My Mother, My Partner???

Usually when I write about couples and illness I refer to the two primary, romantic partners (with or without any romance). But when it comes to the ups and downs of my pain condition, my mother is still my main squeeze.

My mother spent the last five years largely laying down on the couch in her apartment, eating cottage cheese. Her main activities were going food shopping on Saturday nights and watching Law and Order and its derivatives. She moved into an assisted living facility a few weeks ago and, to our surprise and delight, has been reborn.

My mother listens to the daily live music that's played in her new home. And the same "gentleman" keeps asking her to dance. She's getting the reputation of being "the one who dances." Not bad as a new identity at age eight-three. And, not so coincidentally, my pain level, which peaked a few weeks ago when her anxiety over this transition was high, has now dropped.

I am a bit embarrassed that after so many years of meditation, milk thistle & co-enzyme Q10, psychotherapy, and disentanglement, my nervous system is still hard wired into my mother's emotional states. My head is leaking insights about our relationship and my historic role as her source of a good sense of self. I can kundalini breathe myself into a state of transcendence, but I can't seem to get beyond the slim fiber of umbilical cord that still ties us.

We are a dysfunctional couple. I love her. But had the choice been mine to make, I would have been her BFF and not her daughter.

Who are you entangled with? How does that affect your health or the health of your partner? And how have you tried to extricate yourself from knots that keep you tied down?