Overcoming the guilt of no contact

[Arrghh]

I had a miserable upbringing. Mother has and had mental health issues. Edited highlights include:

• Making half-arsed suicide attempt when I was 3, knowing I'd be the one to find her
  

• Driving my dad away, so I didn't know him until adulthood
  

• Allowing a creepy, dodgy male friend of hers who'd tried to rape me at 15 - and she knew it - to carry on visiting the house
  

• Hoarding to excess - the place looks like one of those documentaries
  

• Deliberately making me witness violent rows between her and my stepdad
  

• Forcing me to abort an unplanned baby, then showing me developmental pictures of fetuses in the days running up to the op
  

• Alcoholism
  

• Vindictive criticism
  

• Sulking and silent treatment
  

• And many more!
  

I am NC. Have been for nearly 3 years.

I saw her today, unintentionally. I took my kids to see where I spent my childhood. She still lives in the area.

My mother has a genuine sixth sense like fucking radar, and at one point I looked up to see her standing about 15 feet away looking right at me. We were at the swings park where I used to play. It was like seeing a ghost. I felt my face scrunch up in a DO NOT WANT way. I looked back down, and she moved on. The kids didn't see her.

I felt nothing when I saw her except brief, mild, DO NOT WANT. I didn't feel I was looking at someone I could think of as my mother in any way.

Now, I can "do" NC, having been brought up with long periods of The Silent Treatment, but I also have a conscience.

I know from experience and from these boards that NC brings peace of mind, preserves us, etc etc.

But I don't think she realises, has any, any idea how hurtful she is. She is genuinely flummoxed that I make no contact with her. She thinks she loves me. She thinks it would be nice for us to meet up. So I feel like the shithead.

And I like my conscience clean, and despite the reasons above, NC doesn't sit well with my conscience. I feel unhappy that there is a rift I am making no effort to heal. I almost went round to knock on the door. But not quite. The good part of my heart wanted to do it. The self-preservation bit didn't.

1. How do you do NC and have peace in your heart when you believe and teach your own kids that kindness is the most important thing there is?
   

1. Have you ever been NC with an awful parent and then have them die, and did you feel shit afterwards?
   

Sorry for the essay.

[heyday]

Yes kindness is very important but self kindness is vital.
Your mother has serious issues and to preserve your sanity and to protect your children then you have to stay away.
You could go round there, scream and shout or calmly tell her how wretchedly she treated you but it's very doubtful that she would ever acknowledge any responsibility for how badly she treated you.
Would you feel any better for doing so? Probably not and nothing would be gained. It's been 3 years and you closed this door for a reason.
I didn't see my violent alcoholic father for 9 years. I tried hard to love him but he never understood why his family was so upset because he used to beat the crap out of my beautiful mother, how he installed fear and terror in his children or why we were sickened that he tried to drown my 6 year old brother in the bath because he couldn't remember what he had had for dinner at school.
I hated him with all my heart. When he died I did not cry, and did not go the funeral. It was a few months later that I wept..... Cried, not for him but because of how I would so desperately loved for things to have been different. How I wished he could have been a good father and I could have been by his bedside holding his hand when he died.
Yes, I cried for everything that could have been. I realise now that he was a very sick man who caused fear and immense pain. I don't regret for one minute walking away and having no contact for years. I had suffered enough and by NC I could stop that pain from being endless inflicted upon me.
You are a good person. Put yourself and your preservation first and do not let your children be infected with her poison.

[AbbieHoffmansAfro]

The fact that you refuse to suffer any more, or expose your children to risk, does not make you a bad person.

[HauntedNoddyCar]

Your first duty as a parent is kindness and love for your children. You are doing that. Your mother didn't.

You chose to have your children and your duty is to them. Your mother failed in that duty. Your children need you happy. Your mother plainly didn't.

It's the FOG thing rearing its head.

[Arrghh]

Heyday, I'm so very sorry to hear what you had to live with. I really hope others in your life have made up for his atrocities.

I'm very, very grateful for all your words of sense. I realised by the end of posting that I'd found some answers for myself. I got part of my answer this afternoon when my gut reaction was one of brief horror. The answer is that I've reached my limit: I've had as much as I want to take.

If I kicked the same cat up the arse every day for a year, I could hardly be surprised when it didn't like me and want to join me in celebrating the first anniversary of my repeatedly kicking it up the arse.

It is FOG. Absolutely.

[something2say]

To answer number one, you teach your kids that there are boundaries and standards of behaviour and that they are free to choose their own cut offs. X just ask yourself, do you want to be that unhappy again? Exactly x

[Aussiebean]

The hardest part is accepting that they will never ever get it. When we had tried to talk to my mum about her behaviour you can see this wall go straight up and nothing gets through.

If it did, they would have to admit that they have done some horrible nasty things and not many people will be willing to first accept that and then sincerely apologise. It is the height of self preservation.

And going nc is also self preservation, but it is also a mothers protection for her children. To ensure they need go through the same horrors.

[Softlysoftlycatchymonkey]

Good mornng.

I've been NC with my mother for 12 years. She did the suiside attempts - lots of them. Always failed of course.

Many of your experiences you have listed I've witness too.

NC was the best thing me and my brother have done.

I still feel pangs of guilt every few years. I then discuss it with my db and I see the light again.

You just have to look after yourself and your own dc now. You don't need this toxic woman in your life, your kids don't need her either.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

You may already be doing this but sometimes it helps to think of them not as 'mother' but . My own DM was not in contact with her mother for very good reasons and that's part of how she dealt with it. She never referred to her as 'grandmother' or 'mother' but always 'Millie'... and it seemed to relegate the woman to the same semi-detached status as a neighbour or passing acquaintance. Helped reduce that emotional connection, I think. DM did actually go to see Millie before she died because - whatever else my DM is - she has some very firm beliefs about being the bigger person. She went to see the dying Millie the way she'd have gone to see a sick neighbour.

[Lottapianos]

FOG is so very hard to deal with. You were well trained in your most tender and vulnerable years to think of your mother and her feelings before your own. That's far from easy to shake off. It takes years and relapses are very common. Its so desperately tempting to think that things might just be different this time. But you know they won't.

Trust your gut. As other posters said, you closed this door for a reason. As a stranger reading your original post, I am sickened by her treatment of you - she failed you utterly. When I feel my resolve slipping, I spend some time thinking of the awful things my parents did and I get angry again. That reminds me how important it is to put myself first. Good luck with it, its not easy but you made a good decision to put you and your children first

[EllaFitzgerald]

Trust your instinct and don't let it be overridden by feelings of guilt.

I have been NC with my father for 25 years, having made the decision to stop the relationship as a teenager. He was not a nice man and there is absolutely no part of me that has any desire to have that in my life again.
I've never regretted it for a moment. I do feel a little sad sometimes, particularly when I see fathers being nice to their children, but I'm not missing him, just wondering what it would be like to have had that in my life.

I don't know whether I'll ever find out if or when he dies, we don't have any mutual contacts. Over the years, the negative feelings have diminished and I rarely, if ever, think of him.

The only thing I would suggest is to ask yourself whether you would regret not telling her how you feel before she dies. I'm not in any way suggesting you should contact her, (I wouldn't, in your position). I certainly didn't, because he wouldn't have understood and it would have been utterly futile, but it was something that I did make a conscious decision about.

[castlesintheair]

I manage to stay NC by reminding myself why I did it in the first place. I think writing some of the things down, like you did in your OP, are helpful. You are protecting the family you have made and want from possible treatment similar to that which you endured by the family you were lumbered with. That, in my opinion, is a very kind thing to do.

I haven't yet experienced the death of a NC parent. I do however feel like I have already mourned the parents I should have had and continue to do so.

Stay strong. You are doing the right thing. And maybe stay away from your childhood area for a bit!

[Sandthorn]

I misread the first half of your OP, then wondered whether there was some element that was right to start off with. I believe you are right to have cut ties, but I suspect there's part of you, maybe a very tiny part, that's done it for the wrong reason: to punish your mother, or to show her the error of her ways. And I think that part of you is unsatisfied with the result.

NC is right for you because it protects you and your own child from a poisonous, abusive, neglectful relationship. That is all the reason you need, and more than excuses any hurt to your mother. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

Why do you want her to understand? Is it to inspire some remorse? Do you hope she'll wake up, apologise, and become the mother you deserve? I'm really sorry, but I don't think that's going to happen. If she could tolerate exposing her child to the atrocious shit you've described, she can tolerate not having her adult daughter in her life.

There's bugger all you can do to make her understand how awful your childhood was, or why you've cut her off. If she had that kind of empathy, she'd have put a stop to it at the time. Instead, you need to concentrate on making sense of it to yourself. And aim to life a full and happy life without her, because that's what's in your power... Nothing more and nothing less.