Annadel, I know just what you are talking about. I used to know someone that was everybody's pet project. This person was mentally ill, refused to take her medications, refused to take care of her medical issues, and refused to take care of her personal and financial issues, children or life.

Everyone felt sorry for her, as she truly was a sweet and good person, and everyone was always helping her out with money, goods, advice and anything else that she needed. She was always grateful, but still did nothing to get out of her rut. We gave her furniture, clothes, appliances, money... you name it, we gave it to her. She went out one day with candles lit and her apartment burned down along with everything that we gave her.

After years of watching her fall deeper and deeper into her illness, I was at my wit's end. One of her many issues was diabetes. The way she was describing her issues caused me to believe that she was becoming diabetic from being overweight. I told her to talk to her doctor about this and get this turned around. Her employer even paid for her to use any weight loss program she wanted to improve her health. She couldn' stick with it past a week and dropped out. She never told her doctor about her health concerns and lied to me about this too.

Finally, I found out that she had become insulin dependent because she wouldn't take care of her diabetes. I saw her in our break room eating a huge piece of cake that someone brought in and asked her why she was eating something that is virtually poison to her. She said "You're right." and threw it in the garbage. As I walked out of the room, I looked over my shoulder and saw her pull the cake out of the garbage and start eating it because she thought I had left. The moment her eyes met mine, we both knew that I was done enabling her and that I could no longer "help" her.

It took me years to come to the realization that you can't help everyone.

It also took me years to realize that the person has to not only realize that they need help, but in order to accept the help being offered, they have to want to fix their problem, too. Otherwise, you enable them to continue on in their destructive behavior.

Sometimes the best help you can give is the tough love and know when to walk away. When they realize that no more help is forthcoming from others, they will have to fix their own problems if they want to make things better. Sometimes self help is the best help.

In regards to your current situation, the best you can do is to continue to be whatever source of comfort, assistance and help that you can be. Your family will get through this. Hugs, sweetie.