Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[Confused]

Memories and questions no matter how long always find their way back to us, and we have no say. Im really sorry your thinking about all this again, but the good thing is you have come a long way, your wonderful and your building even more strength as the days go on. Hugs

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"When I was pregnant with you, I felt nothing for you."

"When I held you in my arms as a baby, I felt nothing."

Do you see the power, accruing to the abuser, in this lie?

Here is a secret: You did not come from your mother.

You came from God.

Cedar

Here is the thing: One more time, a sinister thing, a terrible story told to hurt and shred and destroy her own child, her own children.

And both our mothers told that same, so hurtful story. Yours, in how she felt when finally you were here, a newborn and utterly defenseless baby girl, and mine, in how, if only abortion had been legal, we would not be alive.

Witness these events from your own perspective, not from hers, SWOT.

What would you think, if you had learned the mother of your grandson had whispered those same words to him when he was newly born, when he was so new he knew nothing but what she told him about himself and his place in this new world where he found himself?

And then, imagine what you might feel about her, if she whispered that same story to him and to everyone else, every year, on his birthday.

But our mothers did not tell that story to anyone else.

And you and I both know why.

Because they knew how wrong, how horribly, unforgivably wrong it was to do what they did.

And here is something for us to know: They did it, anyway.

So, that would be malice aforethought.

I see you.

I see you back.

Snip.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

if only abortion had been legal, we would not be alive.

E. told that one to Thing 2.


I have no idea why E. told us these truths about our births. These are the types of things you DON'T share with your children. I can't even conceive of not loving my children on sight and I adopted most of them. Even Goneboy, who is six...I cried when he ran into my arms and called me "Daddy" and I loved him with all my heart. I did not give birth to these children, except for Bart, and they were burned into my heart even before I met them. As for Bart, I loved him dearly and fiercely as soon as I held him. How can you not feel anything for your baby unless there is something wrong with your brain? E. had a strange way of attaching. I almost wonder if she had attachment disorder. She either overattached or did not attach. Who knows? So much wired wrong in her brain and so much of that dysfunction given to us...

And that's my point. Through all this writing and also voracious reading about FOO like ours (they all seem to follow the same pattern), I am learning that they are sicker than sick...and spread the love toward their beloved can-do-no-wrongs and the hate towards their scapegoated child(ren) and, if we are unfortunate enough to allow them know our grands, them too. The same games. Favorites. Unfavorites. BS.

E. was a mean lady to me. I believe she wasn't to 1 and 2, bu she was to me and they went along with her, never once defending me so why should I keep them in my life? Why should I care if they don't like that I post about the FOO? Why should I care if they think I'm "crazy" (the pot calling the kettle black). Why should I care if they think I am "bad?" I don't.

The best revenge is living a good life, even if they don't know about it. I intend on continuing my good life up here in the serene town I live in with the drama free angels I call my real family.

You will feel so good when you finally talk it out so much that you realize...they are just human beings, deeply sick and flawed and they hurt you because they could. And we can decide they are not our family. If anyone asks me if I have family now, I am going to just say I have my husband and kids, but I just have an elderly father.

If they ask, "Only child?"

I'm going to say, "Yes." A harmless lie...and really NOT a lie.

I don't need to explain anything to anybody.

Cedar, you are getting stronger every day. I know you can finally be your own winner. When you stop caring, you are the winner And one day you will.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You are braver than me, SWOT.

I am scared of my FOO. I don't know how to say no or what to say no to and I cannot, or could not, in the past, protect myself from my mother. I don't want to be afraid, anymore. I don't want to have those broken places in me when I need to be whole and strong.

And I do have those places. When I am not thinking about how to behave in the event of a confrontation, then I will know I can let go of all of it, too. So, I am going to keep at this for a little while longer until I am not always wondering what I should say when they call, or what I should do, if they come here.

I am proud and happy for you, that you are there already!

Because you did it, worked through it and came through it in such a good, strong place, I know it can happen. So I know I will get there, too.

As always, thank you, SWOT.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I'll never be 100% there. And neither will anyone who grew up in a home like ours. And I don't know what to say to these people. I never did know what to say and I WAS afraid of my mother. I was afraid of her mouth that mocked me and made fun of me and belittled me. I did talk back. But I was the kid and I was still scared. It is easy to make me feel ashamed, even if I have nothing to be ashamed about. So I am afraid of Thing 2 as well.

I have a question for you. You certainly do not have to answer or apologize or even address it.

Why do you still talk to your FOO?

Remember, I tried calling E. too because I wanted to settle things while were both in this lifetime, in accordance with my beliefs, but it didn't work. It lead to more heartache than if I'd just dumped her...but I felt it was not the right thing to do. I don't know why. I guess maybe I knew how how much she hated me, but didn't want to admit it to myself.

The reason it is easy to be brave is because I absolutely have decided I will never face Thing 1 or 2's words again. I will see them once more. Then *poof* forever, unless we have to work it out in the afterlife. But in this life? I have a family. They are not needed.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Why do you still talk to your FOO?

Well, I actually don't. Or they don't talk to me, or some weird combination of the two. I feel badly about that. Somehow, I always wish everyone could just come for dinner, and we would all be so happy this was behind us. I am choosing now because I have not gone back to them after the last thing that was too blatant to excuse, though the option was offered and continues to be offered. I want to be sure I am doing the right thing, because my mother is in her eighties and I need to know why not seeing her now is the right thing, and will continue to be the right thing, after she dies.

And because I do not want to be vulnerable to my sister when my mother dies.

Or to my mother if my sister should die.

I don't want to have been wrong about deciding to opt out. The harder I work at reviewing my childhood, my adolescence, my young motherhood, and my life now, I am seeing things correctly, stringing the pieces together correctly, for the first time.

It's been a hard thing.

I am coming to understand how deeply in denial I am about so many things, and I am not sure how I feel about that. All those times I post about believing in the best of us, or believing in change, or believing we all want to be better and do better...those things are true, of course, but the more deeply I access material having to do with my family of origin, the more I actually trace through the hurtful things my own sister has done with malice and intention...I sound foolish, I know, but I just can't believe it and I feel really so sad when I do believe it, when I really do see what they do and how they see me, how they mean and intend to see me.

And my children!

It feels like they celebrate when the kids are not doing well. Like that same obscenity feeling. Something so deeply wrong about the way they seem to relish and almost cherish every bad, painful thing that happens to them.

And I just keep stumbling over that.

I wonder what in the world is the matter with me for thinking like that. And I have to get to a place somehow where I don't do that. I have to get to a place where it is what it looks like and where I believe that is really a real thing. So I guess that is an apt description of what it is to be seen for a role. To be seen as some interchangeable thing designed to service something I don't understand.

And that is the thing I need to see and face up to and etc.

And I am doing it, but it's surprising how hard it is to see that stuff. I do feel protective of my sister and of my brother.

?

They are grown up people, for heaven's sake, and they are ~ well, here's the thing. They are as firmly locked into denial, into their own belief systems of how to do this, as I am.

So that's where the intention piece comes in, for me.

I was so sure it was an accident, or an overwhelming spate of emotion that well, that was an accident, too. But you don't stalk someone by accident, and you don't isolate and ridicule someone by accident over time and again and again.

And I never see the anger piece in it, for my sister.

But she is angry, deeply angry.

And I must be too of course, but I call it resentment because that is what it feels like to me. A slow burn, not an explosion. And I get it that dealing with how I feel about knowing I am resentful keeps me locked into them, too.

And I don't know what to do. I hold faith with myself that I will come through it, that I will get to the other side of it.

And that's what I am doing.

Here is a story and I apologize for working through things again on your thread ~ but I keep doing it. I would be okay with it if you did it on one of my threads though, or if Copa or one of the others of us did. (Cedar says, dancing right away from the hurt of the issue at hand.)

On we go.

I cannot afford compassion. Not yet. Compassion is never going to address the core issues here. Or denial, or whatever this is where I refuse to stand up for myself because I can't believe they could mean what they do mean, though I have seen it a thousand times.

Though I have seen it every time; and have never seen anything else from them.

And that is a good admission to make.

On we go.

Here is the story, this time: D H and I rented a condo on the beach in Padre Island, Texas for a month before settling on Florida. We invited my parents, who wintered in Texas, down for the weekend. My mother suggested including my sister and her D H. It was a two bedroom condo, so that meant my sister and her D H would stay with us, as they were driving from quite far away and my parents were close enough for it to be an easy drive for them, and they could return home that same night, after dinner. And from the second my sister arrived, everything was weird. She and her husband seemed determined to escape D H and I with my parents. Tried to get them to slip into a bar for a drink with them, instead of all of us slipping in ~ that kind of thing. But it was our condo and my sister and her D H had spent the night before and were to spent the next night too, so it wasn't like there was anything to say about that. Or maybe, there was nothing wrong with what they did, but it didn't feel right. In that same way so many things having to do with my sister feel really off. In any event, we all made it through the weekend somehow. My sister and her D H left the next morning. And my sister told me, some weeks later, that they had left so early because they liked the beach so well and they went looking for a condo that was nicer than the one they had stayed in with us.

So they were there, on that same beach where we were, and they chose not to spend that time with us, but to spend it looking through other condos on the beach that were nicer than the one we had rented.

Rented, not bought.

So, it isn't even like it was our own condo that we bought.

I keep tripping over that.

It was a beautiful thing, that condo we found. Beautiful pool, beautiful original art in the condo. But it felt sullied to me, somehow. I thought to myself: Well, that is probably true, what my sister said. I had rented the condo through a real estate agent because we were looking into doing a condo on a Texas beach instead of Florida, and I hadn't seen the condo before we got there. But the family dysfunction part is that I hadn't thought along those lines at all, before my sister said that.

I hadn't thought I might be showing off, or trying to hurt my sister by inviting her, or any of those things. Intellectually I get it that there is not a thing to apologize for or explain. My sister and her D H had never stayed on the beach in any vacation they ever took ~ they stay off the beach, if they even go. So, I excused it by knowing I might be jealous too, if our situations were reversed. But what I do not see where my sister is concerned...what am I not seeing where my sister is concerned.

So thank heaven D H and I decided Florida, not Texas.

Stuff like that, where I can't believe she did what she did, or that my parents played into it.

Stuff like that.

I don't know what to make of it, or how to respond to it, or what to do with the resentment I feel that they were even there and ruined something that should have been okay.

That stupid, resentment feeling.

I don't know what to do with that. I could say: Sucks to be you. Be grateful you were even invited, and you would not have been, had I known how it was all going to turn out.

But didn't I have to try?

But that doesn't seem right. So, I wonder how it must have looked, to her. And I try to see myself from her perspective. But when I do, all I can remember is how really hard it was for both D H and I to go through the motions of enjoying anything, to make ourselves go anywhere and do anything, because our kids were so troubled.

So, there's that.

What I mean is that I felt so badly ~ D H and I both did, and were so focused on how it feels when your kids are whatever and you are still enabling and you don't know what to do about any of it that I don't think I was insufferable, or showing off, or trying to be better than anybody.

But maybe I was.

?

That kind of thinking is what I mean when I write that compassion cannot be part of this.

Maybe the word I am looking for is justification. Justification of badness cannot be allowed. It just feels bad to think like that, in case I am justifying myself, my own bad behavior. That I can't see, I mean.

My sister's D H nearly strangled himself paying for everyone's dinner instead of everyone just paying for their own, which is what D H and I did with my parents.

So, huh.

Need to see this through Maya's eyes. Mine just aren't ~ I guess I'm taking responsibility for something that, given the other things I've realized about my FOO, could never have been okay. Even if Maya herself found herself in that position of trying to ~ well, I guess host everyone on the beach is what I was doing, and that is not a wrong thing.

Well, so what does anyone think about that.

***

I have been thinking so often about the piece you posted here about family roles and fluidity and rigidity and that continuum of illness and health idea.

I have been working hard to be out of denial regarding family of origin. I have been working hard to see my sister as she is and to see myself ~ well, I don't know how I am going to come out of this part seeing myself. I was going to say something about having been a fool for lesser things, like I always do. But that is not exactly how I feel, anymore. I am feeling like, blank surprise. I think anger will be next, or maybe I will laugh and bless myself and let go of this whole fantasy of family. Since my father's illness and death, even showing up for dinner, even hosting a dinner, even visiting a hospital, has been an exercise in dysfunctional family dynamics with a bullet.

I am serious.

But I could never see it as the unbelievably dysfunctional thing it is, before. It was just the way things were in our family. But here is the thing, and the reason why I am doing this, now. I still keep thinking I miss them. I still keep thinking I want them; still wonder how it would feel to care for my mother without being afraid of her, and how it would feel to be cherished by a sister and brothers.

And when I think like that, I remember my mother punishing my brother for standing up for his grandchildren.

Clink.

Like a clinker, instead of a gold coin.

I wonder whether I will regret losing my mother after she is gone and so, I am working really hard to get out of denial about her now, before I am coping with both her death and my denial, and regret that I didn't see her while I could.

And my mother knows, and my sister knows, that these are their weapons, the things I cannot deny or look away from.

I can see that coming.

So I am working really hard to be out of denial because the more deeply I look into my past, the more horrified I am. I don't know how I survived it the first time. I see the same sickness radiating out of the hearts of my mother and my sister and they are so darn mean I can't even believe it. Copa posted about pictures of her mother. I have pictures of my mother too, of course. And D H has always hated them, said it made him physically ill to look at them. His reason was that my mom and my sister were so fakey. That was his word for the thing Copa sees in those pictures of her mom, and the thing I could never see in those pictures of my mom.

I just don't see it.

All of a sudden, now, I do.

Huh.

Denial is the strangest thing.

It's like knowing and not knowing. Or knowing and not believing it could be true so you just don't believe it and that's that.

***

When my father died, everyone rallied around my mother ~ and you know what that led to. That is why I keep going back. I fall right back into believing that we can do this, that we can make a family out of all of us. That never happens.

This time, I don't want to go back. And I don't want to be vulnerable, either.

How do I see my mother, knowing I could see her but that I am choosing not to and she is elderly and lonely? This is what she tells all of us. That she is so lonely, and that there is no one coming home ever again. Which makes me think of my father and how true it is that I will never see him again, either. And so, I did the responsible thing and even that blew up in my face. So, how do you like that.

Bad Cedar.

So, I have to get to the other side of Bad Cedar pretty quickly here. I need to see the manipulation for what it is. I need to see that to hurt me is how they get in. But just as it is true that enabling our kids is not something we do strictly for them once it becomes enabling, I need to look at that enabling piece for FOO too. And I am all confused there, because surely a person has a right and an obligation to see her mother through her dying time, through losing function and loneliness and health problems and doctor's visits and etc.

?

And I feel like a real poop over not being there for those things, to make those things easier for her. And I don't have an answer for that one.

***

And I need to believe that, right down to the roots of me, I need to believe that they are who they seem to be. But then I wonder what kind of person could think these things. But interacting with them is like nothing imaginable. Well, you might be able to imagine it because you are living it, too. The most unbelievable things are said and done.

Maybe that is where I should be concentrating my energies ~ on those times there was just the fun of being together. But here is what happens with that: When you look at it from a certain perspective?

There weren't any.

I am serious.

So I have some work to do still, but I am coming along well.

Little confused, still.

Cedar





So, for anyone still with me here: What are the words I can say, if my sister and my mother do contact me this summer when they are all together twenty minutes away from my house?

Or if they come to my door?

 

[BusynMember]

I am coming to understand how deeply in denial I am about so many things, and I am not sure how I feel about that. All those times I post about believing in the best of us, or believing in change, or believing we all want to be better and do better...those things are true, of course, but the more deeply I access material having to do with my family of origin, the more I actually trace through the hurtful things my own sister has done with malice and intention...I sound foolish, I know, but I just can't believe it and I feel really so sad when I do believe it, when I really do see what they do and how they see me, how they mean and intend to see me.

Cedar, for all of you to change, they have to ALL want to change, mom and sis too. And they don't.

It feels like they celebrate when the kids are not doing well. Like that same obscenity feeling. Something so deeply wrong about the way they seem to relish and almost cherish every bad, painful thing that happens to them.

Maybe they like milking it for the attention they can lavish on one another?

And I don't know what to do. I hold faith with myself that I will come through it, that I will get to the other side of it.

Yep. You are. I have to go. Will read the rest when I get back. Thanks for sharing. I would have found it hard to suddenly cut contact while mom was in her 80's too, even though she didn't want to hear from me. Makes no sense, but I'd feel she was old and it isn't nice...even if SHE isn't nice. So I get it. I did hold on way too long as it was, so I doubly get it. You will probably almost lose the sister after mom is gone, which I feel would be a good thing in your life as she has nothing positive to add to yours and was so mean about your daughter.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thank you.

So, I was reading Richard Rohr this morning.

This is from him, regarding Francis of Assisi: "...he had the humility and patience to know that whatever is true is a shared truth."

And that rings true with what I say regarding not entering into FOO dynamic, again. What I said to my sister was that I did not want to be who I needed to be, in their eyes, to be in relationship with them.

The truth is a shared, therefore objectively provable thing. Who I believe myself to be is the truth they ridiculed in: "What would Cedar do?"

Maya: "Believe them the first time they tell you who they are."

So, the imagery to hold is: I believe you, but I no longer believe in you. Closely followed by something I saw on FB awhile back: "Don't f*** with people who are loyal to you."

Followed by the imagery of the Sword whirling against the sky, in Braveheart.

And this:

"I have done what was mine to do, now you must do what is yours to do."

That was R Rohr, quoting Francis.

So, I have the answer, now. Like it always does, for me anyway, the answer has to do with faith, with unshakable faith. But the faith I believe for this time is in myself. I cannot know the end of this story. I don't know. But I do know, and will now hold faith with, with my own integrity. I think that is the correct word, the correct feeling, of what was reclaimed, here. So actually, I am whizzing along at top speed. I do see that, even in the weirder parts of what I write here, I seem to be willing to look at things fairly so I can trust that I am seeing clearly, and that I am seeing correctly, based on what I know or can learn.

So, I can stop feeling anything one way or another about this. I can let go, and trust that I know what I know: that I handled it well when I believed in them, and that I will handle it well now that I don't.

It is what it is.

"Do not be afraid.", right?

And of course that is true.

Here is another R Rohr: "...forgiving and accepting the imperfection and woundedness of life."

That is true, too. But it doesn't mean to forgive people determined to victimize you, to use you as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement, for whatever that obscenity feeling is at the heart of it. It means accept that it is what it is. There is nothing I need to do. Just like we tell one another where our troubled kids are concerned ~ well, I forgot where I was going with that. But it's the same process, the same kind of standing up at last and letting go, not necessarily of them, but of trying to figure it out. It's the same dynamic at work as the one in learning I was not responsible for what my children were choosing to do. A hurtful situation because it is so surprisingly different than what we were so sure it would be, but no entertaining guilt or remorse or desperate effort to change is going to matter.

I am not the one who picked this for all of us. I am the one who picked, and believed, in something better than this for all of us.

So, we can let go of those things.

For me too, why doesn't matter; how it came to be what it is doesn't matter.

It is what it undeniably is.

Just like it is with our kids: If this thing were fixable, we would all be having that dinner I am always posting about. The one with the white candles, and the bouquet from FTD.

Interesting aside: When I see that dinner table now, I see not the table set in preparation, but from my position at its head. The candles are lit. The linen is beautifully thick and white. I am there by myself, or I am looking across at D H.

Ring of crystal.

Turning for home.

***

"Even a little bit of the truth is more than enough for a saint." That is Richard Rohr, too. I am seeing "saint" not as a religiously or spiritually pure person, but as someone with unshakable faith in themselves, in the rightness of what I know and have validated as best I could do it and found it to be undeniably valid true stuff.

True stuff, all of it.

Little fade there on Cedar's part. But there is a core of me now, that knows how it is with denial, and how much we need it until we don't, and understands how to nurture myself through it.

As someone who can know that the little bit of the truth they do know can be correctly extrapolated to the whole.

And be okay with that.

Someone will die, everyone will, that is what we do. What matters, and this is the piece I was refusing to see, is that what matters is what we choose while we live. That someone dies is only the end of the story for them.

And having gone through this now, when I still had the option of undoing what I have done, I will know what was true and what was not, when either or any of my family dies.

When either or any one of my family dies.

It is what it is and what it was, and that will not change or be a vulnerability for me, now.

Here is another:

"Faith itself sometimes needs to be stripped of its social and historical encrustations and returned to its first, churchless incarnation in the human heart." That is Christian Wiman, from R Rohr, this morning.

So that's what I have. And that's all I have. And that is enough.

I'm good. Standing pretty well.

I think we're through this part.

Woot!

SWOT?

Thank you, again. It's been very nice to have you with me through this.

Cedar

Here is me this morning. (I get to be Henry. And Katherine. And the loons are D H and me.)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Then *poof* forever, unless we have to work it out in the afterlife. But in this life? I have a family. They are not needed

That hurts me a little bit, to think like that. I wish for them, wish it could have been better for all of us. But then I have this:

"I have done what was mine to do, now you must do what is yours to do."

And that was Francis, quoted on R Rohr, this morning.

You know, SWOT? Maybe *poof* forever is good, strengthening imagery, too.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Cedar, I do believe we resolve in the afterlife, which helps me put this life aside. I did the best I could do. I had been born with a touchy/sensitive emotional system and you could easily push my buttons to make me cry. When I didn't want to cry and look weak I fought back. That was the best I could do. And I'm not sorry. I never should have needed to defend myself in the first place. I was the child. And the trend just continued into adulthood. I really wonder what is going to happen to 2 now that she will not be able to bash what I'm doing. I am only offering a little of what my life is like now. She needs somebody to think is horrible too, maybe because she knows who really is...her boyfriend.
Herself. Her mother, who she doesn't want to see this way but whom has damaged her so badly that her age (50s) she still can't let go of an abusive man after five years. She was damaged more than me because she never detached and she came to think "Oh, mother wasn't so bad."


I believe she will peek here every so often. I don't think she can separate from me as I will from her. She needs to hang on, even if it's not good and the bold truths I speak about, which she wants to think never happened, are not good for her. She needs intensive help before she can read stuff like this. But she will. She isn't good to herself. And I am sad about that. I guess.

Cedar, I am done trying to hope for the best when others have shown they don't have a clue about reality in our parental home. I no longer will try, accept anyone back, or care.

Cedar, in a column I read today about family abuse and who tends to be appalled by it, I got a really vindictive I' whiff of more truth. This REALLY affected me and it's been true of my own life.

People who have also been abused are LEAST LIKELY to validate your abuse. They will say "oh, my dad beat me too, but it was good for me." Or "So what if your mother put you down? You're too sensitive. All mothers so that. Sheesh!" Or "Your mother is your MOTHER. You have to love her because she's your mother. My mother beat me, but I love her and care for her because she gave birth to me." BUT..if the person was raised in a loving family, they are shocked, and this has been my experience. Example:

I once mentioned to a friend who has a great set of parents that one of my parents told me "Not one of you has given me a moment of please. Not one."

I am used to the people I know who were from similar homes just laughing it off. Not her. She was clearly shocked and I wonder if she even believed me. She asked several times. "Wait. Are you sure he/she wasn't kidding?"

I shut up after that.

People who were loved are appalled. Just that "When You were put into my arms I felt nothing, absoluely nothing, shocks them.

Abused child adults? Naw. They've heard it all themselves and tend to throw the blame on you. "I'm sure your mother did the best she could. Stop hating on her."

No, she did not do the best she could. That was not her best. She must have known what she was doing and she did not seek out any help to find out the best way to deal with me. So she did "Mean Therapy."

Remember. People who were loved are shocked at our FOO. Look at Lil. She can not relate to us and I'm happy for her.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

FOO like ours (they all seem to follow the same pattern)

That is a priceless thing for us to know. It never had a thing to do with us, with who or how we are.

WTF, right?

I am learning that they are sicker than sick...and spread the love toward their beloved can-do-no-wrongs and the hate towards their scapegoated child(ren)

It looks like they are spreading love because that is what it would be ~ loving responsibility or loving pleasure or loving nurturing ~ if we were performing the same actions. But I think they do not know deep in the heart kind of loving. I think they only know shallow-water loving. As soon as the water is too deep to see their own reflections in it, they lose interest. That being the case, there is no golden child. There is a golden pawn. That is why the roles can be interchangeable, as they are in my FOO. (Did you see njs' interpretation of the meaning of FOO?!?)

:O)

So, let us say the FOO.

Where was I going with this.

Lost it.

E. was a mean lady to me. I believe she wasn't to 1 and 2, bu she was to me and they went along with her, never once defending me

I have read about families where only one child is targeted. It was that way in A Child Called It. The sibs were twisted into hurting him, too. That would be worse than the kind of abuse where the mom is so nuts she doesn't much care who she hurts. I always knew what my mother did was wrong, because I had seen her hurt others, hurt or betray friends, hurt animals. If I had not seen those things, it would have been a very hard thing to ever believe in myself, again.

I am glad you have your father now; and glad for the love there.

That is a miracle, that you have him now, and that he has you.

they are just human beings, deeply sick and flawed and they hurt you because they could.

Maybe this is true ~ that the abusers are deeply sick or flawed. I am not so into giving them a free pass into forgiveness, this morning. It's like my sense of fair play has been outraged around all these issues. That's what I see ~ no fair! Someone big hurting ~ actually physically hurting or emotionally hurting ~ someone little.

Routinely!

It's boggling my mind.

And I don't feel like forgiving any of them. I feel like taking vengeance. But confrontation will have to do. I see you. I see you back.

Oh, you dirty rat, I see you back.

Ahem.

Make that rats. Oh, you dirty rats.

E. told that one to Thing 2.

Oh, that dirty, dirty rat.

Through all this writing and also voracious reading about FOO like ours (they all seem to follow the same pattern), I am learning that they are sicker than sick..

I know!

WTF.

And the thing that is bleeding me dry this morning is that they left us vulnerable to the other predators in the world. Like we were wearing neon neckties or something.

"Easy prey" flashing on and off and we didn't ever even know it.

I just can't believe it.

Roar.

Dirty rats.

I am used to the people I know who were from similar homes just laughing it off. Not her. She was clearly shocked and I wonder if she even believed me. She asked several times. "Wait. Are you sure he/she wasn't kidding?"

I shut up after that.

I know!!! That is how it is, with me and D H. And husband family. They were always asking whether my mom and sister would be here for the 4th of July. I was always so happy to look normal, like a person with a family, and I always said "Yes!!!"

And D H told me later, that was so they would be ready. They are decent people. And they came anyway, and isn't that something. And I think they must have loved me enough all these years, but it makes me really sad that I didn't even know who or how I was, how judgmental or contemptuous mixed in with who I am really.

Wow.

I was a rat, too.

That is the hard part. Where am I me, and where am I still my mother/myself.

Ah. Salvation: D H family don't care about that stuff. Not a one of them has to be perfect. So neither do I. Yay, me!

:O)

Whew. That was a close one.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

It looks like they are spreading love because that is what it would be ~ loving responsibility or loving pleasure or loving nurturing ~ if we were performing the same actions. But I think they do not know deep in the heart kind of loving. I think they only know shallow-water loving. As soon as the water is too deep to see their own reflections in it, they lose interest. That being the case, there is no golden child. There is a golden pawn. That is why the roles can be interchangeable, as they are in my FOO. (Did you see njs' interpretation of the meaning of FOO?!?)

The GoldenChild is the one who makes the parent have the most to brag about and whom the parent most thinks is what he/she would like to be like. In many Jewish families, I am sure not all, being academically gifted is the gold star for being functional and prized and Thing 1 was brilliant. I think that's how he became the GoldenChild. Also he was passive and did not raise his voice or ever challenge his sainted E. So he was obviously her King.

The scapegoat is the brave one who calls the family's dysfunction in or acts out the family dysfunction and makes the abuser think of herself/himself. This child is the one that most reminds the abuser of herself and the abuser doesn't care for herself. So she/he is afraid of the scapegoat and what it means to her/him about her own self and issues she has.

If there are three kids there is often a lost child who gets no attention at all and I think this may be also very damaging. This child usually tries to keep the peace and is afraid of confrontation and wants attention.

And it is this way in thousands of families in the country, heck the world. The dynamics are very similar.

Boy, did reading MY story in other people's posts help me get over it.

I feel it is best to disconnect from toxic abusers. I did not exactly disconnect, but except for Thing 2, when she was in the mood not to be no contact with me, I did not have much to do with FOO once I was in my 30s. Maybe before that. I could be a good mother without their influence. And my kids were safe from divide and conquer tactics. Which E. did do in the other family. I have no idea how extreme it was, but I didn't want it at all. It might not have been as bad, but I do know that E. had a definite favorite grandchild. It came through loud and clear when she spoke to me. She did not seem to like the boy as much, which is the first time she ever picked a female as a GoldenChild.

Ah, well. These stories were told to me in codes and second hand so I am saying right now I may have some things wrong. But you get the idea and so do I.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

One of my brother's children was born with spina bifida. My mother gloried in all the ways she could "help". Like, she would go with the mother to the doctor, or to the Shriner's Hosital...because the mother was ~ I will say my mother described her as not smart. That is not the word my mother used. In any event, the child lived, and grew up believing her grandmother loved her. And here is the golden child part: Once there was no glory in being the wonderful, smarter than either the mother or the father, compassionate grandmother, my mother dropped this child, now an adult. She did not send a card for her showers or for her wedding, nor did she attend any of those occasions. She began telling the now adult granddaughter "true" things about living with spina bifida. Very cruel true things. And then, once my father was dead, my mother dropped her entirely. I saw a post on FB awhile back from this grandchild of my mother's. And the child, a young married woman now, who will never have children of her own and everything else she is coping with with such strength and generosity and courage, was mourning, was missing, playing Monopoly or Scrabble with this grandmother who still meant so much to her, and whom she somehow suddenly no longer saw.

And my mother never responded.

So I told my sister about it, and suggested that she make my mother aware of what was happening. (My mother was staying with my sister, when that FB post from her granddaughter appeared.)

And no effort was made to contact or comfort the grandchild; the young, now married granddaughter who so missed those times with her grandmother.

None.

Ever.

So, I mentioned it to my mother, that summer.

And nothing was done then, either.

So that is where I am coming from when I post that I think all these roles are interchangeable, servicing only the abusive parents' (or grandparents') need for that obscene thing we named grandiosity.

Doesn't that so suck.

This young woman is very well mothered herself, and she and her mother are very close, and her brother has babies she can love, so she is fine. The girl's mother put up with alot from all of my family. But after that incident, when she saw my mother in some public place and my mother started doing what she does, the mother turned her back and walked away.

And my mother was so flabbergasted that she told me about it, all in a huff over who so and so thought she was, and what did it matter anyway because she was no one.

Cedar

It makes me weak, to think about it, SWOT.

 

[BusynMember]

if only abortion had been legal

E. told that one to T2...lol. My Gawd, these crazy, unfit mothers are all the same. They really are. And the way they split their families is the same too.

And statements like that to children of any age, and I wasn't that old, tells you for certain that the mothers have no empathy or have personality disorders or are just plain mean, yet so many of the now adult children who don't want to believe their mothers caused the family problems (or fathers or both) are in total denial and try to put the blame for their own problems elsewhere when it is staring them in the face.

It's amazing, really. A loving mother would never say this to a child of theirs. It's the type of thing you should take to your grave and nobody will be worse off. However, a loving mother would not have felt "nothing" during a pregnancy or after holding her baby either.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have Book Club tonight. (Gone Girl ~ excellent!) So, I will answer tomorrow.

Thanks, SWOT. I like it that we are looking at all this scary stuff together.
I am trying to figure out whether I am seeing the world differently since doing all this hard work. I think I am more present in the moment, less concerned with whether the other guy is pleased with me, or angry, or whether they need something.

I held a door for someone today, and thought of you when I did it.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It's the type of thing you should take to your grave and nobody will be worse off.

Well, if the person took it to her grave, she would not have been able to use it to hurt someone else with.

And statements like that to children of any age, and I wasn't that old, tells you for certain that the mothers have no empathy or have personality disorders or are just plain mean, yet so many of the now adult children who don't want to believe their mothers caused the family problems (or fathers or both) are in total denial and try to put the blame for their own problems elsewhere when it is staring them in the face.

Yes.

Though I still say (for me, for my mother and me) that my mother lies routinely and was lying about this, too. It is too exquisitely designed to hurt, to break a child's spirit. Additionally my mother, oddly enough, never found occasion to remind her adult children of the abortions that might have been.

Because we were no longer children. And we could walk away.

And then there would be no more spirit-breaking games for the mother to play.

Though in my family, we will still go through the reaching out from the grave part. But now I know that is coming.

Thank you for sharing something so hurtful with me, SWOT. I am stronger, better prepared, because of it.

Somehow, we expect that when someone dies they see with integrity. That is the vulnerability. Understanding from our own hearts, knowing everything we have gone through with our own children, we believe, right to the core of us, that our mothers could not have meant what they said, and would take away the evil things that they did to us if they could.

But that is not true, for us.

ouch

But you get the idea and so do I.

I am getting the truth of it. Still stumbling around a little.

Gone Girl is about sociopathy.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

It is too exquisitely designed to hurt, to break a child's spirit.

I think that my father was a sociopath, and my mother had sociopathic traits.

I have written that my mother stole an inheritance and felt herself to be the victim, because I was mad. Slick.

I found some writings of hers recently, from those times, and she lamented that I had not found compassion for her, the understanding that she too had been shaped by her life. As I think about it here, by this she meant she was not responsible for her choices. Or, that her choices were justified. In any event she was not responsible. Others, like me, were responsible, to adjust or not. Take it or leave it.

I find myself veering between two poles: I do not believe what my mother or father did or did not do to me or for me was premeditated to cause hurt. They just did not care less.

If I was hurt or damaged, that was necessary collateral damage.

Sorry. Had to do it. Done. Understand I would have chosen differently if I could have. But I am me. I do for me. Only me. All for me. Get it? Get over it.

The thing is, I was trained for compassion. Compassion is who I am. I cannot turn away from it. I will choose it over and over again.

I understand that my mother consciously and deliberately has hurt me, chosen for herself knowing the consequences.

Had she been able, had life afforded her the option to choose differently, she would have...done differently.

What would that life have been like, where she could have shared or cared for her children? The Astors? Vanderbilts?

But given her array of choices...her choice was to sacrifice her kids.

But in her mind she did not intend to do it. She would have chosen otherwise, if she could of, if life had given her better options. She was dealing with the reality she faced.

Kind of like the Corleones.

Gone Girl is about sociopathy.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I found some writings of hers recently, from those times, and she lamented that I had not found compassion for her, the understanding that she too had by shaped by her life.

Yes, they do that. But how could it possibly be that she felt she merited your compassion when she had given you none of her own?

Did our mothers never once put us first in their eyes and in their hearts? Could they only, always and forever, see what it was they needed?!?

Another observation: Given everything we all have gone through with our children...how is it we are not whining, not demanding that they see through our eyes and extend compassion to us.

Because we are not our mothers and our mothers were very wrong in what they did.

I find myself veering between two poles: I do not believe what my mother or father did or did not do to me or for me was premeditated to cause hurt. They just did not care less.

Me, too. It was an accident, every time she hurt me, every time she bled me, every time she shamed or counted coup. I am not so kind as you, Copa. My mother hurt me the way she did because she could. Because there was no one to protect any of us and she could. In that sense, my own brokenness was an impersonal series of meticulously planned incidents, almost of incidents planned with a kind of chilling, anonymous precision. But that is giving my abuser ~ any of them, any one in the long chain of hyenas come running at the scent of vulnerability, at the scent of blood in the water and a spirit in distress ~ too much credit. The ongoing complexity, the twisting intricacy of what happened to me when I was just a little girl, when I was a beautiful young woman, when I was a new mother ~ that was only possible for my abuser to accomplish because she had broken me, personally. It required no skill, no talent, to hurt a child into an adult who could not defend herself. Not from you, and not from anyone else.

Eye to eye; right up close. A polluted obscenity of the intimacy that is mother love.

If I was hurt or damaged, that was necessary collateral damage.

It was an obscenity, Copa. No one has that right. Decency forbids it. Everything that matters about how everything works, comes together, flowers and changes and grows ever more beautiful forbids it, Copa.

That is why we can heal it now.

They were wrong to do what they did. Wrong from the thing's inception.

Understand I would have chosen differently if I could have.

No. Not to have left scars at this level. Malicious intent.

The thing is, I was trained for compassion. Compassion is who I am. I cannot turn away from it. I will choose it over and over again.

No, Copa.

Not yet.

Go back for them once you are through it.

I understand that my mother consciously and deliberately has hurt me, chosen for herself knowing the consequences.

I don't know Copa? But for my mother that was not so. I learned that in the WalMart / birthday party / sister dancing in the kitchen story. Obscene, the thing shining from her then, Copa.

Rotted, and slyly, coyly, clever.

And she thrives on it, and that is right where she wants to be; and it was never just me. It is everyone with whom she interacts. If you broaden your net, Copa...what were your mother's other relationships like? Loyal friend? Loyal over time, I mean? Loving wife, cherishing and respecting and being real with and to her mate?

Had she been able, had life afforded her the option to choose differently, she would have...done differently.

Her life did afford other options.

She chose this one.

Kind of like the Corleones.

"Take the cannoli. Leave the gun."

That man was going home to his family. Business was business. That is the difference, the strange conundrum, of that lifestyle and those movies.

Right here with you, Copa.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I have read about families where only one child is targeted. It was that way in A Child Called It. The sibs were twisted into hurting him, too. That would be worse than the kind of abuse where the mom is so nuts she doesn't much care who she hurts. I always knew what my mother did was wrong, because I had seen her hurt others, hurt or betray friends, hurt animals. If I had not seen those things, it would have been a very hard thing to ever believe in myself, again.

It is extremely common. And the golden children most often want to think their mothers were good people so they say "it wasn't that bad" or "it was his fault." I don't know that it's worse. Just that if it had happened to them too they most certainly would not be singing her praises.

They need one kid to scapegoat and another to exalt. From the tons of stuff I've read, obviously the scapegoat and the Golden Child rarely get along or see eye to eye. Mother is very important to the Golden Child.

Yet the scapegoat is often the strongest. I don't know Thing 1 enough to know if I am the strongest. I am stronger than Thing 2. My life choices alone, and the willingness to get help when it was needed, show that. I could not have lived with some of the choices made by Thing 2. I have not and will not list them all. It is as if all of her decisions were all about her own well being, taking nothing else into account. I doubt Thing 1 is aware of all her choices, but that is between the two strangers.

 

[Copabanana]

We brought my mother home with us when it became clear that she no longer could return home. To a different town, maybe 5 hours away.

My mother loved it here. She loved my house which she had not seen before and wanted to buy one like it.

There was lots of adjustments for us. Arranging a day care program, finding physicians, getting medical equipment. For my mother, she was Queen for a Day. Mind you, already I had been in that other city for four months having left my job to see to her.

The writing had been on the wall. While in Rehab, when M was there, she would act out. Like a child or a prima donna, she would be. Demanding to be taken to the bathroom. I need two or three people to take, me she would assert. The compassion towards the powerless she had been so proud of all her life forgotten as she carelessly demeaned the predominantly Latina aides.

It had not been enough that I was there with her, all day into the night. Alone in her Condo, at night, M in another city. Away from home and animals.

None of it counted. And when I had returned home, just for 10 days, at Christmas she raged at me on the phone. "You throw me away like garbage."

But nothing compared to the job I had taken on. Slave. With perfect manners, she saw that life as I know it ended.

S can you help me to the bathroom please? S can you get me a kleenex, please? S can you get me a glass of water? 20 hours a day. And the other 4 she would roam the house. Come in our room. Disoriented, she would pee in the most unexpected places. The work was unending. My life I saw had ended.

Soon M began to be hostile. He saw her behavior as volitional. He saw her choosing to treat me so.

I didn't know. She clearly was ill, confused and demented. How could I hold her responsible?

M confronted me directly. It is her life or yours. And I, he said, think you are the more vulnerable. She is strong. You are dying. Choose, do you want to live or not. We can find a place for your mother to live close by. You do not have to die to take care of her.

I tried harder. I knew she was impaired. But I knew M was right. I tried still.

Finally, I saw I had no choice. There was no love in this arrangement. I did not do well self-sacrifice and she did not excel in gratitude or acceptance.

I told her directly, Mama, we have to find you your own place. It will be close by. I will come every day to visit.

S, I would do anything to stay with you. It's not an option M. I have to go back to work. We have to find another arrangement. We searched. She chose one. Really, I don't think it much mattered.

For the first week or so, it looked like it could have worked. We took her out for a haircut. To dinner, would would be her last meal in a restaurant. She was happy.

I continued to take her to doctors' appointments. The worst agony. She was confused. Disoriented. She spared me none of it. One morning I began screaming in the car. "You are my Mother. My Mother. Think about what that means. Protect me. I cannot stand any more. Protect me." Screaming. So loud that people heard me from other cars. I thought later, was it elder abuse. I am thinking now, more child abuse.

Soon after she became incontinent. Blank. Except when I would arrive. She would scream. Scream. Just scream.

I tried to talk to her. Mama, I begged her. She would not talk to me. Just fury. Fury at me. Because I had brought her to that place.

I was horrified. Nothing in life had prepared me for this agony. It was in these weeks that I first went to bed. That was March of 2013.

When I called before I came she told the caretakers she couldn't care less if I came or not. I would show up. She would scream.

Meanwhile the price of this place had almost doubled.

I took her to a neurologist. I wanted to get some kind of take on what was going on. The started screaming in the office. Said her Axxhole hurt. I didn't know what to do.

I took her to the doctor. The doctor called the woman to the clinic. Said she could not properly evaluate my mother, if the people who cared for her were not present. By this time the owners of the place were disgusted with me.

They felt I was not yielding to the reality that my mother was old and dying. They did not understand the reason for all these doctors. At the same time they did not like the loss of control and felt my visits were intrusions.

I had told the doctor that my mother complained of pain on her behind. When the owner came, she discounted my mother's complaints. She said my mother was attention seeking and had invented her complaint.

At the same time the doctor examined my mother and had found a horrible pressure ulcer that they had concealed.

Two times my mother aspirated and was hospitalized. The second time, she never went back. She stayed in the hospital. After that she came home. The screaming had stopped.

I have not been able to forgive myself for insisting that my mother leave my home. We ultimately turned the master bedroom and bath into a private space for her and brought her home, hiring 3 people to help us.

Why I ask myself, instead of throwing her out, did I not bring in people to help from the onset?

I think the only answer is this: First, the power of my mother's personality. She would not have stopped dominating me and consuming me even though 20 extra people had been their. Second, me. Ultimately, I made the decision when I brought my Mother home that I had surrendered my life to her and her needs. And I had done so because that was what I wanted to do, had chosen to do.
Three months prior I had not been ready to make her care the priority in my life.

Nothing, I mean nothing had prepared me for that, nor trained me to do so. She did not take care of her own parents. Whether my Mother would have done so for me, I do not know.

Writing this is very difficult for me. I fell in love with my Mother. In so doing, I gave up my own life.

When I told my mother that we had to find another living arrangement, I added. "Your life is not more important than mine." She responded "I know."

I write these words and I cannot find a way out from the pain. I cry as I type. Still, I would do anything, anything in this world to have chosen differently, to have kept her here with me. I believe I behaved cruelly and I almost never behave cruelly.

I still wish I had chosen her instead of myself. And I feel I will punish myself as long as I live for this error. Sometimes in my secret heart I blame M. It is his fault I tell myself. If he had not stuck up for me, I would not have not broken the rules of my family. To save myself.

I am far down on the totem pole. I broke the rules. I pay the price.