If It's Not One Thing, It's A Mother

[Moonshadow]

Thank you for your words of support, Sparky. I wasn't looking for sympathy.
I was trying to convey the reasons that I cannot forgive my mother for her actions.
There is no excuse for the way she treated me.

Having said that, it's comforting to know that others understand my pain.

 

[linasmom]

Moonshadow-

Thank you so much for your post. I've been avoiding this thread like the plague. I've been avoiding it because, while I love reading about how others have been able to forgive and come to an understanding about why their parents abused them, I still carry around a lot of anger towards my mother who is my abuser.

I will not forgive her. There is no reason, that I know of, for the abuse that I incurred. She grew up in a very stable, normal, working middle-class family with no history of abuse. I actually lived the first ten years of my life with her parents and her so I know first hand how her own parents are as a family unit. My mother will not admit to any mental disorders. She will not seek help. She refuses to even admit the things that she did to me.

While I find so many posts here touching - especially Jet's - this thread has, in a way, made me angrier and more resentful towards my own mother. We do not speak and I doubt we ever will. In fact, I wish that she would just die. I know that sounds harsh. But it's the truth.

I don't know why, but now I feel so horrible after writing this.

Rachel

 

[Rivergirl]

I was able to do some forgiveness work around my father who was verbally mean, sarcastic, and critical. I haven't been in contact with him since my mother's death about 28 years ago, but a few years later I just kind of decided to forgive him.

For me forgiveness meant letting go of being mad at him, and it felt like giving him back his own behaviour. It is his mess, his crap, and is all about him and not about me. I separated myself from his behaviour and it felt actually in my mind like taking a big armful of stuff and giving it back to him. All the insults, all the put-downs, all the condescension, all the plain old meanness. It's who he was, not me, and I chose to let go of it all. I felt lighter at once, and I still do. I rarely thought of his hurtfulness after that, or of him.

I still can remember the way he was if I really try, but if I think of him now I do so without much emotion---just someone I knew long ago who was a mean person. The memories of him are dim, and don't hurt any more. I don't feel like I'm dragging around a heavy load of bruises inside my heart from him. I took them into my arms and gave them back, saying in my mind These are yours. I won't carry them any more. I know you did the best you could at the time----it was pretty poor, really. So now I let you go.

Now. I am still working on my mother, who has been much harder and more stubborn to get rid of. Maybe because I spent more time around her, maybe because I expected more of her, maybe because she was just more poisonous. But I am working on it, because I have had MORE THAN ENOUGH of carrying around her poison---in the form of memories that still hurt----for 50 years. But I want to forgive that woman who was so trapped in her own quicksand and could not get out. What a miserable person she was, and she spread it around to all of us. What a miserable life she led, and then died, still full of poison.

For me forgiveness does not mean excusing or saying it was okay. It means understanding that these mean-spirited and abusive people could not do any better than they did----did not have it in them to be better, and did not make better choices. And that's their crap, not mine. It means letting go of the anger that has bound me to them so tightly. Why they were like that I don't know, and I don't care why any more.

I recently said to my therapist that it feels like I've been rowing this little boat all my life with a rope out the back towing more and more baggage as I go. And now there is so much that I am unable to move forward any more and I am stopped dead in the water. So I am working on letting go of all these pieces that weigh me down. My father's meanness, my mother's abuse, my boss's death, the way I was treated at work......opening my hands and my heart....and letting go. Hopefully I will be rowing forward one day soon.

 

[pandora]

I have had seething anger towards my Mom since i was 14 and she forgot I existed.......I now know after my father diied she fell apart...never got help and i think when he died and she was a 43 year old,a house wife, widow with no other family support she just didn't know how or whT TO DO.

i DON'T agree with the things she did and though I think I forgive...well, I do....I rensent.

I am trying to just tell myself, she is NOW 65, I am 37..........right now I would feel lost without her, I love her and I don't want her to die.......at one time, I really beleived if she died my life would not change at all and I had already come to terms that I HAD COME TO TERMS ......WITH god...I was not even going to go to her funeral ( now I want her to never die)

I guess in my case....I think I am now the lucky one....I hope I am not setting myself up to just get hurt again......I wait....but I pray thay she will just stay in nice mother mode!!!!!!!

 

[Rivergirl]

Hey Linasmom......

I think the best advice anyone can give you is that the place that you're in right now is the place you need to be. We're all in the place we need to be on our own journey, as hard as that place is sometimes. :kiss:

I forgot to add that in all this forgiveness work that I've done on my father and want to do on my mother, who died about 28 years ago, I have to say that I am very glad she's dead. Gone, buried, out of my life. Yay! And I don't feel one bit bad about it. I actually feel happy about it----my life has been better for it.

I am reminded of a poem I came across several years ago by a guy named John D. Moore. He posted it on (of all things) the Magnetic Poetry website. I can't believe he wrote it with those magnetic poetry things, but it really grabbed me. It describes especially the way I feel (or want to feel) about my childhood, and my mother in particular. It's called Rest In Peace:

surround it with some colourful, perfumed flowers
give it one cold goodbye kiss
put it deep down in the hole
and listen to all the lies,
the words about god and eternity
linger after as they bring
a sad marble angel and fresh green grass
to cover the moist dark dirt

now dance on it
and go free

 

[Arcticboy1970]

Well folks,

I am still processing soemthing from the other night and would like some feedback if people can. Earlier in this string or thread or whatever they are called, I commented on the situation with my mom and how she was and is stupid and inept. Well, I think I need to revisit that. The last year and a bit with her has been odd, she has behaved somewhat like I think a mother should. She has been concerned with how are and has been caring. Not spitting acid and denying she played a big role in how screwed up my head is. It's been wierd.

Well the other night she called me and we started talking about things more, we have spoken before about my diagnosis and why the docs say it is there, my T had recommended this step.....anyways she told me that she went to her doctor the other day and asked to be referred to a mental health clinic because she is depressed and thinks she may have the same thing as her son.

It probably fits........... and I am not sure how to feel and think about it.

Gotta stop, my brain is spinning. Triggered.

 

[Moonshadow]

I have been avoiding this thread for a while. I know, I started the thread, but dealing with my mother issues is a difficult road for me.

Rachel, your post about your feelings toward your mother really hit home with me. I have often wondered how I would react, if I heard that my mother was dead. I've lived so long without her in my life, it's sort of like she's gone, already. I don't know that it would make much difference. If I heard that she was on her death bed, I do not see myself rushing to her side.

Arcticboy, I have believed, for a long time, that my mother is bi-polar. My grandmother thinks so, too. My mother will do nothing to get help. If it turned out that she did have such a mental health issue, I don't see that as an automatic out on her negligence or abuse. Even bi-polar sufferers have moments of clarity. With my mother, it was never her fault. If she just turned a blind eye, it was not her responsibility. There was always an excuse, always someone else to blame. Usually the blame would fall on me.

My mother used to tell me, when I would ask her if I was wanted, "Well, if I didn't have you, I probably would have killed myself on drugs." What is a child supposed to do with that? How was that supposed to make me feel wanted? I was never something to live for, I was a burden she was laden with, keeping her from having fun.

 

[Rivergirl]

Hi there---that sounds to me more like "you saved me from the road that my life was taking". Just my take on it. There were certainly more positive or loving things she could have responded with, though.

Rivergirl

 

[Moonshadow]

In a conversation I had with my grandmother, recently, I asked her what my mother says about me. I wanted to know if she feels any remorse over the way she treated me, or felt at all responsible for the terrible things that happened to me, due to her negligence and lack of protection.

My grandmother told me that since I returned my mother's last gift (she used to send Xmas ornaments to my children, whom she's never met), my mother said that she's through with me, and no longer speaks of me. That was nearly 2 years ago. I could tell that it hurt my grandmother to tell me.

I am not surprised that my mother gave up on me, as she never tried that hard to speak to me, anyway. Sending gifts to my children was merely a way for her to be manipulative and underhanded.

Since hearing this, I feel relieved to know that she won't send anymore unwanted gifts. I always felt like the "bad guy" for returning them, even though I always felt it was manipulative. It still hurts, though, to know that my mother has completely washed her hands of me. It just reinforces my feeling that she never really wanted me anyway.

 

[averyave]

Sorry to hear your stories.

Mine has similar tones. Im just glad I found this site today. It sounds weird but I was convinced by her to feel guilty for feeling upset for her verbal/mental abuse. I vented my story in a post. I hope the moderator allows it to go up.

I guess my point is that venting feels better on here because it appears we all understand.