What kind of mother would cast away their own child?

[TheDogsBollock]

Adult child admittedly but I can't imagine my feelings changing that much to my children when they're adults.

And all because uncomfortable questions were asked.

No Jlyn she moved across the country without telling him she was going or where. Probably because she didn't want him encroaching on her new life with a new husband and children. Made it messy! He couldn't find us for years. I never knew that, just thought he didn't care.

Despite it all, I still would have gotten over it but she can't . Her playing the victim is just a slap in the face.

I'm the type of person who hates issues not being sorted. I run towards threats to try to resolve them rather than run away from them but this is something I can never solve. Such a mind fuck.

I was disowned by mother and father because "Life comes too easy for you, we always struggled and you never have and won't ever understand what it is to have hardships." FWIW, I struggled plenty and not much came easy. In the end realized they are just evil jealous people with no willingness to accept responsibility for their own actions.

If your mother is denying you your right to know your father she is out of line OP. Everyone deserves to know where they came from.

Is your dad named on your birth certificate? If so it's easy enough to contact births, deaths and marriages and seek help from them. If not it's much more difficult. I have no time for mothers who deny their children to know who fathered them. What plans do you have for proceeding with your quest to find out who your father is OP?

A friend of mine has a daughter with a personality disorder. She asks blunt questions over and over again. Each time hurting my friend deeper and deeper. For her own mental health she has had to go no/very low contact every now and then over the past 20 years.

No Jlyn she moved across the country without telling him she was going or where. Probably because she didn't want him encroaching on her new life with a new husband and children. Made it messy! He couldn't find us for years. I never knew that, just thought he didn't care

Do you know this is true and how did you find this out?

I think there must be something in what happened with your father for your mother to go across the country and I suspect that your questions are too much for her and she has done this for her own mental well being.

I hope your therapy helps you.

Do you want contact with her?

I mean if the uncomfortable questions were about inheritance and the mother feels like her child is a selfish and only interested in money, I could understand

Oops sorry didn't see the other pages

(Disclaimer, I also don't know or have met my father. I do know who he is, but have never contacted due to the potential fallout for his existing family)

I think it was because my lifestyle choices were very different to hers, as she wanted to be a free thinking hippy type, always on the move with multiple partners. I came along, and suddenly she had someone else to have to think about. She liked the idea of a baby, but not the reality. I have a DH, 3 x DC's, dog, house, etc. I didn't want her flitting in and out for them as I remember her doing to me, so I said, "I love you, but cannot be like this." So, she flounced, and we had no contact for about 5 years.

Only you can be the judge of acceptability.

My mother told me to leave at 16. No drugs, no violence, no alcohol, no criminal activity. I didn't even get in to trouble at school. I was a proper goody two shoes, and was doing really well. I had a boyfriend and she seemed to like him/got on ok with him. But she made the decision.

I'm the only one who can truly judge her. I still speak to her every week, message her daily. I'm the first person she will ring if she needs help with anything. We don't have a fantastic relationship, or one of those lovely mother/daughter relationships you hear about. But my son has a brilliant relationship with his grandma, that is the gift I am giving him.

Every now and then, I get a pang of 'how could she?' I'll never know the answer. I'm so glad that I don't know. It means I have all the 'normal' feelings a mother has about her child. I'm so sure I will always be there for my son, no matter what.

You get to judge, not other people on the internet. You also get to chose how it makes you feel. If you want to move on you need to change how you feel about it all. I'm a strong independent women because I have had to be. I'm grateful for the positives I have pulled from a totally shit experience.

I have a low contact relationship. There always was a lot of emotional baggage, but the critical issue was my curiosity about my paternity. It stirred up a lot of past hurts from the relationship (young relationship, unexpected pregnancy) plus issues from her own father. I can understand that, but I had my own needs to know part of my own background and she really couldn't grasp that. She had a significant amount of difficulty in changing role from (absent, part-time) mother of a child to mother of an adult and giving up the few vetoes that she held as my mother (grew up in extended family)

I had to pull away and keep a distance for my own well-being. That's obviously different to being rejected as a daughter but there are parallels of the breakdown of a mother-daughter relationship because of an inability to deal with emotional baggage and to accept its relevence on other people involved.

I know a mother who has given up with adult DC. There has been a lot of unpleasantness for 15 to 20 years. Constant verbal, emotional and psychological abuses. Ridiculing of the mother's health situation. There has been violence. There are demands for money often. Ability to see the DGC is aligned to if the mother has provided money, goods or child minding. There have been Professionals who have seen the abuses and advised the mother to avoid the DC but the mother loved the DC and had all sorts of excuses for the DC ways.
Not the DGC are speaking to their Grandmother in the same way as the DC. The DC partner is also unpleasant to the mother.
The DC are now in touch wit the Bio F who provided nothing, not even presence in the DC life nor paid any maintenance and seem to prefer him to the mother who brought them up single handedly.
It was horrible to watch. I would have dumped my DC long ago for a lot less. Thankfully the mother is dealing with it now and starting to live for herself.
It would be interesting to know if the DC knows and acknowledges how the mother has been treated or would they make out the mother was all shades of bad?

Yes, I suppose it must be the all the children's fault User.

This is why it's so difficult to get past the shame and humiliation of being disowned by your own mother because you must have done something terrible right? It's hard to believe that mothers can behave like this if you haven't had one yourself.

I've had the same experience @TheDogsBollock...she treated us all badly and then handed us the ultimate humiliation-even our mother couldn't love us. I'm sure she's told stories of how awful we all are to whoever will listen, and I'm sure some people think I'm a terrible person because of it. However, I have been in a relationship for more than a decade, married for longer than she ever managed, have friends of 2+ decades (and I'm only in my early thirties)...on the other hand she's disowned 5 of his 6 DC and has no long term friendships....there's a common denominator there, and it's not me! I try as much as I can to separate myself from the issues and see them logically and unemotionally. It's not me. I didn't choose this situation, none of it. I wish I knew who my Dad was. I wish my mum loved me enough to tell me. But I don't, and she doesn't, so I've just got to toughen up and do the best I can.

My mother never denied what my father said about her doing a moonlight flit either. She certainly wasn't afraid of him. More bitter that he left her - which was a massive shock to me as legend was that she left him.

I was always too terrified to even mention him until my late 30's so no personality disorder where I kept questioning her about it.

But how do you 'toughen up' Katniss. I try everyday but fail miserably .

I've been married 25 years, have 4 DC who know they are loved immeasurably, had a good career before anxiety kicked in but no friends since school days. Very lonely, lonely enough to miss my mother and the rest of my family, so desperately so!

I’ve got a child living with me whose mother walked out on him at 2 years old!

Boggles the mind

Katness, have you tried an ancestry DNA swab and membership. You might find genetic links that will help you find your father.

The relationship between a mother and their dc can be a very complex one in which even the closest of family members may not be able understand let alone outsiders. The dynamics may include a lot on non verbal communication, condemnation, guilt, emotional abuse, attention seeking, fear, controlling type behaviours that only the two people involved are participants in.

Unfortunately the default is always that the 'Mother', is supreme with a halo. It is usually difficult for others to understand that mothers too are capable of destructive behaviours towards their offspring and so the spotlight is always on the dc's behaviour.

There are also just bad, selfish dc, but this is usually more quickly spotted. Perhaps because it is the dc's behaviour especially adult dc, who is usually scrutinised first for fault.

Abusive parents grow old, and abused dc grow up. When the abused adult dc does not conform to the way the world expects e.g visiting regularly, hugging elderly parents or just enjoying their company, people react with horror.

In my experience, I'd be very careful at making any judgement about elderly parents who don't get on with their adult dc, because you never know what history lies between them.

It sounds like you are in contact with your father and are seeking clarity from your mother about past events. For whatever reason, you seeking those answers is causing her pain and that is why she's withdrawn from you. Rightly or wrongly, she doesn't want to/can't deal with it.

I can see it from both sides as I've never really spoken to my DD about her biological father. I've tried to answer her questions as best as I can, but sometimes I just can't. Thankfully she understands and accepts that.

@TheDogsBollock I don't know. I try to remind myself of the many good relationships I have and not dwell on my mother. I think of her less as time goes on but I don't think I'll ever stop missing the idea of a mother.

My dm sat me down and said unless I changed XYZ she would on from me and consider someone else her child. We got past it-ish but she feels like if a relationship isn’t reciprocated it’s best to end it.
The XY and Z were things like dressing like a slob and not living in naice areas. She is someone who doesn’t like to keep a thought to herself.
She still disapproves of my life but I generally don’t rise to the bait.
Give it time op? Rubbish but there’s nothing else you can do.
I also have a ds by an ex who has never been on the scene. I have made the story more palatable for everyone. And I dread the day ds gets the other version of the story.

Oh OP please don’t feel ashamed. I know what you mean, but in a different way, I am NC with a close family member (my choice) and it feels like such a taboo, people seem to think that it reflects on you as a person to have taken such a drastic measure, and it clearly feels the same in the other direction. I had very VERY good reasons for going NC, and wouldn’t have done it to avoid my own shortcomings obviously but I know many people who have been dropped in order to hurt them, or to protect someone else from shame etc. I’ll give you some examples, my ex DSD - my ex’s daughter, was ditched by her mum. Completely deserted, the most beautiful and angelic child you can imagine, unceremoniously dumped at 5. I have done my best to remain a constant in her life, but the hurt is there. When she contacted her mum over ten years later wanting answers, her mum said she just wanted to hurt her dad for leaving her and to show him what it was like to be stuck with a kid by yourself. That has always stayed with me, her relaying the conversation back in complete bewilderment, she was literally a child at the time. How can you leave a child to punish someone? A close friend’s husband just fucked off, went to work one day and never came home. When she eventually got hold of him he said he’d decided he didn’t want to be a dad (4 kids down the line) and said he won’t be seeing them but she should count herself lucky because he WILL pay maintenance (which he still does). Just refuses to see the kids. I’m getting choked up now even thinking about it, that level of devastation for the kids, the total calculated abandonment. Adult friend was disowned by her mum for wanting to report historical abuse, it was the parents’ friend and they knew at the time what had happened and there was a massive fallout and she was blamed even then - she was early teens, their friend was late 30’s. She has letters and things that he’d written as evidence and was inspired by the #metoo movement to finally report him. They said she would bring shame on them again, open up old wounds etc etc and she tried to explain that she couldn’t live her life because of this man and she felt morally bound to do something about him. She reported, it went nowhere, but the parents have completely disowned her and also sent a letter saying she was disinherited. When she told me I could hardly breathe I was so appalled and shocked. So yes, people disown their kids for shitty reasons, and I am aware of this so personally I would reserve judgement until I knew the reasons/full story. I think for many parents it’s like an extreme version of gaslighting. Cutting you off so that your truth, if you like, isn’t forced onto them and they can carry on like nothing has happened and it’s all you and your ways. Many people take extreme measures to avoid looking at themselves and taking responsibility for things they’ve done. My mum on a lesser end of the spectrum, goes totally hysterical if you ever mention anything being less than ideal and refuses to discuss anything at all. If it’s not light and fluffy then she explodes with rage. I don’t even bother trying to address stuff anymore, I talk through things with other people, but if there had been a serious incident or abuse that I needed to approach her about, she would probably go nuts, maybe even NC, in order to avoid any potential blame or responsibility. It’s not you, it’s her. Keep talking about it, keep hearing all the reassurances that other people have experienced it too, that it’s not your fault, and hopefully one day you can belive it.