Sadness

My daughter has a mental illness.  She has bipolar disorder with schizoid affect.  She suffers audio and visual hallucinations.  She doesn't take her medications as directed and instead she self medicates with drugs that worsen her illness.  She has experienced a great personal tragedy this past year, the disintegration of her fifteen year marriage due to her husband's "inappropriate behavior" with their two teenage daughters.  When her daughters told her what was happening she did everything she was supposed to do; she called the police and protected her children.  My daughter and her daughters spent months talking to people from the police, the district attorney's office, the local women's center, and victims assistance.  My son-in-law was eventually convicted, branded a sex offender, sentenced, released with time served, and put on parole.  Then he called my daughter who was in a state of mental deterioration.  She had not been taking her medications as directed; she told me that with her husband gone she didn't need them anymore.  The balancing act she had been practicing for most of the last year was precarious at best and when he called the balance beam tilted and she fell off.  She talked to him as he pleaded with her to believe that he was innocent.  She wanted her family back.  She was hearing voices.  He knows how to manipulate her, especially in her mental state.  She took off with him (he cut off his monitoring bracelet) leaving the two older girls with me and taking the younger girl who is eleven.  She was gone two weeks before they returned to the area and things began tumbling down on her head.  He was arrested and put back into jail where he spent three weeks. The voices in her head were louder and reality slipped away.  She ended up leaving her youngest daughter in a McDonald's and crashing her car.  She spent eight days in a psychiatric hospital then was released without a safe place to go and without proper medications.  My eleven year old granddaughter is now in a children's shelter in California while her two sisters are with their uncle in West Virginia.  My daughter is still hearing voices.  She is convinced that computers are reading her mind and that terrorists are stalking her.  She believes the only safe place for her is with her husband and according to her they are planning to be together after tomorrow.  I am currently in West Virginia and won't be able to get back to California for at least a week.  I text my daughter and call every day and wait to hear from her.  I feel helpless to help her.  I don't know what to do.  I love her and am scared for her and heartbroken thinking about the way she and her children have suffered, are suffering.  I want to cradle her in my arms and tell her that it will all be alright soon, to tell her to give me her pain the way I did when she was small.  But I can't and she can't give me her pain because her pain is wrapped up around her mind holding her hostage.  I pray everyday for answers, for advice, for anything that will help my baby.