Dear
@Sarah1208
I have read through your recent posts and I can only express my sympathy for your position. Nothing I can say will change the current lockdown situation as regards care homes. That said I would simply say please be a little more gentle with yourself regarding “broken promises“.
1) You say your first broken promise was placing your mum in a care home after promising she could stay in her own home. That promise was I believe you say prior to her Dementia appearing. You did your best to keep it, but her needs eventually outweighed her wants. I gently say to you that there was little real alternative choice open to you. As you say as a key worker then visiting your mum in her home would not have been wise. There were risks, you took a decision for a loved one, in trying and unpredictable circumstances, no one knowing where things would move to. I live with my mum who is shielding. When my siblings agreed to stop visiting in early March we all thought for a relatively short period, but now at least a year. No one knew how this year would unfold. Please always remember no one had a crystal ball or twenty twenty vision in March 2020.
2) You cannot keep your promise to visit your mum in her care home. She has not settled well to date and I suggest would be unlikely to in another one. Again I gently say to you that you have not broken your promise. Covid19 and resulting visitor restrictions are beyond your control. You strike me as a very caring and loving daughter, not someone who lightly gives and breaks promises.
Please I know the emotional roller coaster of guilt, feeling you have let a loved one down, etc. Just stop for a moment and consider your position again. Did you really have any true alternatives? Did you break promises or have matters been taken out of your control? Is it helping yourself or your mum thinking that way? I read the words of a very caring daughter, working in a role which helps others not I think an employment situation based on chance? Please tone down the self criticism dial, let go of guilty feelings of letting your mum down because again gently I say to you that you do not deserve to own them. Your situation is very stressful, partly due in no small measure to events being largely outside of your control. If you could visit your mum right now you would do so without hesitation. I suggest a large measure of your feelings are based on the thought if I knew what I know now I would have acted differently. Please accept none of us have that crystal ball.
I hope my words can help you to reflect for a moment. Your mum’s Dementia, Covid19, care home visitor restrictions are all beyond your control. Please, please accept that fact in your heart and your mind. You have not failed, events have spun out of your control. As a key worker you demonstrate each day you are a person of honesty and integrity, your posts on this forum show how much you care about your mum.
I am a bloke so I can only hope I have got my points over in an acceptable way. Not easy to do but harder still to walk on by whilst a stranger is taking on more than their fair measure of guilt, for events out of their control. Just hope my comments allow you to pause and reflect. Sarah1208 sounds a pretty decent human being.