I grew up in an emotionally, physically and verbally abusive home. I was also sexually molested an...
I'm really sorry that I got frustrated with a poster on your thread rather than give you a good reply. That doesn't happen for me very often. I'm sorry. You don't deserve that at all, and it has nothing at all to do with your post or you.
I have a major problem with certain ideas that I feel are harmful, in general to society, but especially harmful to utter to those who have survived a lifetime of abuse and are coming to terms with their choices. Such fear-mongering plays into the hands of the abusers, and essentially implies that "you cannot make it without them." Which is horrid because it is always untrue. I have to question the motives of anyone willing to lay down a statement that obviates such a negative core belief about survivors of abuse, or anyone, really as BS. (When I believed I "needed" my abusers, I was most suicidal, and for good reason. It really felt like there was no way out.)
I am 39 and I cut out my abusive parents in 2011. I am more than happy with that decision, to say the least. And I would do it again, even if the cost were greater to me, even if it meant they'd kill me, because I flat refuse life on those terms.
The correct answer is that I honor your decision to make the call in your life of what to do with your family, because only you can deeply feel the need there inside of yourself to ask it, recognize your freedom to choose, but also to accept and live with the consequences of your choice, directly. Nobody can tell you how your life will go one way or another, or when the timing is right.
That is how I truly feel, but I obviously strongly feel that if every abused person could permanently disconnect and never deal with again the abusive people in their lives, as soon as possible, that would be ideal and is often the only way to get to the healing that needs to happen in cases of a whole family closing ranks and being involved in the damage done.
The concession I make is that the collateral damage is that those connected to and confused by the splitting of a family member away will not understand, often, and you will lose them, too, in many cases. For example, I did not get to attend my dear grandmother's funeral because they presided over it. Things like that, but I put my own healing first as a survival need, and these other things as "wants," although they are strong wants.
And this can increase your emotional loss and pain, which is why it's important to be in therapy and working with a good trauma therapist before doing anything major.
