My heart is very sad for those of you who have experienced horrific relationships with parents. I’m very impressed with those of you who have moved on and not allowed it to own you.
^^ Yes.
It’s very hard to know when to let go of the hurt. Or if you should. People do change as they age and as circumstances change.
I wasn’t raised in abuse, per se, but my mother was clueless about how to raise a child and could never discuss anything difficult or delicate. She was so uncomfortable with anything sexual, that I bought my own tampons and bras even as a tween. I also grew up in a filthy house, as I swear she didn’t know how to clean - she was raised with domestic help in her house.
I do harbor some bad feeling towards her about this, but have come to understand she sees the world a bit differently and has very low standards on household cleanliness. It’s made me OCD about living in a clean house, such that I go crazy when my family leaves dirty dishes out and do not put food away immediately.
My mother’s family, her father and brother, are quite dysfunctional. My uncle and his second wife were crazy and abusive to the children from his first marriage and as a consequence he has several grandchildren he has never met. I try to get through to him (I am considered like Switzerland) but I’ve reached the conclusion that it is hopeless. My Mom is gone now and it was awful to see her father and brother dishing out the same garbage when she was even on her death bed.
Now, I worry about my cousins. Idiot uncle made a stupid insulting comment on my Facebook page and I tried to laugh it off in response. It didn’t really hurt me, it was only startling in it’s obtuseness. However one of my cousins reached out to me privately to apologize. Dammit, she shouldn’t be apologizing for him!
It’s also bad that my sister and I are seen as “his” side of the family and I think it’s painful for all of them to see us because we remind them of him. I love my cousins but I don’t see them that often and I hope we can purge any nasty residual idiot-uncleness between us.
Best line on CC in a very long time.
I think there’s a big difference between personal hang ups and parenting fails and actual abuse. My family of origin has its share of dysfunction but none of it was directed and with intent. People mostly had good intentions and sometimes lacked in execution. We all blame out parents until we get older and wiser and forgive them. That’s where I see the role of forgiveness. No, my mom’s not perfect but neither am I. There are parenting choices that I would change if I had it to do over again. If I have “given” my kids hang ups I hope that they will go easy on me and forgive me as well.
That just gave me the creeps re-reading it. I have never liked that bumper sticker saying of “Christians aren’t perfect just forgiven”. That puts us right back in the world of forced forgiveness like you can shame a person into forgiving an abuser because it’s the Christian thing to do. It also give a free pass to avoid introspection. Being “broken” or “imperfect” by nature, if that’s what you believe, is no excuse for bad behavior.
This is a bit of a tangent but when googling that phase to make sure I quoted it right I came up with this little nugget. DH started bailing out of the moving car on the way to church as soon as he was old enough to tuck and roll so as not to be subjected to the judgmental hypocrisy in their particular congregation (strict Southern Baptist). This pretty much sums up why that concept of mandatory forgiveness on the part of a victim just rankles. I would bet this uncle has a pretty good reason why he won’t attend “the church he grew up in.”
Quote from The Christian Post:
BY BILLY GRAHAM, CHRISTIAN POST GUEST COLUMNIST
June 2, 2011|10:31 pm
Q: My uncle doesn’t have anything to do with the church he grew up in (or any other church), because he says Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites and aren’t any better than anyone else. How can I answer him? My faith is very important to me, and his attitude really hurts me. – M. McK.
A: Perhaps you’ve seen a sign outside a church or on someone’s bumper that says something like this: “Christians aren’t perfect – they’re just forgiven.”
It points out an important truth: Although God has forgiven us of all our sins, we still aren’t perfect, and we still sin. Even the Apostle Paul – the greatest Christian who ever lived – often found himself weighed down by his old sinful nature. He wrote, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). Every Christian can identify with his struggle.
Why do I mention this? The reason is because your uncle doesn’t really understand what it means to belong to Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect – because we aren’t. But it does mean God has come to live within us by His Spirit, and it does mean we now have a whole new direction in life. We aren’t hypocrites – not if we’re following Jesus. But we are honest about our needs, including our need of God. Can he say the same about himself?
Pray for your uncle, that God will convict him of his pride and rebellion. But pray too that you will be a witness to him of Christ’s love and peace. He may deny what you believe, but he can’t deny the reality of a life that has been changed by Jesus Christ.
Understanding another’s dysfunction or mental problems helps one cope with injustice if you encounter that situation. But it doesn’t mean you need to embrace it or live with it or forgive it. Often in these situations it’s a matter of save yourself first if you happen to be the victim. If forgiveness helps you heal, do it.
As to the above quote–I’m not sure of your point. I think the point by Billy Graham was that nobody’s perfect and nobody can judge someone else. Leave the judgement to God. All you can do is live your life to your best ability and try to be a good example to others.
I hope these people are in therapy, that can help a great deal.
Ive struggled with mental illness and chronic depression, since childhood. Unfortunately, during my school years support was not available for those with disabilities, unless you were extremely disruptive to the class. I wasn’t, so I just kept getting passes along until I was old enough to drop out.
Then years of getting less than five hours of sleep a night with two special needs kids, made me almost psychotic, compounded with lenghty periods of being single mom and not having any outside help. At one point, I even entered a psychiatric hospital ( for just a weekend) because it was the only way to get their dad to help & so I could get some sleep! ( I was compelled to do that twice in a 3yr period- pretty sad that was the only thing I felt empowered to do)
Do you forgive people who have tried to make amends and have changed or do you turn your back?
Is the state getting involved in these abusive situations, and if not, why not?
There are so many mandated reporters out there, teachers, medical personnel, camp counsellors…, that there should be more than bare minimal supports out there for people.
What other resources would people support?
In my situation, I was attending weekly groups for women who had been in an abusive relationship.
( husband was also in treatment)
My youngest daughter was attending a children’s support group at the same time & place. ( my oldest declined to participate- she was about 16-17). Unfortunately, the shelter had a policy, that forbid getting rides from the abuser, even though it is common knowledge where the shelter is, and they knew I was living with him, so we were cut loose one day after we had accepted a ride from him even though we were dropped off several blocks away. It was difficult to explain to my youngest who was 9, that she no longer would have a safe place to talk about what she had witnessed. But since medical insurance does not cover such and there were no other affordable alternatives, she was stuck. Why don’t we have more resources for families? If I had chosen to become homeless with my children, it’s possible we would have had free counseling available, but I made the decision to stay, and to continue to try and keep my family together.
I think the level of contact and forgiveness with people in different for everyone, although I think everyone makes mistakes, but most people have grown and changed a great deal by the time they reach midlife. Most people are doing the best they can, hopefully each generation is able to learn from the preceding one and access more resources, to have a better life than their parents did.
Very true . . .
Thank you all for springing forth with your stories. When we suffer, one way or another, we don’t always have our bearings or perspective. It doesn’t come from the distance of reading articles, sometimes not even with counseling, if the other hasn’t been through something similar. It needs another human to share and vent. Your openness helps. Every word of it.
My mother is toxic. And willingly so. If you set up a boundary, change the topic or limit contact, she would up the ante. Each time I try to describe, I stop myself. But not only was it burdening me, but as someone else mentioned, she was threatening my kids’ stability and sense of security and sense of family. I wanted them to grow up knowing there are things we do for others, sometimes from love, sometimes just because it’s right, that it can be important we try. But also that there can be a point at which we have to mindfully weigh the blow-back. Most of that I couldn’t express when they were younger, I tried to protect them. But it also served as a lesson to me, as a mom, how to raise them to be as whole as I could. As they got older, I was able to talk to them, in careful bits. Luckily, DH’s family, though far off, is warm and wonderful, embracing. And my grandmother, though she was also far away, doted on the girls, wanted us to visit when we could, etc.
The pain we’re talking about often isn’t any one or few things we can point to. It’s the cumulative effect of years. And since it often starts when we’re more vulnerable, it’s compounded by confusion. But even when we’re older, wiser, there’s still grief at the loss. We do our best to work around it.
Jym, I don’t “plan” to forgive. What I do instead is try to remember the good things, too. And share them with my kids. There were ways my mother was a good mother and traits she gave me that I am glad to have, memories I enjoy. And I try to understand. But she is toxic.
Thank you all.
My MIL’s toxicity wasn’t some relic from the past. She was toxic right up through the last time we saw her 2 weeks before she died (she was not well but died unexpectedly in a flash). She was so toxic that we assigned a minder at my FIL’s funeral to keep her sidetracked and separate (even while she was in a wheelchair) from my FIL’s sister who she hated to the end. And of course she told DH that he should have been killed rather than his brother. There was no softening and she didn’t have an introspective bone in her body. I like your last lines @lookingforward - that sounds familiar