I've been thinking quite a lot about my childhood recently. I tried to have some counselling sessions recently to deal with an issue with my brother, but I hated the counsellor and a comment made has actually left me annoyed.
I'm the youngest of 4. I'm younger by a way as my mother had 2 or 3 miscarriages between my sister and myself. My siblings are roughly 9, 8 and 6.5 years older than me.
When I was 7 my father burned one of my brothers with the iron and that was the snapping point for my paternal grandparents who removed us into their care. They were aware that my parents were neglectful and that there was violence between my parents (toward each other) and they bit their tongue over a lot to stay close as it was clear the situation was worsening as the drug problem became worse.
Anyway, my counsellor openly expressed surprise that I was angry with my mother. He tried to hide it, but the first time I mentioned it he reacted quite strongly.
Now my father was undoubtedly the worst of the two. He was cruel as well as violent. One of my earliest memories is being sat at the table hungry and watching him eat all 6 plates of dinner because we'd done something that meant we didn't deserve it. By the time I was 5 or 6 I knew to lie if he asked what my favourite birthday or Christmas present was (and I knew how to hide excitement when I opened something) because I knew he'd target my favourite thing, we all did.
However, my mother didn't just do nothing. I could understand a woman not knowing how to get out of a situation, but she diverted him to us sometimes. If he was raging mad when he came home then she'd start something. Accuse one of us of breaking something or doing something and that meant one of us, usually one of the boys, would get a hiding instead of her. Or she would give us a hiding herself, egged on by him, as that diverted his mind from her.
That I can't forgive. I actually think worse of her than him. He was evil. She wasn't. She didn't save us when social workers came calling or when she had the chance to leave because she knew that she wouldn't ever leave him and we were a buffer. I know this because she admitted it when she was dying.
She was a victim in many ways, but that didn't, imo, give her the right to do what she did to us. Yet this is the second time a counsellor has been surprised that I haven't, and won't, forgive her.
And it's annoying because I'm actually ok about them now. I've made my peace with it. It's the situation with my bloody siblings that I have an issue with and want to try and sort in my mind. It is related, the issues are partly because we have very different views (there is competative 'who suffered the most' between them), but I can't get by this because every counsellor insists on a background and then seems to think not forgiving her is the root. When it's not.