To make contact with my daughter

[NickiNooNoo]

Long story short - I made some very stupid decisions many years ago. Because of these decisions I lost custody of (and subsequently contact with) both my daughters. They were 9 and 12 at the time. They were taken away by social services. One was placed with family and the other went into care. Both were angry at me and my choices and refused any contact at the time.

Since then I have turned my life around and put right the reasons my daughters were angry. However I am now in poor health and desperate to put things right before it's too late. I've found my eldest on Facebook. Wibu to send her a message?

You can't put things right. What's done is done.

You can apologise and express regret but no more than that.

You cannot expect anything at all from either of them.

You could ask your brother to pass on letters if he feels it is appropriate and has carefully broached it with them first.

NickiNooNoo

How does your plan to do this benefit your daughters?

Nicki, I hope you do hear something but of course, must be prepared to receive no response.

I know that, in your daughters' places, I would be glad to hear from my mother, would accept her apologies and forgive her. As an adult, I realise things aren't always as black or white as we see them through childish eyes.

However do go very slowly and accept it may come to nothing.

I wish you luck.

Whatever your motivations for getting back in touch with your children, you'd have to be absolutely 100% committed to being consistent with them, which would mean not disappearing again. You wouldn't want them to let you back into their lives and rebuild trust only for that to crash down on them again.

It may be worth you having a few counselling sessions yourself, first to explore whether you are going to be strong enough and to prepare yourself for what might happen if things don't work out to be completely plain sailing.

Good luck whatever you decide.

Slightly different situation but I became estranged from my dad when I was 20. I was incredibly angry with him and had no contact for 30 years. He became ill and suddenly wanted to see me. I had so many things I wanted to say to him about how shit he had been and get some explanations but I didn't feel I could say it to an old, dying man so I refused to see him. It would have all been for his benefit so he could clear his conscience.

I would say make contact yourself but be prepared for them to say no and then you need to accept that and walk away.

Let sleeping dogs lie, I would be suspicious if I was your dds that you were only in contact due to ill health and hadn't made the contact at the point of recovery when got your life on track. Your mistakes were big life changing for those girls separated from each other from everything they knew one in care. I can't imagine what they went through. I think contacting at this point could be more damaging.

Both of my 2 daughters are NC with their father. He tried to approach them with a letter. They ripped it into pieces and are similar ages to your daughters.
He had the opportunity to " make it right ", years back. They aren't interested anymore.

If he tried to get in touch by FB, they would immediately block him.

Am sorry OP, am afraid a good outcome really only happens in movies. Are you prepared to put your daughters ( and yourself if you are ill) through this?

Maybe a good idea to get your brother to speak to them, but don't expect much.

Am glad you turned your life around, but please expect and respect that they may have moved on.

Think about it from your daughters’ point of view. No contact from you for years then getting in touch because you’re ill. It would just seem like it’s all about you. Talk to social services before you do anything. Trying to get in touch might just lead to pain all round though.

I agree with pp. you are doing this to give yourself piece of mind, in your older years, rather than doing it for her. And she will see that. Maybe you could word your contact as an apology initially, then see if she engages with you further about wanting contact with you.

Can I ask op at the point of them refusing contact did you send letters birthday cards or Christmas presents regardless I'd they didn't want contact? If the answer is no and no attempt was made at the time when they were dc. Then rightly.your dd would question your intentions. I like the sound of a letter send through your brother he can try and sound them out prior and even if they refuse then he can keep hold of the letters on the event they change their minds. However writing a letter thought and consideration should be made not to make excuses.

Don't write the letters with the view that you want to put things right. You can't fix the trauma of their childhood, they didn't even stay together FFS!

You want them to absolve you of your behaviour, you have no right to ask this of them, even if you don't say it directly.

This seems to be all about your needs.

Yes YABU. My own abusive mother sent me a letter when I was 32 and pregnant with my second child, 16 years after I’d last seen her and at a time when I’d largely healed and forged a good life for myself. All it did was set me off on another downward spiral of depression. Which only harmed me and, consequently, my little family yet again, it took me about another four years to get back to a good place. And what for? Like you, it was all about her - she was ‘getting old’ and was ‘ill’ blah blah blah. Leave them alone to live their lives, hopefully they’ve gone some way to repairing the damage you caused them and are living good and happy lives now. Leave them to it and stop putting your needs and wants above theirs.

OP I think the letters are a good idea.
Of course you can’t undo what happened, but I assume there are reasons why you failed at mothering your children, and I think that it is better for anyone to know that their mother regrets things, and perhaps understand more about why , than to never know. Your daughters may take a long time to digest the information though, at first they may be angry , so be prepared for that.
I agree with pps that some things are harder to forgive than others, but I wonder if you were trapped in a violent relationship, or by addiction, or poor mental health, and if so I am sympathetic and very sad for all of you that your daughters’ lives were so badly affected, particularly the child who ended up in care. Was there a reason why your family did not take the two together ?
Your daughters may not want to remember things from their childhood, and you may not get a response, but I still think that long term it is a good thing for them to know that you deeply regret what happened.
Good luck.

I haven't seen my mother since I was 12 (now 46). Since the explosion of social media, I have an anxiety attack every time I see a message from someone I don't know. If I were to open a message and see that it was from her or about her, I don't know how I would cope.

About 13 years ago, I heard that someone had been in contact with her and spent the next six months looking over my shoulder, scared to answer the phone or door in fear that she was there. I was pregnant at the time and could have done without the stress. The constant anxiety I felt meant that I could not enjoy my pregnancy. I then spent years wondering if every woman I saw of a certain age was her - I was terrified of bumping into her or her approaching me. This only eased when I moved to the other end of the country.

After all this time the only reason she could want to be in touch is for selfish reasons. She ruined my early life. The effect of her walking away ruined my teenager years & twenties in that I suffered from low self esteem and had no self confidence. In my late-twenties I decided that enough was enough and that I needed to take control of my life and make it what I wanted it to be.

Your post smacks of self pity. Leave your daughters be. They have had it hard enough. If you had reached out earlier when you started turning your life around it might be different but it is likely that after all this time all you will do is cause upset and trauma (even reading this post has made my anxiety levels about my mother go through the roof).

You made your choice all those years ago. You made another choice when you started turning your life around. You now want to choose your daughters as you have poor health.

They have spent years dealing with the trauma of your rejection and you now want to drag it all back up for them for your only selfish reasons. Let them be.

OP I would honestly rip up any letter from my mother that arrived at my door. I think it's clear from the vast majority of people who've been through trauma in childhood that a direct approach (a letter is still a direct approach) is not a good plan and would not be well received. In the nicest way possible it's quite a selfish approach to take.

If you do need to write a letter for yourself then by all means do it. It can be a very cathartic experience which I think is probably your underlying reason for wanting to contact them.

Unless you have a time machine you can't possibly put anything right.

Please go through a trained 3rd party if you do want to make contact.

The ill health thing stands out to me, it reads instantly like you just want her to care for you now and that will be the first thing to stand out to her too.

My father was a deadbeat who made selfish life decisions and abandoned me, Im luckily not scarred from it as I had a mother who picked up the slack and a great male role model but I see my father for exactly who he is.
If he got in touch now saying he was Ill I would tell him exactly where to go because I know instantly the only reason he would get in touch is he needed something (hes burned all his bridges but think I owe him for my life dispite the fact hes never done anything for me, he just had sex with my mam) and hes damn sure not getting it from me.

Absolutely don’t use Facebook for something like that.

As others have said, use a third party to establish if any contact is wanted first. And only then, your first move should be with the idea of opening some kind of two way conversation between you - mostly focused on what she wants / needs to say to you, as opposed to you unloading all your guilt on her. Your daughters may be settled in their own lives and not be ready for any kind of discussion with you, and you’d have to respect that.

If my mother got in touch it would send me on an emotional spiral, I’ve worked so so hard to get over the hurt she caused and indeed, her. I’ve sort of forced myself through a bereavement. It’s final in my head that she’s dead. (She’s not).
I actually don’t think it’s a good idea and don’t think any good can come from it.
This is based on my very specific personal circumstances though. Sorry Op.

You probably need to let it go. My niece and nephew are both in their 30’s with their own families now, their estranged mother has tried to contact them several times over the years but they don’t want to know, although they get on with their lives they are very damaged from their childhood experiences with her (especially my niece who is the eldest) they have had many, many issues over the years which their mother has no idea of but we’re a direct result of the childhood and time with her. Sometimes the cracks are too deep to heal. You need to make peace with that and just hope and pray they have good lives.

Don't give them a bit 'poor me' letter full of excuses and justifications.

You have not made right the reasons they were angry.

They werent just taken from their mum, they were separated from each other. One got to grow up with family but the other? Shoved off into the care system.

You cannot and you have not made that right. Leave them alone.

I am in the position similar to your daughters and I would say leave them alone. They presumably could make contact if they wished to but what you need to consider is that they are not making contact with you. Why is that? What do you possibly think that you could say to them that would make them want to see you? They now have their own lives and they have made their way in life without your help or hinderence so what would/could you bring to the table that would make their lives better? I know that I sound harsh but I am that daughter and there is nothing that my 'mother' could ever say or do that would make ME feel better - that is what YOU have to think about.

I'm NC with my parents and inclined to agree with the few posters above me, I'm afraid. If either of them approached me directly in circumstances where they were in poor health and wanted to clear their conscience before it's too late, I'd perceive that as being all about them, rather than of any benefit to me. I'm working through grief and a kind of bereavement, so when that time comes for me, I hope to have made peace with it (and therefore not need to see them one last time, unless I want to).

OP isn’t bothering to read peoples replies, she’s still droning on about ‘putting things right’, ffs. And she feels entitled to force contact on her adult kids despite many many posters with experience of this saying what a bad idea it is.

you cannot ‘put right’ catastrophic, life destroying trauma that you inflicted on your kids.
Re-read until it sinks in.

This is so hard.

My DP has a very toxic parent and has decided to go NC, but occasionally this parent will get in contact out of the blue and it completely sets them back emotionally and for weeks, sometimes months afterwards, they're in a bit of a mess.

I'm not saying you are toxic OP, but I did want to point out that sometimes it's not as simple as 'putting the ball in their court', because that in itself can be incredibly triggering.

I think you also need to ask yourself, who would you be doing it for?