To turn up on her doorstep tomorrow? Estranged mother who has decided I no longer exist

[ReclaimingMe]

With flowers of and a card telling her what I think of her. I will not cause a scene and will leave immediately if she starts one.

She cut me out of the entire family over 10 years ago and I’ll never get over it. It eats me up inside when I think of my DC being snubbed by their cousins, only having a few people from DH’s family at their future weddings on their side, knowing half their family don’t care about them at all despite pretending they did.

I have a good life - DH, DC, friends, work, hobbies, holidays but no matter what it’s always there in the background like a blackness following me about. My whole family hate me, I’m worthless, crazy, nasty, blah blah. I can never be truly happy with this hanging over me.

She cut me off to punish me as she knew it would, horribly. She used to tell me I was the only one who cared.

All I did was tell her how her psychological and physical abuse made me feel. Ask her if she was aware of the sexual abuse I suffered from a sibling and why she prevented me having a relationship with my real father. Tell her I wouldn’t tolerate her continuing to single out one of my kids for her emotional abuse.

She has been going about her life making out she’s the victim and I’m the bad one. My siblings obviously all on her side. I just don’t want her to get away with airbrushing me and my DCs out of her life. I want to remind her I do in fact exist. She has said I don’t anymore.

Yeah, I also want to ruin her Mother’s Day. She used to tell me I was a shit one and my ASD DS didn’t have anything wrong with him, I made him like that, so I have spent years judging myself and thinking I’m a failure as one. Never ever would I cut off my own child though .

WIBU to do this?

PLEASE DO NOT SUGGEST THERAPY OR ‘MOVING ON WITH MY LIFE’. I’ve done both. It doesn’t change anything.

I'm so sorry to read your post. The situation sounds awful but what do you hope to gain by going round there?
You say not to suggest therapy or moving on as you have done both. With the greatest respect the pain and anger in your post really suggests you haven't been able to move on which is understandable.
To be able to move on you need to find a way to work through all the emotions you feel and finding the right therapist might help you do this if this is something you wanted to do.
Poking the bear as you say is highly unlikely to help you it will more than likely end up feeding your anger as the chance of your mother showing you anything more than the apparent contempt and lack of care she has demonstrated to date is slim to none.
She has absolutely failed you but whilst you continue to look to her for anything more it is going to be almost impossible for you to move on.
Please consider spending the day with your DC and doing something that makes you happy.

You say not to suggest therapy or moving on as you have done both.

I think there is a lot of naivety about the nature of grief on this thread. I totally get what people are saying about moving on and therapy for the OP may be helpful or not. She needs to be in a place in her life where she is mostly content and functioning but surely people understand that there are traumas that you just have to learn to adapt to and live with and process but you might never fully get over. There will be life long triggers for the trauma and that will affect some people more than others because trauma does that and it depends what resources are available to the person in terms of healing too. There isn’t a magic wand and therapy only goes so far and people are all different in their responses to trauma and therapy.

OP you are having a bad day with something you struggle with and you have to live with but you are moving on clearly, it has been 10 years and you are living with it.

There may be things you can do to improve your happiness and peace of mind in the situation and maybe therapy might help with that but maybe not. I personally found reading a lot to develop a full understanding of what I was dealing with - both narcissistic family systems and trauma, fostering other positive relationships and time were the things that helped me with my situation. But you are doing the best you can in an extremely difficult situation and that is ok too. It is ok not to be alright with this situation in your family sometimes too, it is a shit situation and you struggling with what is a shit situation is perfectly natural and normal and it is ok to do that and you shouldn’t feel shame or be made to feel like there is something wrong with you for that because there isn’t.

I really hope that you decided against it and are enjoying today with your children and happy knowing you are the mother to them that she never was to you and they will never suffer as you did.

What is your aim, bar pissing her off? It’ll just her enable her to say how awful you are. I bet you won’t feel any better.

You have had a terrible childhood OP.
Sexual abuse is not something you just move on from or put to oneside. It is a criminal offence and I hope one day you have the strength to report it to the Police.
Your mother is not worthy of the title. Don't let thoughts of her ruin today, the best punishment for her is to let her see how happy your own little family is and that you don't give a fuck about her or your abuser today.

No I wouldn't she may well enjoy the drama and then be ringing round family with tales of how terrible you were etc etc.
I see that you want to have your say to help all the built up rage and sorrow but it will only hurt you more than it can help.
Could you write a letter to get all that pain out and then burn it? It's no good for you carrying it around. I'm sorry she failed you so badly and also that wider family have not stood with you. She probably has them all in a hold as well.
Build your kids the family you already have with friends and people who care. I don't have a massive family either but the kids have a couple of honorary aunties who they love from my friends group.
They only need a handful of good people to love them you wouldn't want the toxic love it sounds like they would get from your actual family.
You sound very brave I hope you find some peace with this situation.

I didn’t go. It’s a 3-4 hour drive each way and I decided not to waste my day. DC wanted to go on a picnic walk so I’m in the bath after breakfast in bed and have decided to put my mother back in her box!

@oliviastwisted thank you for your post. The calculated shunning by my entire family has been more traumatic than the sexual, physical and psychological abuse put together. More so than going through losing my 2nd child at birth after being told 2 weeks before she was born that she was going to die. It’s difficult to explain or rationalise. I know they’re all cunts so why do I care? I should be grateful I’m free of them right?

I was part of the family for over 40 years. My mother and I got on OK after I left home at 18 as long as I kept my mouth shut and did what she asked (like driving from Devon to Edinburgh with chickenpoxy toddler twins for my brother’s birthday). I guess I disassociated with what I’d been through as a child and it was only when I started experiencing panic attacks and sought help with that (had one while driving with DC in the car), that it all came out. I was the one my mother got on the phone to for a bitch about the others, who called her if she was travelling to make sure she was OK, organised celebrations, reminded everyone of birthdays etc. I was so desperate for her approval.

The sibling who sexually abused me was a she not a he! She was my mothers golden child. I was 8, she was 11/12, just a child same as me. I don’t feel malice to her about it. She couldn’t have her own DC and had her own MH issues. I always wondered if something happened to her. She used to beat me up and bully me and the sexual abuse was an extension of that. My mother used to let her get away with it. I had to wear her hand me downs (including too small shoes as my feet were bigger). She used to taunt me that she’d not let me have clothes that I liked and she’d keep them in her wardrobe long after she’d stopped wearing them until they were too small for me.

I believe that my mothers abuse towards me was triggered by my stepfather walking in on the sexual abuse, deciding I must have been the instigator and/or wanting to shut me up so I never told anyone and completely destroying me as a child calling me filthy, disgusting, evil and threatening me with a psychiatrist. Often sending me to my room as she couldn’t stand to look at me and leaving me out of family events/holidays like Disneyland Florida one Christmas! I believe she prevented me from seeing my real father in case I said anything. We moved to the other side of the country shortly after it stopped. It took him years to find us and when he did, she told him I didn’t want to see him without asking me. My abusing sister (he was not her father)gleefully told me that afterwards.

Confronting her should have finally given me some peace but all it did was make me feel 100 times worse. She could have just said Sorry. I didn’t know how to deal with it. It wasn’t your fault. She purposely denied me that and instead reiterated that I was a spiteful, nasty child who no one cared about. It’s no wonder I can’t let go of the anger really.

She also deliberately tried to turn my twin sons against each other by calling one handsome and clever and the other one ugly and stupid (at age 7/8). I overheard DS2 telling DS1 ‘You’re ugly snd stupid, Grandma says so’. She’d said it a few times but I couldn’t stand up to her just told DS1 Grandma’s just joking. DS1 decided he WAS ugly and would scribble over his face in photos. He’d never had that thought in his head prior to that as we always told our DC they were beautiful.

How on earth can I be the bad guy in this! The sense of injustice is over whelming sometimes. I hate that I am seen as a bad person. God knows what my siblings partners and children have been told to explain my family’s absence.

Wow, you are not the bad guy in this but a couple of things my therapist said to me might help you. It helped me rationally at first but it took a while to really accept it so as you know, the rational understanding of something doesn't make the pain go away, but here goes ....

1. they need you to reflect back to them what they need to feel. Your family sounds chaotic and you were outspoken, very risky for them. What they needed from you was silence. What they needed from you was collusion what they needed from you was that you be no trouble what they needed from you was that you have no sense of yourself what they needed from you was that you have no sense of any right to a boundary.

If you think of a functioning alcoholic, they were a functioning family in name only. There was no attunement to the children's needs. taht wasn't the goal. Appearances were the goal.

My therapist said to me that I might as well be talking to them in a language they don't understand. I speak genuine emotion. They speak appearances and her I am asking them to acknowledge that they hurt me, asking them to verbalise some small expression of regret. they can't because they do not have the emotional maturity or the self-awareness to even understand that they have prioritised appearances over genuine respect and support. If you try to connect with my family the get angry because they are anti emotion.

Patrick Teahan on youtube is very good on the subject of dysfunctional family systems and how hard it is to change them.

why give her the satisfaction?
Buy yourself flowers but buy them tomorrow when prices aren't inflated because it's a special day

I’m so sorry OP. So so sorry.
But you haven’t moved on, you clearly haven’t.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained from this other than further hurt to you, and you deserve better.

She doesn’t care and nothing you say or do will make her either. Stop waiting for an acknowledgment or apology from someone who doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong and probably wouldn’t care, even if they did.

You and your family deserve so much better.

💐

ps, I do completely understand what you mean about the sense of injustice though. I have a strong sense of injustice too. Whoever said life was fair I guess. Why do we need there to be justice?

I felt that I could forgive my mother for the decades of projection. (My father went to a psychiatric hospital a few times with depression and paranoia and yet I was casually labelled paranoid (amongst other things) as I grew up and beyond, it was still happening until I put my foot down two years ago) although I could orgive my parents for their unconscious projections, but I cannot forgive them glossing so dismissively and with such boredom and irritation over my pain, while in the next breath using their pain to manipulate me. I should feel terrible about the pain I caused them telling them that they hurt me !!
Even though they reacted to my pain with anger and martyrdom So, when I'd just about got to grips with that and was nearly at the point of feeling enough acceptance to inhabit some sort of semi-peaceful existence, then I discovered that although they won't talk to me, they had smeared me talking about me to aunts, uncles, cousins and my name is mud in the family...........

At the moment I'm trying to let go of that
And on top of that, my mum hates me for what I've done to the family. So I'm trying to accept that. She just has no insight ever. It's like trying to teach a dog to type.

Ps2, instead of trying to get them to realise you did nothing wrong, switch it around. At the moment, after two years of trying to get through to my parents (and enmeshed golden child brother) I have switched my focus to protecting myself. I will wait and see if they demonstrate to me that they have experienced any growth or any insight or any lessening of their defensiveness, denials, any relaxation of the ego that would allow my mother to suspend her silent treatment. Let ME be the judge of whether or not they win back any of my approval. YKWIM?

Do they earn your approval? No. They don't.

The practice of self-compassion has been helpful to me too. I did the kristen neff phd and christopher germer phd self-compassion work book. I did all the exercises and understood the yin and yang of self compassion, made intentions and I do repeat them. They help.

Nobody validates me but I validate myself now. I believe my own interpretation of events and no amount of silent treatments, gaslighting, triangulation, manipulation, stonewalling, projections, smear campaigns etc will ever make me doubt my own interpretation. so my name is mud in the family but I am still the judge of what happened to me.

It helps.

I’ve just read your last post properly!
I have no words, none.

You have been subjected to serious mental and physical abuse and quite rightly you feel the way you do. What an absolutely horrific upbringing you’ve had.

Your priority is to protect your own children, something she utterly failed to do and whi h you are now doing.

She isn’t fit to lick your boots and you mustn’t give her the satisfaction of attempting to crush you again.

Enjoy your life as it is now - DH, children, friends etc and when you’re ready, you may again benefit from some talking therapy around this.

I had no such seriously abusive relationship with my mum, although it wasn’t great, but I am at peace with it now as I’m low contact and engage with her very little. It’s her loss and she knows it.

Live well OP 💐

Having had to acknowledge that both of my parents are tedious, self interested, narcissistic, deluded individuals who have told wider family all sorts of weird things about me over the years, all I can say, OP, is cut yourself some slack. You don't need to understand her, to get her to understand what she has done. You do have to get her out of your head though.

She is broken. Don't let her break you. Don't let her take one more moment from living a life with your DH and kids.

It's hard, but once you give yourself permission not to give a fuck what they think, do or say, it does get easier.

💐

If you do that you give her ' evidence' that she is the victim amd not you.
She coyld show the card etc to others.
If you really need to send a card write on it to the mother that did nothing when i told her about and list the things you want to say..
That way it may at least cause her some discomfort and she may.be too ashamed to show it others ..or use it against you.
If you do do it, it may not make her feel bad as she chooses to blame you.for what she decides she wont hear about herself.. if you do.do.it you need to.make sure you feel.it valixates you rather than care about any reaction she may or maynot have.
She is outragoeus for blammimg the abused in this and i feel.anger onnyr behalf .

I'm glad you didn't go. It wouldn't have brought you any peace.

It also sounds as if as horrible as it seems, they've done you and your kids a favour.

I have some empathy with what you might be going through. In my case it was my father, not my mother who was the monstrous one, and I was the one who cut him out of my life rather than the other way round. The end result is, however, the same and an abused child has been left estranged, hurting and in therapy, trying to pick up the pieces of our lives.

I'm so glad you didn't do this. I understand completely your desire to lash out and make your mother feel even a fraction of the pain she has inflicted on you.

The reality is, life pays no concession to fairness or people getting their just desserts. The grenade you considered lobbing at your mother was far more likely to blow up in your face.

I'd write everything you'd like to say to your mother down in a letter, but don't send it. One day, you'll be able to burn it and let it, and her, go. In the shorter term I hope you manage to celebrate a happy, peaceful Mothering Sunday with your own children.

@ReclaimingMe that is just so awful. What you have experienced is so so bad. I completely agree that for me too my family’s abuse of me when I confronted the abuse was worse that the bullying and sexual abuse I grew up with. It is such an enormous abandonment and betrayal and rejection.

My therapist reminded me when I spoke to him how lonely I was that the whole family system had broken down for me was that I had actually been dealing with that from my earliest childhood, I just hadn’t accepted it until now. Even now I still think that maybe my mother gets it but as another poster put it, they don’t, the can’t, they don’t speak the language, instead they speak the language of dysfunction. There is nothing healthy possible out of that dysfunction. It is a choice to leave it behind as you have done and it is a choice to stay.

I wonder if you could reframe the estrangement for your self though in a much more empowering way. I don’t know about you but the reason I never brought up the abuse for so many years was because I absolutely knew how my parents would respond. I grew up with them. I knew what they were like. I knew what my siblings were like. I knew my parents would abandon me if I brought up the abuse and I knew that my siblings would protect my parents from facing up to their own emotional and psychological abuse of their daughters. That was the family pattern always. It went on all my life.

On some level I wonder did you know that in your family if you spoke put that you would be abandoned too? The reason I ask is because you speak of your mother forcing you out which puts the power in her hands but actually if you knew your family and you knew what they were like then maybe on some level you choose to walk a different path for your own children than what you grew up with yourself. You choose to protect your children from abuse. You choose to see your own value and protect yourself from harm. Those are powerful and very healthy choices.

WARNING COULD BE TRIGGERING ***I've experienced a mother like this op I was beaten when my dad left age 5 because I looked like him .she came in pissed when I was around 7 and asked if I wanted to sleep forever and whipped out a huge knife. I was raped for 2 years by a man's son she was shacked up with and she completely did nothing about it .she has done some horrendous things over the years and I too don't have relationship with the majority of my mums side as I am the bad one laughable isent it. I didn't question her really until I became a parent myself and then what she did to me was wrong and abusive and I knew I wanted my children to always feel happy and loved. I've kind of kept her at arms length through my adult life until my granddaughter came along as soon as she was born my mum made it all about her being a great grandmother buying a travel cot for her to have her over night. I have 4 children and I can count on one hand how many times she's had mine not that I expected it. I stopped her having mine when she took my youngest 2 for the weekend and she also had a man to stay she had met 2 days before !

Things came to a head last year my daughter had not contacted her for a week and popped round for a brew at mine so I took a picture on fb of me and my dgd and popped it on fb saying look who came to see me. Within 2 minutes I got a snotty message telling me to ask my daughter what she had done wrong as she hadn't called her for a week. A few days later she saw my daughter in town spat in her face and her friends and shouted to the point she was foaming st the mouth all in front of my granddaughter. I rang her and told her she was a disgrace and from that moment never contact myself my children or my grandchild again.
I don't regret this decision I've spent decades second guessing myself , if I was good enough , seeking approval and I don't give a fuck anymore op I've totally cut her off and feel liberated and at peace just because someone gave birth to you it does not give them the right to make you feel like crap or treat you badly if I were you I'd not run up she won't give a crap and it'll make you feel worse and fuel her fire so to speak never take a step back. Sometimes we just have to accept we will never get the parents we deserve but you can always be that parent to your child I'm 41 and finally at peace with that and I hope you will be too xxxx

I would not bother, if someone know matter who they are, doesn't want you in their life, why bother. X

Breakfast in bed and picnic walk sound so much better

I hope you've had a lovely day with your DC.

Tbh, I haven’t read all the posts just the OP. Sorry in advance for any repetition. My dad’s sht and my advice to my siblings and now to you, is you aren’t missing out on anything, unfortunately she is not the person she should have been to you and that’s sht… it’s sucks. However, you can’t miss something you never had and from the sounds of it, you never had the ‘typical’ lovely mummy. She’s the one losing out, not you. Try to flip the situation and think of how her absence and mistreatment have contributed to the wonderful mummy and person you have become be grateful that your children will never endure what you did. Easier said than done I know… but with toxic people there really is no other way than acceptance. IMO. I hope that was helpful, sorry if it seemed preachy that’s not my intention.