew alot, the less I had to live with selfimportant boys. My second brother was not that loud, but so very important he almost would pop like a balloon, so much air he seemed to have blown up his ego with.
The thing was that mother rarely spoke that much to me as I lived at home. After the boys went away she was mostly nice to me and let me go on with my own stuff. I helped out alot and did housework and made food for me, my sister and mother quite often. Father never would even taste anything I made, which was quite rude, I thought. Alot was good and did taste very well, but he always had some excuse to not even take a bite. When I was finally going to move away in a short while granny came to visit, but that was one of those awful gaslighting experiences I've had with my mother. My second brother was there too, and he was not as obnoxious as he'd been when living at home, I thought. I remember we both came inside and saw mother making fish and potatoes, which was something neither of us ever had seen. But we both understood with a glance at each other, that mother wanted to impress granny and making it out as she was this good housewife, cooking for her children and guests. So we started to make the table, when granny started yealling at us as if we'd been really naughty. It turned out that mother had told our granny that we were lazy users who would never lift one hand to help her out with all the housework.
The accusations were mostly towards me and they were quite unfair and cruel, as it was usually me doing the cooking and mother just sitting around. But granny had heard another compleately different sob story from mother. To this day I feel that this was some kind of sick revenge from my mother, to punish me for wanting to move away. In the twisted way a narcissist would handle things as I was accused of having over stayed my welcome in the home. The thing is that father was the one paying for everything, and mother didn't pay anything and rarely helped out with any housework. She mostly did the complaining and teasing and the putting down of father. Now as the oldest son, the one she constantly remarked was alike his father, was no more at home she had only her husband to put down. But oddly enough she'd been quite quiet with that too for awhile, and then this assault on me, out of the blue. I had been working since dawn at the factory and had just come home to hear how lazy I was. Normally I ate something after the work and then I went out to run for 10 km over the country side. I was nothing like anything lazy, as she had granny believe.
For a few years me and my second brother talked about this stunt mother pulled on us, but then one day he had forgotten. He had totally forgotten the whole thing and it was like he had been switched with someone else, someone less nice, as he'd been quite nice for awhile. To aknowledge mutual experiences make you bond and like another person, so him denying our past of course made me feel him being less nice. Anyways I move away shortly after that and I rarely spoke to mother for many years, as I rarely had done when home. But at home she did always have a chance to gaslight me like that and smear me and scapegoat me, like she loves to do to those she's bullying for the moment. So I remember that I complained less and felt more selfassure. The biggest mistake I've ever made is that I let my mother come into my life as I also became a mother. The older I got the more we spoke. I can't hardly remember us speaking when I was a child, but now when I was married and a mother she talked to me about how terrible husband my father had been, and how hard she knows it is to be a mother, as she'd been that too. Looking back she made it all so dark and gloomy, like it was not the most wonderful thing ever happening to me, but a great burden to bare.
That is why I believe I wasted so many years complaining, cause I was speaking to her about all the goings on and everything she made into either a big huge mess I needed to fix, or she ignored as if it was of no importance. The things needing to be fixed might just be minor little things I had said of no particular reason, or it might be things that bothered me and I needed to vent. Either way she made me feel even more guilty and heavier then before I said anything, and many times I regretted telling her things. The things that was ignored was the most precious and dear matters to me, like suspecting to be pregnant again or actually having mangaged to, or anything else that made my heart jump of joy. I remember sharing many such things of great concern, that was of the more dire nature to myself, and she could be just totally uninterested and blank in her respons. Some things was things I was very sad about, that had hurt me for a long time, but could not be fixed in any of the ways she liked to tell me to do things. It might just be a sad feeling over a word that was said, and she could never show any empathy or tell me anything uplifting out of love. Like my feelings did not matter, hence I did not matter. Thinking back I wish I'd not put myself through that treatment, as it affected my children.
The cat with the umbrella above I made from a tutorial and I choose the cat as Magda has a black and white cat. He's longhaired though and he has just moved to her brothers place on the country side. He's just renting it with his girlfriend, but it's very close to were Magda lives, so they took care of her cat as they already has the son to this cat. They also have many more animals I will speak of on another blog. The baby graphics is also from a tutorial and I made it of course cause Magda had a baby at spring time. The lovely couple I made to her with a graphic I just had to give to her. It's both dark and romantic at the same time. The frame is from a very old tutorial. The ram below I made from a tutorial too, but changed a few tubes to go with Magda. I did it for a birthday page of hers a few years back as she's born in April and an Aries. I felt the notes and rose petals was very much Magda, as she's both strong like the ram, but also tender and fragile at the same time. I have been very affraid that my moods when she grew up would had affected her negative, and I so wish I had not waisted so much time being upset and affected by people like my mother. It's like if you have such a mother you are a magnet to more nasty women in your life.
The difficult thing about having such a mother, and granny to your children, is that she can be very nice and you can feel like she's hurting and in pain and all those feelings make you take alot of shit from her. Alot of crazy making gaslighting and sick twisted set ups. It's cause she can be very nice and seem so lost and helpless you think you need to be there for her. If she'd been like me she'd been worried she'd hurt me with all her moods and aggressions and stupid framing she's done. You'd think she was thinking about me and my children and wondering in what way she's behaved to make me finally feel that enough is enough. But she does not. She's not like me and now I do feel like the stupid one for pitying her and thinking it was my duty to help her and be there for her. It was never me or my children she wanted and when she was upset it was never cause we had fallen out, but always something else. I remember loving my babysitter from when I was 4-5 so much, as she got so angry with me for real things I had made in the purpose of upsetting her. I loved her cause I knew it was me, and nothing else, that had affected her this way. I do hope that my daughter Magda knows that I think about her, and I do want her to be in my life very very much.
I want my girl to know that she matters, that when I got angry with her, it was cause she had upset me somehow. It might not have been the best choice of reactions, but I didn't ignore her or not feel anything towards her. My mother seemed to be very jealous on my relationship to my firstborn. When Magda was four I was breast feeding her baby brother, and Magda wanted me to give her something. I thought she was thirsty and told my mother to help her out. To find out what she wanted, if she was thirsty or what. Mother said she would, but took the girl out of the kitchen, into the livingroom. She just kept screaming and it only got worse, so I had to stop feeding the baby and go and ask my mother why she would not comfort the child and help her. Mother said there was no reason behind her screaming, but I finally made the girl take a drink and stop her crying. Four years later my daughter is very upset and she says she's very angry with me for not loving her or caring for her atall. I asked her why she feels this way, what has caused her to believe such horrible things, and she says that I had asked her granny to hit her.
After some kind digging into the hitting story I realized it was that day, when my mother was going to find out what Magda was screaming about. And then I understood why she never had stopped crying. So, all these four years my daughter was under the impression that I had told her granny to hit her. The reason for this is that I had told mother to take care of her, and my mother had translated that in such way that the child was led to believe I had ment to say that mother should hit her. Not in direct words, but indirect. But I never had had the intention of anyone hitting my beloved little girl, and ever after that event she was a handful. She would rage over nothing, toss around things and act out. Our deep connection was broken. That is what a narcissistic mother will do to you, if you let her near your children. She will do something vile to them, and tell them that you put her up to it. She will not think that is wrong of her, but that she is helping you out. If she used to have you physically punished on a whim when you were small, you should never let her near you children. My mother made father spank me alot, when I was just a small little thing, and not once did I know why.
The other week my daughter told me that she remembers that I was always mad at my mother. Hearing that I feel it's such a waste of energy and time, me being angry on a selfish woman, while I could had been joyful with my children. I did have alot of wonderful moments with my children, as mother was not visiting me that often as our house was full of little ones. Thinking back I think the less she was here, the better relationship we had and the more fullfilling did our little walks in the nature feel like. I took my children to other events too, mostly at the time when they were all four born and I didn't work anymore. When the three first were tiny I was mostly stuck at home, but when the forth were born father gave me a car so I could take them places. After a year we moved to where we live now and I took them all to many events and let them test all sorts of things. That's when I got to know alot of other parents, but in the end it was only the children holding us together. One mother, I had a lovely chat with, even informed me she had enough friends already, apparently afraid I'd got the wrong idea out of our nice little talk. I don't think I've ever felt more bewildered in my life. Perhaps that's the way people speak to others where she comes from, but I certainly never been to a place anyone has done that.
What I found out was that most people originating from this area are like her, though most are not as honest as she was. They think they are better and that they already have all that is needed out of life. Some people say they are inbreeds and narrow minded people. The thing is that I didn't even want to be her friend, I just happen to like to talk to people in a friendly way and leave them with a nice memory. Nothing more, and no strings attached. People like that can travel the world and they will still be like that - affraid to open their hearts. I think it's more important for them to travel then for those who are already open and free. You can travel more inside in your inner mind then you can ever manage to go on this planet. That is the wisdom. Magda is very wise too and I feel that now when I don't take in my mothers energies like before, and I don't waste time to pity her and be angry with her for her unfairness, now I can enjoy and love so much more then I did as a mother. I cannot change that mother ruined the beautiful bond I had with Magda as a little child. We used to love each other so deeply and the connection we had was magical. I truly felt that my mother envied that, and that was the deep reason why she did what she did. She called it helping me, I call it trying to break our bond. If I knew today what I know now I would had reacted differently towards my daughter's anger and rejection. She was hurt by what she thought was true, and that hurt might had defined her.
She was such a cheerful child, so full of mischief and joy. I used to encourage that and she felt seen by me, up until that day mother smacked her face. After Magda had told me this sad truth she forgot all about it, and I think there has been many more things defining her as time went by. If we don't let these destructive people ruin our relationships they cannot do it. It's cause we take it personal and believe it is us being under attack and rejected, while it's the doings of a deciever who tries to put rifts between us. Knowingly or unknowingly. I am leaning towards knowingly as mother says she never hit my daughter, nore tried to hit any other children of mine. Which are all lies, so hence I think she did it on purpose out of jealousy. I feel almost stupid saying that, as that is the idea she's brainwashed me with my whole life, that I am silly believing she's doing stuff I remember her doing. She does not say I am silly for thinking she hit my daughter to break us apart, she says I'm insane for even thinking she has hit any of my children - ever. Which she has and both me and my husband have both stopped her hitting children. Once my husband stopped her from hitting Magda, and later on I stopped her from hitting her babybrother.
But there is no way of making a person like my mother admit to it being her doing such things, a total waist of time. No amount of evidence would change her stance, as long as she can make others refuse to look and believe you. There is only one thing I really regret and that is to ever let her have anything to do with any of my children. Of all their meetings with her there is not hardly any that has left a positive memory for them. There might have been occations that did not cause them trauma or discomfort, but only barely. Too many times little negative things did happen, small hurts that stuck. Most such little events I never saw myself, but as children grow up they realize that despite their mother forcing them to see their grandma, she did not have anything to do with the choices her mother did about how to treat them. As little children they might think like my Magda, that I was part of it, wanting her to get hurt. But as time goes by they see that I did not know she did that to them. That she was just as cruel to them as she was to me. You tend to think that she was that way to me as it was tiresome being a young mother, and now as a grandmother she will only feel joy the short moments she share with her grandchildren. But such people like my mother will always find children a bother, even on the shortest of meetings.
The colourful flowers in the green vase I've painted myself with vectors, which is a very useful tool. I added an old frame I did many years ago to the graphic. The baby in the summer field I made from a tutorial and of course I thought about Magda and her baby Vincent when I did it. The girl in the stairway is so Magda I had to make it to her. It's also from a tutorial and I've made my own frame to it. Below is a tractor vector graphics made from a tutorial and added to a picture I made with a house tube and a few other tubes and some painting and a frame. It's like it says to my little grandson Vincent, who just loves tractors. I so wish I could get him a tractor for real. Not only so he could pretend to drive it, but so I could learn and take him on a tour. Just think about it, that no matter if he might have problems walking and running in his life, he could be ever so clever at driving. The look in his eyes when he sees a tractor is pure love. Once we passed the main farm here and the farmers big green tractor stood infront of his barn. Vincent got so upset I would not walk up to the tractor with him and let him pat it. He loves patting anything he likes, like it was little kitties or dogs, but the tractor was on the farmers property. How to explain that to a toddler...
To be a grandmother and to get to know your grandchild, see him evolve and struggle, is a gift. To see your children grow up and stand on their own feet, might feel scary, but also comforting. It gives hope that they will manage without me if they need to, and will have happiness and get to do what they want to in their lives. I only wish they could be so very much more happy then I was, even if I've had moments, trying to hold on to what is the best in life. It is hard though when those who should love and care for you do their best to make you miserable with little stab wounds here and there to always hold you down. I believe I'd been a much better and happier mother if I'd done what my children wanted me to do long time ago and stopped seeing my mother at all. The only child that ever wanted to see her was Magda, and that is quite weird as she's the child mother hit in the face. But my guess it's down to the trauma of the assault, that somehow we need to meet that person and make them change to a kinder and more loving person infront of us. That is the reason I went back and the reason my daughter so long wanted to build a relationship with her grandmother - the need to heal the wound that she had created. But unfortunatly such people are more likely to cause more damage, then heal what they already has damaged.
Now I don't think she has any relationship anymore with her grandmother. The realization that to her grandmother she's not a real person, with real wishes, real dreams and wants, has come to her. Besides, I think she finally realizes that she got me, and even though I might be a bore, and not in any way exciting, with fascinating stories to tell, I do love her and her little boy. Magda got a beautiful family now, with a new guy and his pretty little boy. I like them both and wish them happiness. I do hope Magda will make the right choices and be happy with what she chooses. In many cases we believe that the exciting things are the right things, while they are not. And we might think that the boring things are killing us and making our lives miserable, while they are not. The exciting things might be like christmases, not really real, just dreams that come and go, with gifts and good food one night a year. And the boring things are every other day when there is just ordinary good times. Those days are many so why should they be less then the days that are rare? Christmas is exciting cause it's one day, and that is what happenens to the exciting choices in life too. When you choose them, and they become every day, they are also boring and ordinary like the life we had before.
That is why you can never get the excitement forever, as it keeps slipping through your fingers. Everytime you think you got it, it changes into ordinary and everyday life. It happenes every time with every choice we make. So the question is if this is the life I truly want to have, every day, every week, even when it's boring and ordinary. If I'd choosen to move to a big town and work on a busy business, like I imagined to do when I was in Magdas age, I know that I in the end would had realized it was not what I wanted at all. Today I am grateful that I never got that life, and that in the end I ended up here doing what I did with Magda and her little brothers and baby sister instead. All the little things we did together could had slipped away from me, if I'd choosen to put my children in daycare every day and leave my older children home alone after school. I wonder what kind of people my children would had been if I'd let other people raise them, and not myself. Would each and every one of them been so close to me? Would they know how they are? What kind of trouble could they have ended up in when instead of being with me and dreaming up fantasies and having fun in nature, they'd hung at a school yard till late in the evening with other bored kids. Honestly, I think it's one of the best things a mother can ever have - time to be with her children, and I wish my daughter will have that for hers.
Magnolia Lane
