How does one live with the craziness?

I sometimes wonder how people live with such chaotic lives. I am not meaning temporary craziness but permanent, day to day, year after year craziness. I hear all the time about families that live like this; typically the poor because they can't seem to pull themselves away from the chaos. My mother always seems to be in a cycle like this. No matter how much I try and help it seems to always be a whirlwind of things. One week she may be working and everything is fine then the next week she is sick. The following week she doesn't have a job but a few days later she has her same old job back. Every week things are changing and never the same. How can she live like that? I understand the idea that once you live in the chaos you begin to adjust to it but who would want to do that?

I am often encouraging her to do things different. To get a different job that would be much more stable, to stop trying to pay debt down with more debt, to demand that her life have meaning and for people to stop treating her like a Slumdog but it doesn't help. She always seems to have a "good reason" for continuing to do the same things. She has been here for almost a year and made no real changes, it’s frustrating. I feel like her behavior is still the same and that without me being on her all the time she would slip into the same cycle and soon would end up homeless again. I know I can't actually change her and that she has to make the changes for herself but I just can't figure out why she wouldn't want to change.

Her lifestyle also concerns me because even though T is not living with her he still is around her and sees it. T is so unmotivated and already seems to have the "woe is me" attitude expecting things to be just given to him. I am afraid that constant exposure to someone who is not moving forward and making good decisions will continue to rub off on him creating a problem instead of encouraging change for him. I don't think she quite understands that he sees how she lives and could be learning from that example because she seems to always make it through. I want him to see her trying and improving. I want him to eventually one day be able to look up to her and see that she has made so many changes that he can too. I want him to learn from both her and I but she doesn't seem to want to be the example he needs.

Sometimes it's all just a bit much for me. Just watching her whirlwind of chaos is tiring but when I try and battle through it to reach her or T it becomes down right exhausting and energy sucking. I know that what we do know will have a large impact on both of their lives but sometimes I just want to wash my hands of it and let the chips lie where they fall.