'You need to move on' Family situation escalating

[Iamlistening]

It has taken me over a decade, with the help of MN and three years of therapy to find the courage to go very low contact/no contact with my father.
My father was very abusive when we were younger, and the police were sometimes called, other family were regularly coming to our house to help my mother, as he had explosive outbursts of temper. My mother had a breakdown when I was eleven, and her parenting effectively ended, and I became the 'parent' cleaning, listening to her etc.

The worst of it was not that my father hit me, but that he told us a lot that he 'did not want kids' which is true I think, he agreed to keep my mother happy. However he hated any noise, he never once played with me, spoke to me, hugged me or even once said he loved me as a child. I lived in total fear of him. Living with a father who openly hated me was extremely difficult as a child, I became highly dependent on other relationships and people pleasing as a result.

Fast forward today I have no real relationship with my only sibling as such beyond birthday and christmas presents, and this week out of nowhere I have been ordered to 'move on' and 'stop living in the past' by him. He told me 'he does not remember' the abuse at all, and effectively told me I was making it up - I answered that I still have scars on my face to remind me every single day. My brother seems hellbent on rewriting history, he said every parent 'in the olden days' (we are in our 40s) hit and abused their children, and that we had a 'good' childhood?!!

I have been told I am responsible for my mother's current depression as I won't 'move on' and be a 'normal' family with my father. I am 'torturing' my father by trying to outline my reasons for no contact and that I should be glad he paid the bills and didn't have affairs?!

For clarity, I did initially give my father lots of chances, but he ended up being emotionally abusive to my own children by commenting on their clothes being 'cheap' and 'tatty' (they were fashion jeans with holes) and a running commentary on their weight, eyebrows etc (they were pre teen at the time, and very hurt and cried when he would say those things) so we had to stop seeing my parents, and now only see my mother occasionally without my father.

Now my mother has stopped speaking to me because I won't move on, and is giving me the silent treatment whilst my brother has waded into the situation, and I am really very upset he is seemingly forgetting everything has happened, although he acknowledges 'Dad has a nasty temper'

I feel like I am being blackmailed with my mothers depression to accept this in my life again. They are the only family we have .

How often does your Brother see your parents, what does his wife or partner make of them ?
Is he panicking because he now realises that caring duties will fall entirely to him when he might have previously assumed they would be your remit ?

I think you have a very clear understanding of what is going @Iamlistening.

And the reality is that, like ANY parent, you can’t protect your dc from everything once they are adults. They are making their own choices, maybe not the best ones, and there is nothing you can do about it bar (if you really want to) leave the door slightly open whilst protecting yourself.

The same is true for your brother. You might have taken a parent role when you were a child. But he is now an adult and is making his own decisions, even if you know they are crap decisions. You can’t change that and the best thing you can do is first to protect yourself (and leave the door very slightly open if you wish to). And the effect o himself and on his dcs isn’t your responsibility.

Can you keep communication with your niece a little bit eg send her birthday cards etc, make sure she knows she could come to you if she needs to? It perhaps would not work as presumably your brother would be angry at you undermining his views.
What about his wife/ partner (SIL) is she someone who would act to protect her children? Maybe you can keep contact with her? Primarily it is their responsibility and not yours although I can see what you want to help.

These people DO NOT have your best interests at heart. You have worked so long on knowing your worth! Do not let people who do not value you take that away!

It's incredibly difficult when the person you should rightly expect to be your ally in this-your sibling who also experienced it-denies your experience. I can imagine that's incredibly hurtful and discombobulating for you. It might be just his way of dealing with it but that doesn't help you at all.
In this situation I would go low or no contact I think. The alternative is to deny your own experience and I can't see that being great for your mental health-it would be like gaslighting yourself.
I'm sorry this happened to you OP. The key will be more therapy I think and focussing on your own children going forwards.

Boundaries. This is your reality and either they need to accept it, apologise and find a way forward or they don’t. As children, the parents’ narrative becomes reality and is believed by the outside world/ relatives. You are challenging that narrative. Personally, I would step back for a little while.

Two things stood out for me based on what you wrote and my own experiences both your father and my own father were deeply misogynistic (extreme even based on the sexist views of the time) I suspect that is based on they themselves not have been protected from something in childhood and laying that anger at their mother’s and subsequently other women’s doors. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to influence behaviours that men like this simply won’t acknowledge. Understanding only helps on the cognitive level as you are experiencing yourself on the emotional level this stuff has to be processed very differently.

Your brothers lack of boundaries with his kids: my sister was sexually abused for decades by our eldest brother. After decades of her in denial about the abuse she more recently faced up to what he had done to her, but a couple of years after that she was directly responsible for creating a very complicated scenario where that brother moved from a safe distance far away abroad to her UK city. She then left her pre teen daughter alone at a bowling alley at a birthday party knowing that the man who had abused her for decades had turned up there unexpectedly. I was so unbelievably horrified when she told me. That is one of the main horrors of abuse it completely messes with people’s psyche to the extent that they do not develop appropriate defences against abuse because it is normalised. It is extremely sad but again there is nothing you can do. People are ultimately responsible for their own growth.

You are not alone in this and one thing my therapist reminded me and it helped me hugely is that in fact people in our situation have been managing this situation by ourselves for our whole lives to this point, we were just in denial about that fact before now. I found that very reassuring because if I managed it as a small child, now with my adult resources available to me it will be so much easier.