The method with my example.
Step 1: Own your feelings and take responsibility for them
I am so angry and upset over all the time we have lost and all the closeness we once had.
I am frustrated and disappointed that no matter how hard I try, you do not want me in your life except at great distance, and in small doses.
I am sad and weary and sorrowful of the reality that you would rather hold me in your mind as a bad mother than recognize I did the best I could and knew how.
I am bitter than you forget all the good things and remember only the bad.
Step 2: Connect the feeling to the action (why you felt the way you did)
When you say things that clearly tell me you think of me so poorly, I am hurt and, when I am hurt that much by someone I keep trying to trust, I react angrily and usually poorly.
Step 3: Apologize for the action
I apologize for my angry and poor response.
Step 4: Recognize your child’s feelings
I recognize that your reality is real to you and that, in your reality, you are feeling abused, neglected, and emotionally traumatized.
Step 5: Share how you plan to avoid this situation in the future
I see no way for me to avoid constantly fighting with you over the facts of our shared history.
I see no way for me to avoid constantly fighting with you over the manner in which you consistently, insistently, and persistently demonstrate a complete lack of confidence, respect, and trust in me.
I see no way for me to avoid the anxiety, depression, stress, and now, resultant chronic flairs and pain so long as I allow myself to be drawn into this recurrent cycle.
Therefore, I plan to avoid this situation in future by simply admitting to the reality that IS, accepting that it is seemingly irreparable in any way other than acceptance of an ultimatum game I will not play.
Step 6: Ask for forgiveness
Please forgive me for not accepting things sooner.
Please forgive me for not respecting your agency.
Please forgive me for not being able to substitute my reality with yours
Step 7: Focus on amends and solutions
Here’s where it seemingly breaks down, but we’ll see….
Clearly, there are no amends you will accept but that I supplant my own history with your version thereof, since “this” is always where we wind up.
You never forgave me for not taking you with me on the road. I can make no amends that can change that history, there is no solution for it.
So I will instead make my amends to myself.
Clearly, there are no amends I will accept for the choice you made to reject me and the concept of our family in 2003, nor the continued choices in this theme despite any and all attempts to reconcile…. ever stymied by the preceding paragraph.
I never forgave you for not realizing I did you a favor by not making you go through those two years; particularly now you have children of your own, I thought you would understand.
So I will instead accept the amends of your separation, even if I cannot accept the reasons behind it.
That is always the final solution to everything, I find. Acceptance, that is.
In the end, I get the reconciliation I need, me within myself… which, ironically, is all we humans ever get if we’re smart enough to take it when we see it.
There’s the sigh of release… relief…. resolution.
So be it.