Toxic mother died

[morkcallingorson]

Hello. I am a lurker and sometime poster (although not for many months).

I grew up in fear and chaos. I had an emotionally abusive, sometimes violent mother. She and my father waged a daily war with each other, and my siblings and I were the collateral damage.

I am 40. I went from fearing and hating them as a child/teenager, to trying to help them and provide for them, and feeling sorry for them in their perpetual misery and warfare. Moat of these efforts were belittled/ignored/treated with contempt. I think at some point in my 20s I decided I had a duty and that I needed to stop blaming them for everything, so I swallowed all the shit and just got on with it. But their behaviour did/does cripple me in many ways, big and small. Too much to go into.

It all fell apart when I had my first child 4 years ago and my childhood misery came back to me so strongly it knocked me sideways. A lot of repressed memory and feelings came back. A lot of anger and the old hatred too. I had a huge breakdown.

I have never, in my memory, loved my parents. But I thought I had forgiven them the miserable upbringing and continual drama/unhappiness they'd leash upon each other and their children and grandchildren. Not so. Having my own children plunged me into a deep depression and seeing my parents made me, literally, mad. I had to stop seeing them for my own preservation and to stop my little family falling apart. I cut off contact in 2009.

My mother died last month. I haven't really cried. I don't know how to feel, really. I am angry with her for ruining the life and relationships she could have had. I feel utterly sorry for her and her sad life. At odd moments I remember she's dead, and it takes my breath away. The circumstances of her death haunt me. She was alone, and I can't help thinking how frightened she must have been. And in pain. I feel guilty, but also angry, because I know that if I'd remained in contact with her, she'd barely have noticed and I would probably be.....without a marriage? Dead (I've barely had a day in my life without thinking about ending it)? My dear sister plugged away trying to look after her, and all my mother did was abuse her and treat her like shit. That would have been me too.

I don't have any closure. I don't have any happy memories. I really don't, there were no stately homes or anything else to hold onto, it was daily misery, fear and abuse.

But there's this massive fucking hole in my chest and I am guessing that is grief and mourning. But what the hell am I mourning for? And in the end, am I even allowed to mourn? I cut contact.

Sorry to spill all this out here. Nobody will listen to my in rl.

It's grief undoubtedly but for the mother you never had rather than her as she was / treated you and now the chance for her to "suddenly realise" how toxic she was and making it up to you has also gone. Of course you're allowed to mourn, you are also entitled to get bereavement counselling to accept your past and hopefully move on. Sorry if this isn't helpful, I just wanted to say it's OK and now you can move on

mork, I cant help you properly, I have a thread of my own at the moment and am not alot of use.

I can say that my own negligent mother died in 2002, and I never felt grief, and have never looked back. My siblings did, but they never achieved my distance, either geographically or emotionally.

I had decided to 'forgive' her in the late 1980s and move on, but hadnt seen her for 12 years before she became ill, and needed my help.

It isnt your fault what mother you got, or how you reacted.

She may not have been a bad person, but weak.

Grief and sadness at death isnt a necessity, if there is nothing left.

It doesnt make you not whole, iyswim.

Got to sleep now.

Trite perhaps, but you may be mourning for the mother you should have had rather than the one you did have. The woman she could have been. Maybe there's a bit of mourning there too for your childhood, or again, what your childhood should have been. It would be so great to have a time machine and go back and give your young self a hug and say "it's going to be all right... you're going to have a husband and children and most of all you're going to get away from her".

I'm so sorry for your loss,

the loss of a mother you should have had
the loss of your childhood

you describe your sister as 'dear', do you have a relationship with her? You have someone who shared the misery, perhaps you can find some strength together to deal with this grief?

And, yes, you are allowed to mourn whether you cut contact or not. However she was, she was still your mother

I'm sure others will be along to offer support too.

mm, x-posted with everyone else saying the same. Must be true then!

mork

my sister took the brunt too, but she wanted to, she had her own reasons.

You can allow yourslef to grieve and feel sad. You can allow yourself to feel nothing.

I can remember feeling very anxious that I didnt care that much, even though I went home for her death and helped to manage it (at the hospital only, for 2 days). It troubled me about myself. Why were others upset, and not me?

But within months I had seen that it wasnt me, it couldnt be helped, it didnt matter, as long as I was true to myself.

And I still dont think about her that much, and I am not in pain when I do. She amuses me actually, in a good way.

Thank you for your replies. You are very kind, and it means a lot.

Brass, yes, my little sister is very dear to me. I think I was her substitute mum in many ways growing up and we are close and have always supported one another. She bore the brunt of my mother's madness in the latter years (I have 2 older siblings who also cut contact right down to minimal). I have spoken to her a bit about it, and feel that she feels a blessed release from it all. I want her to have a bit of stress free time now. She has had a really hard couple of years, and I don't want to become a new burden for her. Once I start to talk about this stuff, I find it hard to stop and hard to contain all the emotion. We see each other so infrequently (geography and busy lives), I don't want to spoil the little time we have together with this.

Annie, Tatty, yes to mourning the mother i didn't have. Frustrating that I thought I'd done this in the last 2 years with reading and a bit of counselling, trying to understand why I behave and react like I do. Trying to be different and to concentrate on my children and make sure history doesn't repeat itself. I feel like I've gone back to square one. I think I need to go back to counselling, but it feels like ripping scabs off, I'm scared to go back to where I was 2/3 years ago. Has to be done, I guess.

Need to sleep. Will post again tomorrow. Thanks again to anyone who's posted.

fiventhree, you sound so strong. I will come back tomorrow and read what you've said with a clear head. Have not seen your thread, but hope you are ok.

What I know about grief (which isn't much, but more than I would like) is that you have to allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling. Don't fight it - you won't drown in your feelings...go with what you feel and trust yourself. You have my greatest sympathy.

I, too, had a toxic mother and she cheated on me by dying 10 minutes before I arrived at the hospital! I was overwhelmed by grief; probably because I wanted her to tell me that she was sorry (in fact, I didn't even want to go and see her - had no idea that she was dying; sounds cruel, I know!). I grieved for the mother that I wanted, not the one that I had! However, she was a great grandmother and I completely entrusted her with the care of my children. Weird, isn't it?

Mork - so sorry that you're feeling this way.
I agree with everyone that you are grieving the mother you should have had but I think that culi's point is very revealing as well - I guess somewhere deep inside you always held out hope that she might change, might suddenly love you and realise that you were a good daughter and apologise to you for being such a cow - and now that can never happen so you are grieving that loss of hope as well.

Culi, your mother is unlikely to have backtracked on her deathbed and think how much more cheated you would feel if you had got there in time and she still hadn't said it. At least by missing her you can believe that it might have happened and take some small comfort from that. :)

I did some counselling training with a lady who had had a toxic upbringing - abusive father, passive unsupportive mother - and the thing we came to realise as we worked together on our exercises was that the overwhelming feeling she had was anger, and it was wearing her out. So we did some work to change that to pity - pity her mother for being so weak and pathetic that she couldn't stand up for her children, pity her father for being such a poor excuse for a human being that he had no feelings for anyone other than himself - and with the feelings of pity, she stopped seeing them as such an overriding part of her life and could detach more from the emotions she had for them. You say you already feel sad and sorry for your mother and her wasted life - but remember that, at the bottom of it, she always had a choice in how she lived her life.

My messages are getting slightly mixed I feel - talking as I think again - but these are the points:

1. she chose to be the woman she was and live life the way she did
2. she may never have acknowledged your losses or pain
3. pity her for being a poor specimen of a human being
4. Let Her Go - grieve for your loss of a real mother; let the physical loss of this woman who gave birth to you provide catharsis for your lifelong bereavement in terms of a real mother but let her go.
5. it is also quite likely that a portion of the pain you feel is guilt for not being sad "enough" - you can let this go as well. She was not a good mother to you, she was some woman who gave birth to you and then ignored your emotional needs in the most selfish way - you have nothing to feel guilty about. Societal "norms" don't apply here.

I think counselling may be a good idea now. You said it's like picking scabs off old wounds again - yes, but those scabs have been covering festering pus-filled sores that still haven't healed, and the only way TO heal them is to take the scab off and squeeze all the poison out. Once you have cleansed wounds, they will heal properly and you will never need to go through it again.

Sorry to have written an essay - hope it's helped. (((hugs))) for you - you and your sister - I am glad you have each other. Get some more counselling though so you don't lay it all on your sister - you need to talk it out with someone in a safe environment to cleanse up all those old septic wounds.

Pollykitten, thank you. I would like to just let go and feel, but am afraid it's going to overwhelm me, and I can't cope with my children and keeping my day to day life going. She died just before xmas and I spent the holidays trying to hold it all in for the kids/husband/inlaws.

culi so sorry for your experience. I think you see that a lot, toxic parents actually being reasonably benign (and even good) grandparents. I wonder about this a lot, and whether I've deprived my children. I don't think they could harm my kids, but they could harm me, and I could go on to harm my kids (the never ending abuse cycle, iyswim). Just before my mother died, I'd been discussing with my husband the possibility of resuming contact with my parents. I thought I was feeling strong enough to be able to see them for the sake of giving my own children their grandparents. I was under no illusions that my mother had changed or would change. But I thought I had and that I wouldn't react with the same old anger/pain. I'll never know what would have happened if I'd seen her. But a few hours with my toxic father (at the funeral) made me realise that I haven't really recovered, all the old anger just came flooding over me.

thumbwitch, thank you so much for taking the time to write all that. And for the hug! Everything you say makes sense in my head, I've told all those things to myself a million times. But it's all in my head, not in my heart. I agree going back to counselling is the answer. Is there a particular type of counselling that you think would be best? I went for psychoanalysis for a while, if that's what you'd call me blubbing to a psychologist week in week out. I was supposed to progress to CBT, but we moved to a different town and I didn't resume the counselling. I tried to do the Bradshaw self parenting method on myself, but found it really hard going. I don't know what I need, the doctors I've seen keep saying CBT, but I'm just not so sure. Please don't feel compelled to answer, I know you can't "assess" me on the limited info you have here, you just sound like you know what you're talking about!

Thank you for all the messages. So much kindness on here.

im no expert just read your post and am sending sympathy x it is very early days isn't it so i hope in time you process all your feelings

newgirl , thank you so much. I think I have spent so much of my life having upsetting experiences and being told to get over it (childhood conditioning), that I am having trouble letting myself be upset and accept that it is early days and I should not have just got over it by now.

Afternoon Mork; My abusive H died two years ago. The similarities I would draw are that you had in a relationship with this abusive person, whatever form it took. You do grieve, for what that relationship should have been like and you may also feel a sense of guilt that you are pleased that they have gone for good - I felt exactly like that.

I still sometimes think OMG hes really gone but as time passes it all seems like another lifetime I lived through.

hello morkhope you are okay
.grief is exhausting but as others have said the only way to deal with it is to go along with it and work through it.otherwise it won't 'go away'.
the royal college of psychiatrists have a website you might want to look at ; living life to the full [llttf] which has cbt techniques and i know many people it has helped.
in my experience the 'style' of counselling isn't as crucial as the rapport you have with the counsellor.

so sorry you are going through this. I cut contact with my toxic mother and I know she will die soon (she is 77 and frail). Everything you have said I have wondered whether I will feel. I think there's been some great advice and Im going to book mark this so when my mother does pass (and yes, I feel guilty she might be alone and in pain but she brought it on herself).
My dad died in 1991 while I was at university and I felt nothing. I even went for counselling and had the counsellor tell me I was repressing it. It took a while to realise that it was ok to feel nothing because nothing was what he deserved.

Mork - have sent you a PM. :)

Just a quick post, have only read a bit on here so far.

I wanted to add that when you've known someone all your life, and that person is someone significant to you (whether their influence is positive or negative), I think it's okay to feel the sense of their passing. Whether or not you call that grief.

Mork I am truly sorry that things have been so awful and incredibly complex, and that in many ways they continue to be so even though your mother is dead.

Bless you, Mork.

I think you will definitely be mourning all the what if's and could have beens, and the mother you wanted or wished you had, even the childhood you wished you had.

My back story is a lot like yours. Sometimes the utter misery of it knocks me flat. I fell apart too when I had my dd, I realised that so much that had been done to me was so very, very wrong. Really horrible stuff that I had spent 30 odd years justifying and believing my mothers version of me, herself, and everybody and everything else.

Of course you are allowed to mourn, so what if you cut contact. I did that about 6 years ago, and like you, I don't think I would still be here if I hadn't.

I have no magic formula but here is what I do, in short:

I am on anti depressants and anti anxiety medication, which helps me to cope with, tbh, normal life and feelings, as I have had to build my sense of self from nothing. I couldn't make decisions or talk to people. The chill pills help enormously with my ridiculously high levels of anxiety...

I do lots of hippy stuff like yoga, meditation, healing, which I am very interested in, and works for me. What ever is your passion in life, find a way to access it.

I do arty crafty stuff, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

It has taken a long time, but now it is clear why my self esteem is so poor, and it is also clear that it shouldn't be, I have a right to breathe air and walk through life with my head held high. I tell myself this as often as possible.

I have had a ton of counselling and psychotherapy, I have had fantastic counsellors and psychotherapists who have helped enormously.

I'm working on it. You're going to be fine, lovely, even though that might seem a way off yet.

And fwiw if I know full well that one day I will get The Phonecall to say that my mother is either dead or dying, and she will expect me to come running. I won't.

Such sad stories
The only thing I have to thank my mother for is teaching me how not to parent. Ive done the opposite with my kids.

yes, fantastic example of what not to do! If in doubt, think what my mother would have done and then do the polar opposite!

mork, here is a big huge hug from someone who knows exactly what you are saying. I knew that I hated my mother from the age of 11, which is a lonely thing for a little girl. Did you ever fantasise about being adopted? I wished that a kind couple would come and take me away and care about me. I knew I needed to be in boarding school, the whole Mallory Towers thing. I dreamed of being a boarder! It was harder to accept that my father too was toxic. I also cut contact with my parents because I accepted that they were not good for me (not once, amongst all the screaming and accusations did they say 'what's wrong'? A healthy question of concern). I too got seriously depressed after my children were born. When my toxic mother died I too shut down and felt nothing. I sat on the sofa with a huge pile of crappy novels and carbohydrates and put on about 3 stone.

So: a book for you. The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists - Coping with the one-way relationships... by Eleanor Payson.

It is about accepting who they really were, about truly letting go of the wish and hope that they would be different and that finally your sacrifices would pay off, that they would recognise your love and care and appreciate you, about mourning your loss - of yourself.

And finally, about learning to validate your own feelings (fill up that hole), develop boundaries (we are drawn to other narcissists alas), and learn to assert our feelings and reality. In other words, confront our co-dependent behaviour. Al-anon (narcissism and addiction go hand in hand) or any other 12-step programme is hugely recommended by many therapists to help develop detachment and boundaries.

I am signing up for Al-anon and have ditched no less than 4 narcissistic friends, and am working on not being drawn up into power struggles with narcissistic adulterous H (that was the final hurt that propelled me into change), and finally taking risks of being in the world (a bit too much just yet).

My overwhelming feelings now? Huge huge sadness. So sad. But, you know? That is better than the overwhelming anxiety and hopelessness I used to feel. It's more authentic, you know?

Good luck, and know you are not alone in this.

(((hugs))) abitwobbly - well done for turning things around in your own life. I had a few tears in my eyes reading your post.

What a great post, wobbly.