When I was 22 I fell pregnant with my eldest dc. I was in a very bad relationship with an abusive man who used to hit me and verbally abuse me every day, I know, I should have left him, but I was both afraid of him and on some level hoped he'd change.
My mum's response to this was to throw me out, even though she knew I had nowhere else to go and that he was abusive, although I know now I could have gone to a women's refuge. I just couldn't think straight. My sister also refused to help me saying I could stay a night here and there if it 'got really bad' after I told her what was going on with him and that he was hitting me.
My mum and I had always had a bad relationship before that as I grew up, she was very cold and set a lot of store by what people think. She is very religious. There are too many things to list here but my childhood was a catalogue of just having my confidence eroded away with comments that stay with me even as an adult in her 30s, from being 'disgusting' for sleeping with my boyfriend to her telling me she hated me. She was not like this with my sister.
During the pregnancy my sister told my mum that partner was continuing to hit me, I hoped that they might offer to let me come home but they didn't. Reading this makes me sound absolutely pathetic I know, I know I should have just left, and eventually I did end up in a women's refuge.
After dc was born my mum made a big thing of 'forgiving' me and accepting her dgc. She implied that she did not believe that I had been abused as badly as I had and also suggested that I had 'let it happen to me' if it were true. Our relationship got a bit better and she was an OK grandmother, though only ok, and didn't have massive amounts of time for dgc. She continued to run me down though and often made comments about me being a bad mother eg dc was a late talker and she said it was because I didn't bother to talk to her. Which wasn't true. And often said dc would probably be the only child I would ever have as noone would be keen to take on another man's child.
When I met my really lovely DH she got a lot nicer as I was now respectable and no longer an embarrassment to her.
Anyway we got on ok, and I tried not to think about her throwing me out any more, until a few months ago when we had an argument that escalated. The way she spoke to me just triggered something in me, she speaks in such a sneering, spiteful tone to me, and I just realised that I never wanted to hear her speak to me like that again. I went NC and realised at the heart of it is the fact that I had not forgiven her for what she did all those years ago. My dad went along with her actions when I was pregnant though wasn't as cruel as she was afterwards.
My sister and mum have both implied that I am raking up the past unreasonably and should have got over it.
I feel such a weight off me going NC with her. I can't explain it, I just feel so unbelievably happy and liberated that I will never have to listen to her being nasty to me again. AIBU? And thanks for reading.
PS I have told her she can see her grandchildren but she hasn't taken me up on it.