Name changed for this.
I’m not quite sure what I’m hoping to gain from this thread. I just need to get this out and gain some perspective. Things have happened recently with my mother that have really made me take a step back and reevaluate my entire relationship with her and the rest of my family. It has stirred up a lot of old hurt.
My mother walked out on us when I was 16. My younger sister ran away a few months later to join her. My mother was so wrapped up in herself and her newfound freedom as a single woman that she didn’t take care of my sister as well as she should’ve. My sister was 15. My uncle lived near my mum. We never really knew him very well as kids. He was in his forties. He was a popular man, handsome, charming, exciting and well off. A real pillar of his community. My sister started spending a lot of time with him. He rode off-road motorbikes and went out partying most nights. The life he lead was very appealing to my sister. She started spending a lot of time with him. Within a few months she was practically living with him. My mother allowed this. She didn’t see anything wrong with the arrangement.
My sister and my uncle started sleeping together when she was 15 years old. They practically lived together. They were inseparable. He spoiled her, bought her expensive gifts. Let her do drugs like crack, cocaine and acid. This went on for three years. My mother ignored everyone who tried to tell her that something wasn’t right. That this relationship wasn’t normal. My mother turned a blind eye and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He was paying for everything for my sister. Even her private school fees. My mother denies it but I know she knew. How could she not know? She just didn’t want to lose the financial support that he offered by taking care of my sister.
My sister admitted to all of it when she was 18 years old. My mother did nothing. She stopped speaking to my uncle but that was about it. No police involvement. No consequences.
A few years later my mother and my uncle started speaking again. She says she decided to forgive him and move on from it. She even allowed him to walk her down the aisle when she married my step father. Suddenly she started saying that my uncle and my sister were in a loving relationship. There was nothing wrong with it because it was true love. The rest of the family felt the same way. His siblings and mother (my uncles and grandmother)
My uncle got cancer in 2019. He died later that year. My mother nursed him and never left his side. After he died she told my sister that she blames her for his death. She says that he never got over her and that is what made him ill. When he died he was married with a young child. The wife never knew about his relationship with my sister. She still doesn’t.
My mother has his pictures all over her house. She wears his jumpers almost every day. She talks about him constantly. When he died hundreds of people posted tributes to him and mourned him. He was very much loved in his community. No one knew what he really was.
My sister is a shell of a human being. She has developed a personality disorder. She is an alcoholic. She has such terrible anxiety that she doesn’t leave the house. She can’t work. She is broken. But.. she is extremely close to my mother. She even lives with her.
I can’t get my head around any of it. In my mind this was grooming. Abuse. Incest. Statutory rape. It was, wasn’t it? My mother and I can’t have a relationship because of it. She says it was true love and it wasn’t wrong. She says people can’t help who they fall in love with.
This is fucked up isn’t it? Please tell me that I’m right to feel this way. That this is enough to cut my mother out of my life. It has caused so much hurt in my family and the rest of us can’t seem to let it go. The rest of us siblings are constantly having to pick up the pieces of my sister’s broken life while she sits there mourning him as if he were some sort of saint. My biggest regret is not making sure he was punished for what he did. I am 34 years old now. I appreciate that this was a long time ago but it’s all resurfaced again since his death.