Should I confront my mum?-long!!

[pink4ever]

Warning this will be long but please do try and bare with me as I really need some perspective on this.
I am currently estranged from my mum and one of my sisters. Situation has now been going on for over 3 years. Only see them once a year-xmas. It was all over who inherited my gm house when she died(her son,my uncle got it). I didnt care who got it but my mum felt she was entitled to it-more on that later. Because I wouldnt back her up or refuse to speak to my gm(since deceased) I was disowned by mum and sister.
I have always had a very strained relationship with my mum. She split from my dad when we were very young and moved in with our gps. She then basically imo gave up all parental responsibity to our gps. She has always worked and never spent any time with us even on her days off-gps took us on hols,days out,taught us to ride/swim etc.
When I was 8 she met another man-from the very first meeting my sister and I did not like him and our gps were also wary. Mother would not listen and moved in with him very quickly. We stayed with gps and she visited us at weekends or we stayed with them.
They then got a house near to gps and insisted we move in. They put a lot of pressure on gps(also my mum was pregnant at this point) saying that they had to let us try and be a proper family.
Things went downhill very quickly. Stepdad was a control freak and also physically and verbally abusive. SS became involved but blamed alot of it on me-basically blaming it on my teenage hormones and my not giving stepdad a chance(hadnt told them about beatings as mum begged me not to).
My mum began to realise what my stepdad was really like and sunk into a depression-my sister and myself were basically left to our own devices. Stepdad stopped paying bills/contributing and we all suffered as a result.
Just before my mum was due to give birth stepdad was discovered to have been stealing from his work-police raided our house. Mum finally saw sense and left him.
We moved back in with gps but he made our lives hell-would phone at all hours,send police or fire brigade to the house on false calls,shout or bang on door etc. Police were useless to help. My gd health was already poor and he suffered a stroke which I believe was strongly due to the stress of all this.
My mum had my youngest sister and when she was a few months old she walked out on us(on my birthday incidentally) and refused to tell us where she was going. We didnt see her for 3 months. She had of course moved in with stepdad again but denied it for ages.
Sorry I am trying to get to the point! stepdad also behaved inappropriately with me-dont know if I could call it sexual abuse as such but he rubbed his self against me,stared at my breasts and made smutty comments(I wasnt the only one who thought so-a friend also pointed out it was really wrong the way he behaved). I found out a long time later he had done similiar things to my sister.
My mum has also always made me feel crap about myself. She commented on my weight from when I was a teenager. I had an amazing figure but she thinks anyone over a size 8 is fat!(she had a tummy tuck on the nhs which went wrong-she nearly died which would have left myself responsible for my 9 year old sister!).
She also bullied me into an abortion when I was 19-drove me to self harm. A doctor tried to reason with her and told her she was emotionally blackmailing me(ie if you dont go through with it I will kill myself) but she refused to help me and I went through with it as was scared of losing my family.
She also made nasty comments about me being a sahm-she thinks I am wasting my degree and that everyone should work. She forgets that I dont have access to the free child care that she did!!.
So the point is-finally! should I confront her over the things that she has done/said in the past or should I just let things lie? My sister that no longer speaks to me also lived through all this but she has basically re-written history and paints my mother out to be a saint(ie she took my gm in after gd died-true but she only did this so she would have someone to pay half the rent and free babysitting again-plus she believed that meant she would get her house-ha well that backfired!). The main thing that hurts me is that she put a man before her kids-not once but numerous times when she took him back. She finally got rid of him when I was 17 but by then the damage was done.
I know my mum loves to think of herself as a martyr and also that she tells people I have stopped her from seeing my dcs-completely untrue
Thanks if you have managed to read this essay!.

[RandomMess]

In all honesty I think you would be wasting your time.

Have you had any help coming to terms with all of this?

[Xales]

I agree with Random you will be wasting your time.

You will only be painted as the bad person and villified. Unless you accept this role and all that it entails you will never have a relationship with these people.

Ask yourself is that the relationship you want?

[MrsKitty]

I sympathise, but don't know what to tell you. My Mum also lived with an utter wanker for the best part of 10 years, finally getting rid of him when I was 16, but 19 years later I'm still unable to forgive her / have a normal relationship with her. I often wonder about confronting her but since she now appears to be sinking in to early onset dementia I don't think there'd be much point.

Of course, your situation is different to mine, and if you feel you might get something from confronting her - perhaps just having it out with her/telling her how you felt/feel would make you feel better then go for it. The alternative is saying 'fuck her' and having no more to do with her (which would probably be my inclination, given what you've described!)

[LesserOfTwoWeevils]

Sorry to hear about what she's put you through, OP.
But confronting her won't do any good unless you just want to get it all off your chest.
If you're hoping she will see the light and apologise or feel the slightest bit of guilt or remorse, no, it won't work.

[HerHissyness]

Her version of the truth won't match yours, not in a million years. It can't, cos the real truth, the one you know would paint her in a very ugly light.

You may as well confront the wind for all the good it will do you. Rant on here, but don't feed her.

You know the truth, who cares what she thinks, or what anyone else thinks for that matter. Anyone that is a friend of hers is hardly the model citizen are they?

Relax, get on with your life, I hope you are really happy, you really do bloody deserve to be, and remember that Living Well is the Best Revenge.

[MizzyTizzy]

I think you need to work out the reasons why you want to confront her.

If it's to 'get it all out', once and for all and get rid of all the 'secrets' you carry about your childhood, but you expect no change from her or acknowledgement of her wrong doing but need the release of voicing your 'stuff' then by all means confront her.

If you need/want an apology, a change in her behaviour, the loving mother to suddenly appear that you've always craved...then confrontation imo will bring you nothing but sadness . You will be confronting her for impossible to solve reasons... from my experience with my own parents - your mother will not apologise, from her point of view she has done nothing wrong and has no apology etc to make.

If you do confront her, make sure you are doing it to make things better for YOU, not to 'fix' her in anyway.

Trying to fix your mother will be a futile and never ending task to set yourself, better to focus you energies on more worthwhile endeavours imo.

[pink4ever]

Thanks for all the replies-was worried no one would manage to get through it all!.
I think it probably is futile to confront her as any time I have tried to bring it up she has either swept it back under the carpet or denied it happened. She also blames alot of it on my gps ie they didnt give her enough freedom,let her go out enough as she was a young mum. Bolloks imo! but just another example of her evading responsibility for her behaviour.
I will just stay with the status quo at the moment as life is quite peaceful without her!
Thanks again.

[bigredtractor]

Has writing it all down been cathartic? Maybe just having someone listen to you could help?

Agree - she sounds like a lost cause. And that's being kind! You may find that you are better without people like this in your life at all, but it's not so easy to erase them from your mind, hey?

[diddl]

Sounds like a lost cause tbh.

Just being nosy re the house-why wasn´t it left jointly?
(You obv. don´t have to answer that.)

But it also doesn´t sound as if your child(ren) will miss much by not seeing her often/at all.

[pink4ever]

diddl-my uncle,wife and kids took over my gm house when she moved in with my mum as she didnt want it lying empty. I think she just left it to him as it was easier-she knew that he couldnt afford a house(my mum has bought her council house) and that he wouldnt have been able to afford to buy my mum and aunt out.
My mum believes she should have been left the house as my gm lived with her for a number of years. But as I already mentioned my gm paid half the rent,paid for the computer,my sisters tutor,furniture,food,lots of things so my mum certainly wasnt doing it out of the kindness of her heart!.
Re my aunt-she disappeared from my gp lives for years and only came back when my gf was seriously ill-a vulture imo.
My gps did everything for us growing up-helped my mum out a lot financially before she found work and of course were free childcare but my mum has conveniently chosen to forget/ignore this and focus on how hard done by she has been.