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One daughter, though, was careful to draw a distinction between forgiveness and disengagement, a point of view worth considering:
"Here's the thing: I'm not turning the other cheek and offering the olive branch (ever again). The closest I can get to forgiveness is 'let go of the story' in the Buddhist sense. Ruminating about it builds a rut in the brain, so I stay in the moment. When I catch myself thinking about it, I come back to the present moment, perhaps by focusing on my breath. Again and again and again. As many times as it takes. Depression is thinking about the past and anxiety is thinking about the future. Mindfulness has been the answer. Compassion also stops the rut-building process in the brain, so I think about what must have happened to my mother. But I do that for the benefit of my brain. Forgiveness? No."
The decision to forgive your mother is complex, and depends on motivations and intentions perhaps more than not. I’m often asked if I’ve forgiven my own mother; the truth is that I haven’t. I find intentional cruelty toward children an unforgivable act, and she certainly was guilty of that, so no forgiveness there. But if one component of forgiveness is letting go, that’s another matter. The truth is that I never, ever think about my mother unless I am writing about her. In a sense, that’s the ultimate disengagement.
Sorry, but I would have to reverse that in my next conversation with her and say "I sure wish I could come over and see you, but you know I can not because our dogs would smell your dog on us and be very upset."
haha. Very true. I tried to be nice and said word for word " Mom, you know we have 2 bunnies and if the girls can handle a bunny, they can handle your dog that acts like a bunny ". No dice.
haha. Very true. I tried to be nice and said word for word " Mom, you know we have 2 bunnies and if the girls can handle a bunny, they can handle your dog that acts like a bunny ". No dice.
She's got you right where she wants you now, from her perspective. You're trying to engage with her after you walked away and now she holds all the cards. It's just another facet to her toxicity. Time to disengage again.
"Your family isn't welcome here because your kids won't be able to handle the dog" said no loving mother/grandmother EVER.
background: Im 31, my mother and i have always had a rocky relationship. My grandma was more like a mom to me. She passed away in 2012.
Some things happened at the end of last year that made me say enough is enough! This is toxic and its not going to magically get better.
My question is for those that have cut off the relationship, how long did it take you to be at full peace about it and stop wondering in the back of your mind if you made the right choice? If you have children, how did you handle that aspect?
** I do NOT want to repair the relationship. Maybe that makes me a horrid person but shed have to do some serious soul searching and begging for it to happen.
well, it took me a very long time...I was in my late fifties early sixties, I believe.
there are still times I feel guilty, however, while realizing she is my mother, she should have never been one.
I'm not bitter or angry, actually don't feel anything towards her, while knowing she did the very best she possibly could mentally with the tools she had, which wasn't much.
she had a horrible childhood, she was beat constantly, she was the oldest, and was made to quit school and go to work and help raise her sisters, and that is why all but one, were bat **** crazy. She raised them. There was also incest, and a whole lot of anger, actually hate for anyone who had a better life than she did. Everyone was no good, and she was the only one, in her small litter world who ever suffered, she had no compassion for anyone else....everyone else was faking it. She lied, which is something I hated about her the most, she lied all the time...and she was very cruel to my step father who was a decent human being and very good to her. She hit him, humiliated him, and tortured him constantly, like she did me. What I mean is, it was a verbal torture, "you can't do anything right, if you'd buy her something it was never right or good enough, there was nothing you could do, to gain any loving attention, she was miserable, all the time.
It doesn't make you a horrible person, it's totally your choice, so don't worry what others think about you.
I didn't break away from my mother for so long, because I cared what other people would think about me, but b/c I felt sorry for her. Well, you can feel sorry for someone only so long, and then you reach a point in your life, where you've had enough.
We've all suffered bad things in our lives, now and then, some not so bad and others constant, but my point is, you don't treat people cruel or talk about them and gossip like that....she would make up stuff about people, and believed her own lies...awful
So, your not looking for approval from other people, they don't have to deal with her, you do, and every one of us has a different stress level, so once you reach that point of no return, the last thing you should worry about is what others think about you, they didn't live with her. Did they? So how could they know.
And those who abandon you b/c they don't agree with you, were not a good fit anyway, so....
She's got you right where she wants you now, from her perspective. You're trying to engage with her after you walked away and now she holds all the cards. It's just another facet to her toxicity. Time to disengage again.
"Your family isn't welcome here because your kids won't be able to handle the dog" said no loving mother/grandmother EVER.
Very true. And it's particular to only the OP and his/her kids-- not the OP's siblings and the nieces/nephews. Some people just can't stop trying to twist that dagger in. Someone pointed out to me recently, that no matter how many times a snake shed its skin, it's still a snake. OP, definitely disengage and accept it'll always be hurtful when it comes to your mom.
People who don't understand exactly what it's like to grow up with parents like these, they just think you must be ungrateful or uncaring to treat your parents like this, and of course suggest that you just need some counseling or to work on ways to fix things between you.
And those people are usually genuinely nice people with good motives but there's no way to understand it unless you've lived it.
My late MIL was that way. Her project for her last several years was to reconcile my mother and I. So she forwarded every email I sent to her to my mother. Those were private messages and she did not tell me she was doing it -- I had to find out from another source.
I couldn't be angry with her because she innocently meant well. One of the last things she said to me was that she wanted my mother to come visit her and trusted me to arrange that. I didn't. And I don't regret it.
reading some of these stories makes me think of what is going on with my wife and her mother. She'll call my wife up and lecture her about everything for a good couple of hours, our finances, her health, her disease, her faith, I was able to do this why can't you, it's all in your head, it's your fault your sick
We were living in her mothers house for the first five years of marriage, between what i described, and having her mother constantly having people come over and spy on the house, my wife had enough and didn't talk to her for a couple of months until she left a nasty message saying if you don't call me back i'm going to kick you out of the house, and then play it off like it's a joke.
I'm beginning to wonder about my MIL she lost a daughter, before my wife was born, she's been through some abusive relationships, her sons all left under unpleasant terms when they were younger, and i just wonder if she's too afraid to let her be her own person because she's afraid of some how losing the only child she really had a relationship with?
Let me tell you I cut my mother off years and years ago and I have never regretted it since the time she threatened to burn the house down with my lil brother living in it along with my dad . I told my brother to get his things packed and pick up his dog and go to my grandmothers house . I was booking a flight home to boston right then and there . My dad refused to leave the house so I said fine . My dad always had a relentless habit of defending my mother even when she got caught spanking or whipping us I should say in front of dads office building and one of his supervisors told him that he had better get her under control or he would not have a job . After that mother was very careful and she always had a beef with the neighbor on both sides . When I got old enough I moved out with one of my cousins and God bless her because I don't think I would have survived if she had not given me that opportunity to do so . She understood what I was going through because her father my uncle had the same mental defect my mother had it was bi polar but back then no one ever used those words , My mother refused help and said she did not have a problem LOL . My brother died a few years ago because of stomach issues which I'm sure were caused and brought on by my mother . You see while my dad was alive we had to maintain a relationship with our mother in order to see and visit our father because he would not leave her or divorce her or any of that business as he called it . I was always in contact with my grandmother up until the day she passed . all of them are gone now and I'm at peace finally . But I'm glad I cut her off after my dad died . She was toxic to say the least , No one should feel bad about cutting a toxic person out of their life period .
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