Now I feel like the worst mother who was ever born!

[Tink]

Judy, we devote many years to raising our kids. Willingly give up our time and space and often our dreams to provide for them the best that we can. I'm sure you did this, and know I have.

There does come a time when we deserve to live for ourselves though. For you and I, that time has come. Please don't let her or anyone else guilt you into giving up the freedom you've earned. Setting boundaries can be hard, and our kids always know which buttons to push to make us feel that we owe them more... but that doesn't make it true.

I think too that it sounds like you need to take a break from decisions until you truly know where you want to be. You don't have to decide today... and it seems it might be better if you don't!

Several years ago my oldest dd asked us to move about an hr away to help her with her oldest while she worked and went to school. Since I worked from home, Greg drove semi, and I was homeschooling Joel and Katie, it didn't matter a lot where we lived, so we decided to do it We bought a house about 2 miles from them and for a while it was ok. What we didn't realize was that the little town we'd moved to was very unfriendly, seemed like a Peyton Place with drinking, drugs, affairs and so on just rampant. We didn't fit in or like it at all.

About a yr after we moved there, my daughter and her husband got a deal they couldn't refuse and moved away! So there were were in a place we didn't like, with no reason to be there and quite unhappy. I was too far from them to be helping with my grand daughter anymore and we were stuck in a place we did not fit in or like.

We did end up moving back "home" but our lives were quite negatively affected by having moved there. If we had known before what we knew after, we'd never have gone.

I hope you can avoid making a similar mistake.

HUGS