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It’s like one can’t escape the abuse and another generation picks up where the abuser left off. I’ve found no matter how hard I try, how successfully I move forward living a life with kindness and joy the legacy of abuse rears its ugly head at the least expected moment. Sigh! A lot of people just seem to think one should move on and don’t think about the past but it just doesn’t always work that way.
...I had a substitute teacher, who had to do a report on a student. She went to the principle and asked for suggestions....he said, why not do one on Cremebrulee and find out why she has the 3rd highest IQ in her class, but, is failing every subject.
Well she did and she found out why and told the principle....she and I became good friends after that...
but the teachers never reported it either. I really wish they had.....I suppose no one wanted to get involved? I was in 9th grade during that time.
What year was this? I mark that you mentioned when you were in your 'earlyfifties', so you were
born during the Baby Boom, during WWII or just afterwards?
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my male cousin who I was close to, all my life, tells me, I should forget it, and move on...and for the most part I have, but every now and then something crops up....
Every now and then you are being triggered and your lived experience flashes back to the surface; something that is still in need of being understood, looked at from another angle, perhaps restoried from
your perspective.
In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived in accordance with love...
Every now and then you are haunted by regrets on behalf of your family who are no longer alive to
speak for themselves.
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I believe what bothers me most and more than the beatings is the fact that she ran me down to so many people in town....even as a little girl....and now my cousin is doing the same. ...
So that's why all this surfaced again....the hard part is, people in town believed her.....
Indeed it is unpleasant to have one's character assassinated for no good reason, to be the object of slander AND to live amongst people who are so ready to believe the worst.
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I remember once teaching a kid how to ride, and she said, Yanno, your not a terrible person...and I looked at her and said, why would you say that? She replied, "because your mother is always complaining to my mother about you and what a terrible person you are." I remember feeling so bad, at that time, I was in my early 20's.
Well, hopefully that kid learned a deeper lesson about not listening to malicious petty gossip and grew up to form their own opinions, not taking onboard as gospel, another person's perspective.
You might find the advice Gandhi gave to be of use
'I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet'
Obviously, your mother was a poor role model and that would have impacted on your sense of identity, how you perceived yourself as a female in your community, and your mother stuck a label to you :
The Bad Daughter - that can trick you into turning cartwheels proving to people who do not matter, that you are really very good, generous and compassionate. Anything to discredit your mother's malicious and unjustified opinions.
Lack of empathy in those whom society teaches us to expect nurturance is a great sorrow and the
line between illness and intention can feel very blurred at times.
Every now and then when that something pops up, like a groundhog, what do you do? Journal, talk to a therapist, clean house, cook up a storm.....
No Ruth, I'm not saying that, sorry I mislead you.....I'm just saying, that people like these shouldn't be parents...it is tragic for the children....but there would be no preventable way to keep them from raising children.
yes, very sticky questions, totally agree....
in my case, the teachers knew but also didn't do a thing about it....I had a substitute teacher, who had to do a report on a student. She went to the principle and asked for suggestions....he said, why not do one on Cremebrulee and find out why she has the 3rd highest IQ in her class, but, is failing every subject.
Well she did and she found out why and told the principle....she and I became good friends after that...
but the teachers never reported it either. I really wish they had.....I suppose no one wanted to get involved? I was in 9th grade during that time.
my male cousin who I was close to, all my life, tells me, I should forget it, and move on...and for the most part I have, but every now and then something crops up....
I believe what bothers me most and more than the beatings is the fact that she ran me down to so many people in town....even as a little girl....and now my cousin is doing the same...b/c I cut her out of my life. I suppose in her own mind she must come up with a reason why so she to is doing the same.
But can you imagine, this woman, my cousin, telling me all those years to cut my mother out of my life, and then when I finally do, she moved in, and befriends my mother....she left an open paragraph on my mother's obit, so I'd see it, and then, to find out, that in the only thing I took of my mother's belongings was a photo album, in which she had a Christmas card from this person, which was signed, Love.
Now the woman who took care of my mother said, she only came to visit my mother a few times if that....but this woman, my cousin, told me, right before I cut her out of my life, that my mother was calling her and she wasn't answering the phone....she was actually playing both sides....I suppose that hurts the most, b/c she once told me she really disliked my mother for the way she treated me as a child. My mother watched them while their parents worked so they saw a lot as well.....
So that's why all this surfaced again....the hard part is, people in town believed her.....
I remember once teaching a kid how to ride, and she said, Yanno, your not a terrible person...and I looked at her and said, why would you say that? She replied, "because your mother is always complaining to my mother about you and what a terrible person you are." I remember feeling so bad, at that time, I was in my early 20's.
Well, yes, of course they shouldn't be parents, but how do we stop them from being parents? THat's where I was going with that. How do we stop multi-generational abuse? I was just riffing on my own thoughts about it, since you made a point about unfit parents. THere's so much of that, that never gets discovered. And it's too bad that substitute teacher never reported her findings. Did she not turn in her report to the principal?
I think there's more awareness of this sort of thing these days, and teachers are required to report abuse, or the signs of abuse, if they become aware of them.
Cremebrulee---I can relate to much of your story. However, my mother was an alcoholic and a narcissist. As the oldest and the only daughter, I took the brunt of her abuse. When I would try to defend myself, my father would pull me aside and tell me not to say anything because when I did, she would scream at him later. It wasn't until I was much older did I realize that my father threw all of us kids under the bus. He never had the guts to stand up to my mother. Even my grandmother wouldn't stand up to her own daughter. My mother would be verbally abuse to her own mother. No one ever held my mother accountable for her behavior.
When I would try to tell anyone who knew my mother how badly she treated us kids, they never believed it. My mother was very manipulative and was very nice to non family members. She would also tell them lies about me and claim that I never lifted a finger to help her, which wasn't true. In fact, she treated me as a live-in maid---though an actual maid would have been treated better by her.
My mother also had a paranoid streak in her. Someone would make an innocent comment to her and she would read something horrible into it. When you would tell her she was wrong, she would call you a liar. For example, when I was 12, she spent several weeks in the hospital. When she came home, she told me that she felt sick and was very weak. I told her that maybe she needed to go back to the hospital. She screamed at me and told me that I only said that because I didn't want to help around the house. Literally, she would throw that in my face years after I said that! I tried explaining to her that I though if she was really that sick and weak, then she needed to be back in the hospital. She refused to believe it and called me a liar.
She ended up with Alzheimer's and I think it took all of us quite a while to figure it out, given that she always had a paranoid streak. It was only when she said things that, for her, were so off the wall, did we figure out something was going on.
When I had my own daughter, I promised myself that I wouldn't verbally and emotionally abuse her and worked hard to keep that promise.
Well, yes, of course they shouldn't be parents, but how do we stop them from being parents? THat's where I was going with that. How do we stop multi-generational abuse? I was just riffing on my own thoughts about it, since you made a point about unfit parents. THere's so much of that, that never gets discovered. And it's too bad that substitute teacher never reported her findings. Did she not turn in her report to the principal?
I think there's more awareness of this sort of thing these days, and teachers are required to report abuse, or the signs of abuse, if they become aware of them.
Per the bolded --- Yes, times were different those days.
For example, I have a cousin who is a doctor. Back in the 60s, when we were all kids, he had this happen to this brother and him. My uncle (my mother's brother) told them to clean up the front yard. Instead, they started fooling around after having done some of the work. My uncle got angry and took a switch off a tree and gave them both a beating. The next day, my cousin had to go to the doctor for a physical exam. The doctor noticed my cousin's back and saw the welts from the beating. The doctor said nothing. As my cousin put it, back then the thinking was that since my cousin came from a good middle class family then nothing was wrong. As a doctor now, my cousin said that if a kid came to him for an exam and he saw that, he would be required by law to report that.
I'm glad that things have changed in that way. It's a good thing that such things get reported now but for those of us who endured such things in the past, it's, at the same time, bittersweet.
Per the bolded --- Yes, times were different those days.
For example, I have a cousin who is a doctor. Back in the 60s, when we were all kids, he had this happen to this brother and him. My uncle (my mother's brother) told them to clean up the front yard. Instead, they started fooling around after having done some of the work. My uncle got angry and took a switch off a tree and gave them both a beating. The next day, my cousin had to go to the doctor for a physical exam. The doctor noticed my cousin's back and saw the welts from the beating. The doctor said nothing. As my cousin put it, back then the thinking was that since my cousin came from a good middle class family then nothing was wrong. As a doctor now, my cousin said that if a kid came to him for an exam and he saw that, he would be required by law to report that.
I'm glad that things have changed in that way. It's a good thing that such things get reported now but for those of us who endured such things in the past, it's, at the same time, bittersweet.
It's true; back then, the thing was to not interfere in private family matters. Even other adult family members, siblings or cousins of parents, wouldn't interfere if they felt a parent was being overbearing, or whatever. And doctors didn't interfere. If anything, they may have thought the child deserved to be disciplined. Kids had no credibility in those days. In fact, it was believed that it's in kids' nature to lie and "make up stories". They were considered unreliable sources of info.
C
She ended up with Alzheimer's and I think it took all of us quite a while to figure it out, given that she always had a paranoid streak. It was only when she said things that, for her, were so off the wall, did we figure out something was going on.
When I had my own daughter, I promised myself that I wouldn't verbally and emotionally abuse her and worked hard to keep that promise.
Wow. Kind of ironic. Her mental illness (narcissism, and whatever else; the alcoholism, I guess) was so bad, that when she got Alzheimer's, no one noticed. They couldn't tell the difference between dementia and her "normal" mode. Just wow. She really made her own bed and was stuck laying in it, didn't she? It would seem sad, if it weren't for all the suffering she'd spent her life inflicting on others.
Wow. Kind of ironic. Her mental illness (narcissism, and whatever else; the alcoholism, I guess) was so bad, that when she got Alzheimer's, no one noticed. They couldn't tell the difference between dementia and her "normal" mode. Just wow. She really made her own bed and was stuck laying in it, didn't she? It would seem sad, if it weren't for all the suffering she'd spent her life inflicting on others.
Very well said. Thank you!
I recall some of the really off the wall things she said. She was convinced that her father was visiting her and helping her out. The problem is that he had died 40 years prior. Or when she said my father was disappearing for days at a time and when he was away, his best friend was living in the house and sleeping in the bed with her. Of course, that didn't happen.
Indeed, she made her bed and was stuck laying in it.
In fact, it was believed that it's in kids' nature to lie and "make up stories". They were considered unreliable sources of info.
Have you ever done research into the witch-trials of the 16th and 17th centuries? In many cases it
was children-adolescents who fabricated wild stories that resulted in thousands of adults being
falsely accused and executed on charges of witchcraft.
In our current times with the #metoo movement and our confessional culture, we are having more
kitchen-table discussions about situations that have long been considered shameful and breaking
that culture of silence is going to take more than one or two generations.
Scripts such as 'spare the rod spoil the child' are still running in the background and when I was
going to school in the 60s and 70s, corporal punishment was still allowed. Teachers would be
thrashing into kids who would now be diagnosed as having ADHD or being on the autism spectrum.
When I look at my old school photographs, I can pick the telltale signs of sexual abuse in the girls
and it just breaks my heart because those girls never had friends, they were the last to be
picked to join a team for basketball. We were all told about 'stranger danger' and creepy blokes
who wore raincoats and hung around the school.
No one told us that the danger could also be inside our homes, from our parents, siblings, family.
My late father often said 'you made your bed, you lie in it' which is often delivered like a curse
and with coverlets of schadenfreude.
Deep-seated guilt. That's my theory about cases like this. Deep down, some of these chronically abusive people know what they've done, and suddenly become paranoid, that their chickens will come home to roost, so they lash out preemptively, accusing others of abusing them or stealing from them, whatever. They may be projecting their own abusiveness onto their victims. Crazy stuff! These are sad, sick people.
Quite so. I figured things out in time, then denied my mother any power over me. She would scream "you're a liar" when i never accused her. Sometimes, about my sister, " she's a liar!" Which tells me my sister most likely was also abused.
Victims, especially when the perp is as beloved as a parent, crave acknowledgement and apology. They could even consider forgiving. But the crime is out-of-sinc with parental/familial love. It's disturbing and robs us of peace.
I studied victim advocacy and it helped me sort out my own stuff.
DO NOT fixate on not becoming like her because I believe you'll feel yourself being pulled into the mire of her thinking. I have to block the memories & thoughts. I'm not her.
Thank goodness for my awesome father, though he died when I was 3. I'm half him. Incidentally all I heard were negatives about him my whole life. For some bizarre reason my mother kept a court deposition transcript which indirectly refuted everything bad she said about him. Yay! I came across it in some stuff that was sent to me after she died.
My mother had it tough when she was a child. Is that what made her so evil? I think we choose our paths.
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