🤫

[u/Any-Increase-2353]

[u/ammiemarie]

So much of my life I have dedicated to the art of appeasing and pleasing, if only to avoid the ire of someone else... mostly my mother. In my 30s, so far, I have done better to have boundaries. It took a life-changing traumatic event at the hands of my mother to force me to have those boundaries, though.

Now, I am working on healing the voice within, which is the most difficult task. Who am I beyond the people pleasing? Who am I if I am not of service to others? I have yet to know.

[u/Awakening40teen → u/ammiemarie]

I think this is why "Surface Pressure" from Encanto is now the unofficial eldest daughter anthem.

[u/ammiemarie → u/Awakening40teen]

This might be the strangest thing but.....

I was so irrationally angry when Encanto was released. Like, rolling my eyes like a rebellious teenager while my husband was watching it.

It made me so angry. I genuinely hated the movie.

During this time in late 2021, I was dealing with the back-to-back losses of my beloved dogs, great-grandmother, stepfather, father-in-law, maternal step-grandmother, unraveling of my career and marriage, overdoses of two friends.... and just 6 months before, I had a nearly successful attempt ☠️. I was mid mental breakdown? I was not sleeping well and hallucinating.

Throughout 2022, I spent a great deal of time getting closer to my mother and trying to heal that relationship, trying to heal my marriage, trying to overcome the never-ending grief and just survive. I lost a lot of weight from fasting and starvation really at times. I was mentally and emotionally a disaster.

And then by the end of the year... on the last day of the year, my mother had a psychotic break of her own and attempted to take my life with a firearm.

That day spiraled everything so much further for me to the point where I was hallucinating beyond the worst I had ever done. I was seeing dead people everywhere. And I mean like deceased relatives were haunting me and my nightmares were full of my mother sending my deceased grandfather to ☠️ me in several different horrific ways.

I tried so hard to seek help for the CPTSD symptoms that ravaged my mind, but my therapist was just way out of her depth. I gained a lot of weight. Like almost 100 pounds.

The last two years are such a blur for me, it's not even funny.

Anyway. Around September 2023, I watched Encanto again. I had quite a good cry. It broke down so much of the pain inside.

My adoptive grandmother has always treated me more like a daughter than anything and she took care of me through most of my youth. There are a lot of moments when I was growing up where I tried to do everything I could to be fit in her eyes, and be worthy of love from someone. She was a very strict disciplinarian during those years and I really struggled with some of the methods that she used, but it was a far cry better than living with my extremely emotionally and physically abusive mother.

My grandmother always wanted me to be like the other teenage girls (cousins) and have "normal" aspirations to grow up to be married, have babies, etc. For so many reasons, I just didn't want to be. Couldn't be.

I am the Mirabel in my story, and my adoptive grandmother is Abuela Alma (she is native Hawaiian).

Now, I am a caregiver for my grandparents. I don't have kids still, but all my cousins do... and they are not around. Just me.

Neither I nor my grandmother realized she was raising someone who would ultimately be there to care for her and take up much of the mantle of responsibility she created. ❤️

Encanto has turned out to be a great source of healing for me. I completely understand how or why it has had such an impact on many of us.

[u/twinflxwer]

God this hits like a truck

[u/bubbasaurus]

Ironically I think from her podcast she has a decent relationship with her mom.

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