Hey wigwambam can i have a word?

[Donbean]

Hope you dont mind me calling you like that, im SO gobby me!
I was just reading your post on the self asteem thread and im interested in what you said about your mum. She sounds very similar to mine.
I have never ever in life met any one with a mother like mine, until now, reading what you say it sounds like they are the same person!
Would you mind me chatting to you about it?
I understand if you would rather not, if it would be too upsetting or what ever, its just i am so curious now.

Yes i too feel that other people will find me dull, or form a bad opinion of me for bieng quiet or as has been described to me before "stand offish".
But then agin, talking to most people, they say that they too worry about how they come across to other people. Even those with normal upbringings.
I have lots of very good friends surrounding me who have been mine and dh's friends for many many years, i often think to myself that we must have some thing about us to attract and keep such wonderful people with us.
This i always suspect is because dh is so lovely, nothing to do with me. Yet they come round time and time again year in year out.
DH is very good for me, he is so lovely and a genuinely wonderful person, is this a fluke though?
My sisters are both with individuals who are not nice, and have always attracted people like this. Neither has friends or people around them for any length of time.
Because i think of my parents influence. They are not people people IYSWIM.
The contrast is amazing between us all. They can recall with vivid clarity our childhood where as i dont. They especially remember the way my mother was with me, i dont so much.
Seemingly she was much worse with me than she was with any of them.
They are both quite angry when they talk of it, yet i just cant seem to get angry about it.

I believe that it is because of how happy and content i am now in my life, it doesnt matter any more IYSWIM.

Do you ever question how your mother could have been like that with you knowing how you feel about your own child?

Also, how were you as a teenager growing up. Were you more or less affected by your upbringing when discovering your feet as an individual.
Did it affect your friendships and relationships with people.
Were you overtly angry as a teenager or a shrinking violet?
What age did you leave home and escape it?
I only ask because this was the time that i was most affected by my childhood.

Oh god, yes! I look at my dd and can't imagine ever wanting to even hit her, let alone take a rounders bat or a wooden shoe to her. Even if I felt that 4 year olds were designed to make you angry (and sometimes I think they are!) she's just a child and there's no way I could physically take my frustrations out on her. I'm meant to be the adult in the relationship - she's the one that's meant to throw the tantrums.

I see a lot of myself in my dd; she always wants to please me, and I think that's the case with most young children, and I think it's important to praise her when she's done something well and not to criticise her when things don't turn out so well. I didn't have that, so whether I'm adjusting my behaviour because of the way my mother was, or whether all mothers do that, I can't tell. I can't ever imagine calling her stupid, or making her think that some big thing she's told me is unimportant, and again I don't know whether that's me going the other way to my mother, or whether that's just part of being a proper parent.

I can remember trying to tell my mother how depressed and lonely I felt when I was about 12, and she sneered at me and made some nasty comment about it, and from that day on I never told my mother anything important again. She still doesn't know about the depression that I suffer from to this day. I don't ever want my dd to think that she can't talk to me about anything. We talk a lot together, and she asks a lot of questions - she's asked me things at the age of 4 that I would have been scared to ask my mother at the age of 14.

I would imagine that most people who come from that kind of relationship wouldn't want to perpetrate the abuse onto another generation, and I think that's where the difference between witnessing abuse and being on the receiving end of it comes in.

It was worse for me as a teenager, I think. The abuse was mainly verbal by then but the damage was done. I have never managed to make friends because I was always frightened of other people - other children and adults alike. I was a real shrinking violet, scared of everything including my own shadow. It was dreadful, and it's the one thing I dread for my dd. I was bullied horribly, probably because I didn't put up a fight - just like at home. I became angry later in life, probably in my late 20s when I began to find my feet as an individual, and when I began to learn how to relate to other people.

My first real relationship with a man was just like being with my mother all over again. He was a lot older, very controlling, and he was violent too - well, I didn't let him know it wasn't acceptable so he felt it was.

Amazingly enough, I didn't leave home until I was 25 - her control over me was so great that I felt I couldn't do it. And my confidence levels were so low that I had no idea how I would manage on my own. I left home to move in with my now dh - who is as different from my ex as it's possible to get, and I think it was only really then that I started to develop as an individual and grow into the person I am.

Now my mother thinks I'm a wonderful person - she fails to see that I'm still the same person I always was, but she has changed and her perception has changed. She wants to be my friend, and she wants to confide in me about things, and I just don't want it.

WWB-Your last paragraph has hit a nerve with me too-I have read all of this thread with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart. I can't be arsed to go into it all as you couldn't call it abuse of a kind-yeah, I was hit a fair bit with lots of emotional crap afterwards saying she was "sorry" and "didn't mean it"-she had a terrible temper and still, to this day, can't believe why she scared the life out of me.
I just now pity her and as one of you said earlier I tolerate her with a light,"forced" politeness-I never argue with her or dare to criticise for fear of her cutting me out of her will. Callous huh?

Up until the age of ten,however,she was the best mother in the world and my best friend! I was and still am her only child and yet for the majority of my life, it is I who has done the mothering!

My mum has changed towards me too. I think that it is her perception of me that has changed. She speaks to me as if i am not related to her but a person who she goes to for help and advice.
I have a superficial relationship with her and only talk to her on a very basic level.
She rips my sisters to shreds in the hope that i will argue with them, i dont comment on what she tells me to her nor to my sisters. I dont get involved.
My middle sister gives as good as she gets and puts up with no crap from her at all, thats her beef though IMO.
My younger sister is dominated and bullied by her. She says what ever she wants to my youngest sister and threatens her with physical violence whenever she feels the urge.
I left home at 17 and moved in with my nanna & auntie. At age 18 my mother attacked me. For the last time.
My nanna said that i was a wreck when i moved in with her and i struggled through my teens as a very angry very unsettled very damaged individual.
When i look at my child (who by the way has hit the terrible twos and oozes pure evil) I cannot understand how a mother with the feelings that i have, could ever inflict such cruelty onto a child.
I have thought about this over the years and have concluded that A) she was severely depressed and B) she was dealing with her own abusive demon in the shape of my father.
With 4 kids under the age of 5 it must have been difficult.
How would i have coped with it? Its hard to comment as i have not walked in her shoes.
What i do know absolutely is that i did not deserve it, it wasnt my fault and i should never have been born...she should never have had children.

She now has no one.
No friends, few family members have much to do with her.
She sees my sisters very little, she has no one.
Its not just us that she is agressive towards you see. Its every one that surrounds her and over the years they have all edged away.
Does your mum have friends and how is she towards others?

Its me AGAIN!
there is a thread active at the mo about a woman whos mum has died and people are saying lovely things.
I am concerned about my lack of emotion when it comes to thinking about if my mother were to die.
I feel very guilty about this.
I dont know if i would react in the "normal" grieving sense of the word, how do you feel when you think about this?

Donbean, you said that you did not deserve it, it wasn't your fault and you should never have been born because she should never have had children - you're right on two of those counts because it wasn't your fault and you didn't deserve it. I can't agree that you should never have been born though - maybe she shouldn't have had children, but the fact is she did, and you deserve more than to think you shouldn't have been born. The way I look at it is, we have the chance to make sure another generation of our families doesn't have to suffer the way we did.

Dropinthe, my mother used to apologise too, until I was about 6, and that used to make things feel better, because at least she cared enough to know that she'd done something wrong. She used to cry and hug me, and as it was the only time she ever hugged me, it felt good. Then, when I was about 6, she stopped, I can remember lying in the bath with huge red weals and handprints all up my legs thinking, "she'll come in soon and love me again" - and she never did. She never apologised to me again, and she still never has done. I think about it now, and 6 seems so little, so young yet I felt so old.

I do wonder if she was dealing with her own abusive demon. I said on the other thread that my grandfather (her dad) was an abuser and a bully; he sexually abused me and my sister, although I found out later on that he'd never touched my mother that way. He was violent to her, and she has an enormous scar on her arm from where he pushed her into an open fire one day when she was young. But then again, I was abused, and I choose not to perpetrate that abuse further, and I can't see how she could have made the choice to continue the pattern. Because it was a choice - she could have chosen not to do the things she did. Most of the time it was very calculated, not spur of the moment - she hit us both with a rounders bat for an hour once because someone had brushed against the French window and left a mark in the condensation. She asked each of us in turn, "was it you?" and when we said no, we got a belt. For an hour. Turned out to be the girl next door who had done it - she found out the following day, and although she told us it was her, there was no word of apology, and that hurt as much as the rounders bat. Lashing out once is maybe more excusable, but to continue with hitting each of us in turn for an hour was calculated and considered, and I can see no excuse for that.

Everyone thinks my mother is wonderful. She has friends, some of them very close, and some of them she's had for years. She's lost some, because she has a tendency to bear grudges and one perceived slight can mean she never speaks to someone again. She's never been even verbally aggressive with any of her friends or her work colleagues as far as I know, and she works with elderly people so the first sign of aggression and she would have been sacked years ago. I often wonder if she resented us for some reason, I can't see any other reason why she would have been so aggressive and violent with her own children and not elsewhere.

I don't know how I would handle it if my mum were to die. At the moment I think about it and I feel nothing. I'm sure that in the event of it happening there would be some feelings but I think one of them would probably be relief. Sounds awful, but the one thing I dread is my dad dying first, I'm not sure I could handle continuing contact with my mum if my dad weren't here. There are probably some people who think I'm hard-hearted for saying that but it's how I feel at the moment. I don't buy into the "you only have one mother so cherish her" stuff - she only had two daughters when me and my middle sister were growing up, but she didn't cherish us.

hm, its a hard one isnt it, death.
It sounds like you had it much harder than me, not that i am here to compare but you sound like you had a truly terrible time.
I never felt loved nor do i remember any affection. I dont remember kisses or hugs or sitting on her knee.
I remember affection from my dad but it was rare.
Dh had the most lovely childhood. I dont talk to him about what went on with me, it just has never seemed important.
Do you think that you will ever be able to put it behind you?
Do you think that you will ever discuss it with your children, one day when she is gone and it wont matter?
What does your dp/dh think about it?
Have you discussed in detail what went on with your sister?
And one more thing, have you ever told any one outside your family about your childhood, what was thier reaction?

My dh had a lovely childhood as well, but I've been able to talk to him about mine. More of it has come up recently, since my sister started having really big problems with her alcoholism. It's not something we talk about a lot, but every now and again something else crops up and I have to get it out of my system. I think too much, and sometimes thinking is the wrong thing to do and I need to talk about it so it just spills out. I've never really told anyone else the full extent of it. My little sister is of a completely different generation; she knows that my mum was violent but she doesn't understand quite how much, and quite how damaging it was.

I hadn't told anyone about my grandfather until my sister's husband told my mum what my sister had told him about it - he thought it was time for a few home truths. The resultant telephone call from my mum upset me so much that I had to tell dh about it. I've never spoken about it before, it feels odd. Talking about it makes me feel as if I'm playing the victim card, and I don't really do that.

Putting it behind me ... mmm. Mostly it is behind me, but sometimes it catches up with me and grabs me by the neck! I don't think it'll ever really go away; I'm 42 - if it was going to go away it would have done by now. I think I'm at a place where I'm reasonably comfortable with myself now though, and that's good.

I don't think I'll ever tell my dd. She adores her grandma (she's a much better grandma than mother) and I don't think it's right to offload onto her. I am determined that the violence ends with me, it goes no further, and I think that even talking about it goes no further either. I'm not sure that it's something she ever needs to know about - although I may change my mind on that one when she's older.

I don't really know what dh thinks about it, he's never really said anything. He listens, he asks questions, he lets me cry and rant but never offers solutions and never offers opinions. I don't think I want him to, either. I used to talk to my sister about it, but the booze makes her very distant, and since she came at me with a knife in front of my dd a few months ago, I haven't seen her. We talk on the phone and sometimes we'll discuss it, but not often. Her dh has rung me to talk about it a few times, because I don't think he's believed what my sister has said.

This is the first time I've ever told anyone outside of the family - it's my skeleton in the cupboard! Is it something you would discuss with other people? I find it quite hard to imagine ever talking about it face-to-face.

Agree with relief and also RELEASE in Death. Dread the funeral in case I don't cry enough!

By the way,I was only hit on the lash out-never repeatedly or systematically.

WWB-you have grown into such a strong,well rounded,"normal" woman-you should be SO proud of yourself.

Thank you, dropinthe. It's taken a long time though!

Do you notice how we speak about it with such logic?
The way you put your story across is with such clarity and concious thought. These are not the words of a victim IMHO, they are the words of some one making sense and getting on with things.
Like you, i have had a long time to think about things therefor some logic must come of it.
I just dont talk about her and when people talk about thier mothers/parents i quietly listen, dont comment and luckily only a few people have ever asked any thing about mine.
I say as little as possible because as far as im concerned, theres not much to tell.
Does this sound like im brushing it under the carpet?

If you're brushing it under the carpet then so am I! I do the very same thing.

I agree about the logic - it's just pure fact and nothing else. I did most of my weeping, wailing and chest-beating a long time ago - I still cry about it sometimes but usually just when some new memory surfaces, or my sister has a bad episode and it needs dealing with rather than bottling up. It's funny in a way that I can almost detach myself from it now and talk about it as if it were someone else. I'd like to think that it's because all of the screwing up is in the past - I don't want to let her screw up my present and my future too.

I have one thing to thank her for though - by being the parent she was, she taught me how to be a better parent. All I have to do is remember how she did things, and then do the opposite.

Yes, i too learned how not be be a parent from my mum.
I wonder what she would say and think if she could read what i have put on here.

I feel some what guilty for putting the term "abusive" on her you know.
I still like to think that she did the best by us given the circumstances.
I am making excuses for our treatment yet i know it wasnt right because my auntie has commented in the past on stuff that went on.
I think im going to ask her if in her opinion we were brought up in an abusive environment. See what she says, as a second opinion.
Only because i some times doubt my self and my memories.

Sometimes I doubt my memories too, particularly when my mother just doesn't remember things the same way as I do. But my sister remembers them too, and she remembers the way I remember so I know it's not my memory that's at fault. Amnesia would be nice sometimes though.

I don't feel guilty at using the word abuse because that's what it was ... or at least, that's what I can see it for now. I do feel guilty at posting here about it though, she would be mortified and deep down I'm still the little girl who always wanted to please her.

Maybe the fact that you like to think that she did the best she could given the circumstances is a protection mechanism ... protection from the fact that she chose to do the things she did. Perhaps thinking the best of her allows you to at least in part justify what she did, to give an excuse for something that to our grown-up eyes is inexcusable.

My mother would deny that we were brought up in an abusive environment. She admits to being more physical with our punishments than she should have done, but won't concede any further than that. She gets upset when my sister makes accusations because she doesn't remember things as we do, she believes she did the best thing she could have done. I don't.

I've been thinking about what you said, about your mother doing her best for you given the circumstances, and wondering whether maybe that's true of my mother and I'm being too hard on her. I almost wish that I could believe it, but certainly in my case I don't think it's true. The fact that her aggression and her verbal abuse stopped at me and my sister suggests to me that she had at least a degree of control over whether she did those things. She certainly had control over the words she used. She could control her aggression everywhere else - surely she could have controlled it with me if she had made the decision to do that.

I have chosen the way that I bring up my daughter, and the way I have chosen is without violence, and without causing my daughter to be frightened of me. I really believe that she could have made the same decision, if she'd had a mind to. I tell my dd every day how special she is, and how much I love her - no matter what the circumstances are, it isn't hard to tell a child that and boost their self-esteem. It doesn't cost anything, it doesn't cause any extra stress ... I can't imagine why anyone would chose not to do that.

Oh, I don't know what I think really. I'm picking at this now like a dog with a bone, can't stop thinking about it all again. I wonder if I'll ever make any sense out of it.

She did have it hard though.
Without doubt, she had a tough marriage and my grand mother insists that my mother was a completely different person prior to her marriage and having kids.

She still could have let US know that we were loved and cared for and not in the way, inconvenient and a bloody nuisance.
She could have done that easily regardless of what was going on for her, couldnt she.

I dont know either, but what i do know is that it wasnt right, it just wasnt... end of.

For you, you have to contend with the sexual abuse as well, you have double the misery to push down into the depths. A whole other ball game.

Now im thinking about it, i suppose i feel a bit sad, in 10 mins for me i will be thinking about some thing else completely unrelated. I am lucky, i can switch it off completely.

Can i ask, do you have ANY happy memories of time spent with your mother at all?

I've been thinking for the last hour about that and do you know, I can't think of one happy time I spent with my mother. I have plenty of neutral memories which are neither good nor bad but no real happy ones. I don't remember ever being hugged, kissed or told that she loved me either. I suppose she must have done ... I have to hope that she did.

She was efficient and practical, so if anything was happening at school she'd march up and get it put right, and we always had food to eat and clothes to wear, so I guess she must have cared somewhere along the line but she didn't extend to affection - she's since told me she thinks parents need to be authoritative to their children and not try to be their friend, but there has to be some middle ground. It shouldn't be a choice between being brutal or not having any discipline. Fear is an effective disciplinary tool but it comes at such a high cost.

Have you seen the thread on "my mother is so rude", it is hilarious and very entertaining.
There are some real horrors on there.
Not to our standard of horror you understand, never the less very very funny!

Me and ds went Blackberry picking the other day and i remembered going blackberry picking once as a kid. It was a nice memory but i remember getting hit for some thing or other, cant remember. I was about 8 or 9.
Things always seemed to end in me getting hit for some reason.

i remember sitting with my dad watching top of the pops, i will have been about 5 i think, that was a nice memory too.

Im 35 now, and luckily things have faded with time, much much better things have over taken my thoughts these days. DS and DH are my world.

I have some nice memories of my dad, he used to take me chestnutting in the Autumn, although it was always in private woodland and I was so in awe of authority that I was in dread of being marched off down to the police station for trespass! I still find it hard to flout authority now. I was always close to my dad.

I've seen the other thread; don't think I'll bother posting though! I was also reading the thread about the guy abusing his child in M&S and I think if I started on there I would regret it.

Im really glad we have talked. I hope it hasnt distressed you too much.
Its been nice to talk to some one who "knows" or apears to understand at least.
We agree on so may things, seem to have similarities in our experiences.
Its been good to get this stuff down in writing, cathatric in a way.
Has it been useful to you or do you wish you had never started?

Yes, it's been good to get it out - and to "talk" to someone who understands because they've been there. And who understands that a mother's love isn't always unconditional and isn't always taken as read - it gets my goat when people say that "you only have one mother" and "mothers deserve respect" because it's not true; respect is earned, even the respect of our children.

I've had a few tears while I've been writing but generally it's been a good thing. Thank you.

Oh, i didnt want to make you cry, im so sorry.
Its difficult on line to know when to shut up.

The one thing that i tell myself is that im a good person, i am and i think that you are too, a good person and a good mum.
we deserve happiness, we are completely 100% lucky to have our babies and to be able to do what is right.
Im getting all soft and have a little tear in my eye myself!
thanks again for your honesty, it has been difficult for you i can tell, thanks it means allot.