Laying Your Foundation

Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting or saying that what happened was okay. Instead, forgiving means allowing yourself to move forward. So, now what? Maybe she wants to help me. How can I help you? But she won't, because I don't know how she can. I don't know how to answer her question. I am unhelpable and hopeless: a limitless emptiness of irreparability. There is no help for someone like me. That's what I've known all my life. Because I am bad. All of these thoughts whirl around like spring gusts in a courtyard. I don't know what to say. Although endometriosis is usually diagnosed between the ages of 25 and 35, the condition could begin about the same time that menstruation starts. Many of these symptoms are frequently ignored or thought of as a normal part of the cycle. Have a conversation with your healthcare provider if you experience any of these symptoms: Increasingly painful periods Severe pelvic cramps or abdominal pain one to two weeks before the menstrual period More frequent or irregular menses Pelvic or low-back pain felt at any time during the cycle

Pain during or following sexual intercourse Pain with bowel movements Infertility (approximately 25-50 percent of these cases are due to endometriosis) You're an adult with your own life to lead. If your parent with BPD still causes you strife and turmoil, you have some work ahead of you. You need to set better boundaries with your parent to protect yourself and the life you're living now whether it involves friends, work, a partner, a spouse, and/or kids of your own. Setting boundaries Boundaries are the limits that people draw around themselves and their lives to keep others from constantly interfering. When you're clear about your boundaries, others usually respect them. For example, we have boundaries about phone calls -- we generally don't answer the phone after 10:00 p. We answer then because those friends and family members know that we don't like answering the phone late unless it's something very important or urgent. Our friends and family respect this boundary that we set. People set boundaries around a variety of issues, including needs for space, time alone, privacy, and intimacy. I don't know how to be. There's such tenderness in her voice, like crepe paper folding itself over my heart. I am tempted to believe her good intentions. I'm tempted to hope. I feel stuffed full to the lid with neediness, a vast vat of it, all sticky and putrid. My neediness is wrong. More than that, I am wrong.

I shiver with the shame of it and bury my eyes into the biscuity carpet to avoid the reproach of her gaze. I can hear her sigh, but with such a weight of sadness that even across the room from her I feel it might crush me. Her voice is dripping with compassion, like molten nectar. If you have symptoms of endometriosis, make sure you use a pad and not a tampon during menstruation. Tampons can increase pain and cramping during your cycle and may make reflux menstruation (the tissue backup) more likely. Edging Out Endo: Acu-Points Plus Endometriosis can be a stubborn and frustrating condition because of the complex interplay of hormones and unknown scarring and adhesions. Dr Joel Hargrove, of Vanderbilt, Tennessee, has spent many years studying the effects of endometriosis. He states that PMS is reported by 80-90 percent of women with endometriosis. Con-ventional medical treatment is controversial and must be individualized. Medications are often prescribed to suppress ovarian function. Oral contraceptives may also be used in an attempt to prevent the proliferation of endometriosis. Side effects of suppressive medications, such as danazol, are often unpleasant and include weight gain, fluid retention, fatigue, decreased breast size, acne, hot flashes, and muscle cramps. People with BPD don't always understand interpersonal boundaries or the need to respect them. Thus, you may have to be unusually clear in communicating your expectations to parents who have BPD. To set boundaries with a BPD parent, consider the following issues: Decide what's important. Ask yourself what you want to set boundaries around. Some people consider their personal time paramount. Others feel that privacy is critical.

Some may decide that any contact with their parent would be overly toxic. Remember, deciding what's important to you is your decision. Realize your rights. I want to lick it up, devour it, take it into myself, to make her words true, to make it possible to be acceptable within my desperate, aching wantonness of need. But I smother the feeling back down again. Bad, bad, I am bad. I feel twisted up inside, nauseous at this conflict within me, wanting her approval, wanting her acceptance, hating myself, hating my need. Her head tips forward and down slightly, like she's trying to swoop down into my line of sight. It's like a piercing in my heart. And suddenly I feel whisked up away into a scene from my childhood, and I lose the nowness of now and I'm stood apart from myself, out of my body, out of the here. I've become little, littler than little, a sobbing frantic mess, all desperate with the terror of abandonment, and this child-me collapses into a ball and out erupts the pain, the anguish, the life-draining agony of neediness unneeded. The mother is holding the telephone, the ugly cream bulge of it heavy and threatening, the coiling, curled cable dangling like an appendage from its torso on the wall. Just stop it. In my experience, Oriental Medicine can significantly improve a woman's menstrual cycle (see article 17, The Disappointment Down Under). If adhesions are too numerous, surgery may be recommended, but reoccurrence of endometriosis is very high. So even if you have the tissue removed by laser surgery, it may very well grow back. I have found that acupuncture and herbal medicine have brought satisfactory relief to many of my patients for whom surgery is not indicated, not wanted, or has already been done. In addition to treatment, I advise women to follow the PMS diet discussed in article 17 and to exercise regularly. According to a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association, strenuous exercise lowers the levels of estrogen in the body, which may help the symptoms of endometriosis. When I first met Anne, she was 37 years of age and had already undergone laser surgery for infertility due to endometriosis.

She had still not been able to conceive, had adopted two little girls, and found her old endo symptoms returning. With two small children to care for, her downtime from abdominal pain, constipation, and nausea was more than she could bear. We began with acupuncture and herbs, such as Dang Gui, Mu Dan Pi, and Chi Shao that significantly reduced her symptoms after one month of treatment. This issue is often difficult for adult kids to grasp. As an adult, you have a perfect right to lead your own life. You and only you can be the ultimate judge of what you need and want. Your friends, your other parent, your siblings, or others may pressure you to rescue your parent with BPD. You've probably been down that road many times before and found only dead end after dead end. So, you need to make the decision as to what works for you. Make your life your priority. Deliver the message. Vagueness, ambiguity, and lack of clarity don't help you set good boundaries. You must give your message as clearly as possible, and don't pull any punches. But she can't. She needs good mummy to save her from bad mummy. She needs her to come back and make bad mummy stop, to let her be, to quietly, sombrely put her in her room, but without this gibbering malice and rage of the snake-mother, all evil and fetid and frothing. Other mummy disappeared, in a flick of a switch, in a skip of a heartbeat, and she doesn't know where she went, but she needs her to come back so she doesn't have to go to the children's home, where the monsters come in the night-time, the big oafs of men who murder the little children. She needs mummy to come back, to stop this one. She doesn't know. She can't know.