"But We Took You To Stately Homes!" - Survivors of Dysfunctional Families.

[singingprincess]

There is a word document with all the relevant links which I will try and find, but in the meantime...Post away.

Ally - just wanted to thanks for your post it was very kind. Its nice just to be understood sometimes.

Calin Im sorry that my post rings a bell as it means you feel the same as me. However as above its nice to be understood and know it really isnt just me.

Ive got a list of a few other odd things she does , if anyone would like to comment as to whether they are normal/odd/narc/ whatever id welcome it.

1. She asks what i consdier to be inappropriate questions about my sex life. Im 24. When i was rowing up it was a taboo subject and she refused to even discusss sanitary towels properly with me - i must have been about 9/10 at the time and id asked what they were.

The older i get she seems to think its more and more ok to ask if ive slept with someone , eg a male friend. she asks this quite often and has no idea how odd it is. Usually the answer is no as they are just friends of mine. I have pointed out i dislike this and dont want to discuss my sex life with her but her answer is that my cousin talks to her about it why dont i want to ?! Shes even asked if i meet blokes in bars and sleep with them. As in did you meet x in a bar and bring him home ?

2.She says ridiculous things which are obviously not true. She belives x country is a certain way and wont belive me if i tell her otherwise. similar to someone saying Germany is Nazi still but not as extreme. If i call her on it i must be wrong. She cant be and she gets pissed off and ends discussion or asks why i must "keep on about it - it doesnt matter"

1. She makes things up. Not big things , usually small things but in line with you told me you when to (insert name of place here) last week. No no i said i when to (different place name). She will insist i did or told her something slightly different. Usually she does admit shes mistaken though after a while if i insist. Or if she doesnt understand something shes been told she makes up something to allow it to make sense to her or fit into her head. Again usually small things that arent important but weird all the same. She dislikes admiting she doesnt understand a lot of things and keeps saying she does.

Ive nicked this off a website but yes oh my god she does this. "As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she?s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It?s all her fault. She can?t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn?t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right.

Usually its we tried our best for you or something along those lines , gets upset that ive upset her. She has actually used the phrase "oh i just cant do anything right for you can i ?"

Im wondering if my father could be an enabler - about not upsetting my mother has been mentioned. Recently he backed her up in expressing how much of a little shit i was as a teenager. I was not well behaved but i pointed out at the time i was very very mentally ill and on a lot of different medications which didnt even help that much.) I dont get how they cannot understand how ill i was and how all rational nice behaviour was completely beyond me.

She also hates it when i do things she doesnt like. Eg. when i went travelling (which i paid for) she sulked becuase she didnt want me to go and that she would do nothing but worry while i was away. She actually said i couldnt go. I was 21 and told her i was going anyway so shed have to learn to deal with it. Which im proud of.

Weird comment once and this will out me to my friend if shes reading - i got a sales job when i was at uni after years of being a waitress. I was so so excited and one of the first things she said (not the very first) was "remember not to be rude to anyone"
Ive never insulted a customer in any job even thouh many have deserved it. It was such a bizzare thing to say that even my friend who heard it too commented on it.

Ok sorry about the essay but i welcome any thoughts at all. Hope you re all having good days today :)

I'm having a really bad day but the above all sounds very similar to my mother, although mine is probably a sociopath and is much worse.
Sorry I can't help more

I've done loads of work on myself and my childhood but i'm feeling very low today. I just don't feel good enough for anyone, probably because i'm now single so i clearly wasn't good enough for him. I never was good enough for my parents and although I now know they are just mad and way off the scale of anything anyone could describe as normal it still really hurts.
There is still a little girl inside me who wants to be loved and liked and good enough for someone. I've only got my children now and I don't want to screw them up with my need to be loved. I want someone to love me who doesn't depend on me for everything. I thought I was starting to get there with feeling better about myself but it doesn't last long. My ex only left 2 weeks ago so everything is still very complicated and raw but I feel like i'm really slipping and I don't know what to do. I need to bring myself back up and feel strong enough to cope on my own but I don't know how anymore. My whole life has been a struggle and I thought I was settling down with a decent man, turns out he is evil too

NHAN You sound lovely so i doubt you will screw your children up. :)

nhan, things will get better. He only went 2 weeks ago, that's nothing. be kind to yourself now, as kind as you can. you need to look after yourself, so you can look after your dc. i think you are absolutely incredible to have been through what you have and to come out the other side. your dc are lucky to have you.

you know what they say - sometimes the darkest hour is before the dawn.
just take it slowly now.

take care and thinking of you
xx

oiwheresthecoffee Your list rings a lot of bells.

My mum also asked me inappropriate questions about my sex life, starting when I was a teen, while refusing to discuss sex in anything but very basic biological terms. I don't remember it myself, but my sister remembers how she questioned me about when and how often I slept with my first boyfriend as if she had the right to know. I'm now in my thirties and stopped telling her personal stuff ages ago, but still she occasionally blurts out a comment that just totally blows me away with its lack of appropriate boundaries.

She also makes things up to fill in the constant (and often weird) narrative that must be running in her head. One time I had a huge blowout with her because she claimed I told her that friend x was blond, while now I was saying he has brown hair. Why I would even discuss the hair colour of someone she'd never met, and then why I would lie about it?!

It happens especially with stories that don't involved her and I've read somewhere that is a trait of narcissists: if a story doesn't involve them they cannot actually process it. F.e. when I told her that I wasn't planning on buying a changing table for my babes because I had other furniture that could do the job, she kept acting as if she was responding to me while going on and on about where I could get a cheap one, until I with a very loud voice asked her if she could actually hear a word I was saying. She then did that sheepish/sly smirk and changed the subject.

And yes, she does this: "As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she?s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It?s all her fault. She can?t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn?t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right."

It is at this point that my dad, who often sticks by me throughout the first part of the argument, flips and takes her side.

The only way I've been able to deal with it (until now) is not sharing anything with her that has any emotional charge for me, however small, because she always ends up using it. It got so far that for years I've just zoned out when I'm around her, basically pretending I'm not there. Now, with a therapist, I'm working on being more assertive and putting in boundaries instead of disappearing. I spoke out to my dad recently and am making strides in my relationship with my partner, but to do it with my mum - I realised this week - terrifies me.

Meiinlove

Im so glad you ve posted a lot of that sounds like my mother.especially the flipping to pathetic then my dad jumping in to "save" her.
And the bit where she oes on and on seemin to not hear what you are saying. Ive had the very same when buying thins for my home she oes on about an item ive said i dont want and appears to just not hear me when i repeat i do not want it.
Its like her own version of events or something.

I don?t normally post on here so I hope nobody minds, but I read NHAN?s first post and really wanted to offer my support.

It must have taken a lot of courage to have written that. It was heart-rending to read and I found it extremely difficult. You are a brave woman to have written it and even more so to have come out the other side of that type and ferocity of abuse. I am not sure if you have said, but are you still in contact with your parents? Hoping not on that score, but if so, that could be one positive thing you could do now - cut them out.

I am so glad you are getting counselling and I think you are absolutely right to focus on yourself, being a mother and the way forward. I am sure that throughout the counselling process the past can gradually be opened up. It must seem overwhelming at the moment. Little steps is what it is all about, but splitting up with your partner must seem like two steps back at least!
As for your ex, I know it may not seem like it at the moment but he may well have done you a favour in the long run, especially if he was abusive (which I am gleaning he may have been from your posts). The Mumsnet Relationship board is extremely good at dealing with and getting over twunts of exes. My immediate, practical advice is to disengage. If you have to speak to him keep it solely about the children and not about your behaviour etc. Perhaps have a few stock phrases you can just repeat if he starts getting verbally abusive e.g. ?I only want to talk about the children.? ?Please don?t change the subject.? ?I?ll speak to you later when you are prepared to discuss the children? etc etc. If he continues to be abusive, keep a diary and if he is ever physical get the police involved immediately so they have a record. I really would recommend starting your own thread about your ex as you will get loads of brilliant advice and lots of support to help you through this difficult time.

Do you have any RL support other than your counsellor? A friend or another family member you get on with?

You are an amazing woman to have got this far, remember that. Your children are very lucky to have such a strong person as their mother, so please don?t worry too much about them (ha ha easier said than done I know). If they can see you trying to sort out the problems and see you trying to protect them, it will mean so much to them.

Most of all be gentle on yourself. You are having a really tough time. You are allowed to be angry, down, resentful, worried, frustrated, unhappy etc. They are appropriate and valid feelings and it won?t harm your children to see them in you. They may be feeling the same about their father.

Wishing you the best xx

Hello everyone. I think I need some support and I have no one I can talk to IRL.
I am only just beginning to realise just how toxic my relationship with my mother is. I am feeling a lot of conflicting emotions and am afraid to open up a can of worms.

I am afraid atm of being outed, but I really do need some support. I am also concerned that everyone will be bored to tears with my story.

I love my mother although I do not like her very much at all. I don't think she has ever really 'liked' me. When I was 18, she told me that as soon as I was born, she asked the midwife to take me away, that she didn't want to see me. Maybe she had postnatal depression.

My father was disappointed in me for the simple reason I was a girl. He had wanted a son. My mother also wanted a son. I think this was to stick their marriage together. Alas I was a girl. I behaved like a tomboy growing up. It wasn't enough to make my parents approve of me.

My father has seen me as one big disappointment from the day I was born. I only remember my mother being disappointed in me from when I stopped bothering with school. Being bright gave me scraps of my mother's approval, and yet I found myself resenting working hard at school when it felt like it was all give give give. My parents divorced when I was 5, and I didn't see my father again for 6 years.

My mother remarried when I was 6, to a violent man. I asked her not to marry him, but she didn't listen. Mind you, she never listened.
I remember once I came out of primary school and went to say 'You don't even care about how I feel' I got as far as 'You don't even care about' when my mother hit me and I almost fell in the road.
She told me never to tell her she didn't care about me. I wasn't going to say that.

My step father beat us all for years. Mother told us we shouldn't have pissed him off and when I was older and asked her why she stayed with him, she said He brings the money in. Woo fucking hoo. I'd rather be living in poverty with a kind man than living in fear with a violent thug.

No matter what, mother stuck it out with him. We even ended up in a battered wives hostel once, but mother chose to go back the next day.

I was bullied at school, but mother never sorted it out. She told me to hit them back. I was bloody bullied at home and school. Home was just being punched and strangled, standing with my back against a wall (so I knew step father wouldn't creep up on me.)

Left home at 17. Mother claimed I was making her ill, she was so so worried about me. I listened to her lamenting for a few months, then went home again.

Left home again at 21. Never gone back. Yet I still have a relationship with my mother. She can't change the past, but she refuses to accept any responsibility either. It was not her that beat us, therefore she wasn't responsible. She didn't know it was going on. (That is a blatant lie!) She has had a tough life. (That is true.)

I don't even know where I am going with this, but my life is a fucking mess. I am beginning to also realise that my life has taken a huge detour from where I wanted it to go, and I have spent my youth unwisely, mainly veering between people pleasing (including trying to please my mother) and rebelling against her in any way I can. I have been so consumed with these two things that it is almost like I have only just turned around and realised I have spent my whole youth on these projects if you like.
I have wasted my fucking life and I am angry and sad about it, whilst knowing there is nothing I can do to bring those years back.

Or maybe I am just going through a mid life crisis?

Hope I haven't interrupted anyone else. I just needed to get some of that out. Thank you for listening.

hello ladies

Ive been trying to sum up the courage to come in and post for a while, its all a bit raw with me as have just had to cut my very toxic mother completely out of my life. Growing up she was always difficult - hard to please, called me selfish and often accused me of lying. When my stepdad moved in (I was ten) it all got worse. he hasnt spoken a word to me in 7 years (im 21). When I lived at home he would completely ignore me but would lavish my baby brother (he is now 7) with attention. I withdrew spending all my time shut in my room. My mum refused to acknowledge there was an issue, would ask me "why don't you want me to be happy, do you want me to be alone? You are so selfish" I became severly underweight and would be violently sick every morning. there was no lock on the bathroom door and they would both walk in on me. My mum would often finish an argument with me when she knew i was in the shower as she knew i would feel too vulnerable to stand up for myself. I dont want to ramble on - you get the picture.

However I have now told her she is never having contact with me again. I recently fled into refuge following emotional and sexual abuse by my partner. the abuse started when I fell pg with my beautiful DD who is now nearly 11 months. she refused to believe that the DV happened, instead contacted AP and told him where I was and passed any info I gave her onto him until I realised what she was doing. she has written a five page document which she issued to APs solicitor stating that I have a mental health prob that leads me to lie. She said I use these lies to create fantasies that I convince myself are real such as her abuse of me as a child and now that I am a victim of DV. I feel utterly betrayed that when I needed her most she failed me and in doing so put me and my child in danger. ive been really struggling with it all the past few days and have finally plucked up the courage to post on here. apologies that its so long - i get a bit ranty atm

Oh my goodness CovertTwinkle. How awful for you and your DD. How spiteful your Mother is and I totally think you have done the right thing by cutting her out of your life. My goodness I'm almost speechless. Keep posting on here, we'll always listen and stay safe.

For those of you who are finding similarities in each others stories, it's quite common on this thread. One thing that comes up time and time again seems to be the need for approval from our parents or the total dissapproval from them.

I find myself posting today as although I'm trying not to let it get to me in truth it is. Two things, I popped in to see my Grandmother last week and had to make a hasty retreat. The phone rang whilst I was there, it was my SF saying he was popping around to collect something. Not once did my Grandmother mention that I was there with DD but just said "ok I'll see you in a minute then" then proceeded to tell me that my SF was coming 'in a minute' and what he was fetching. This was obviously my cue to leave so I did. I hadn't even finished my cup of coffee.
I realise that she is in her 70's and doesn't want to be caught in the middle (we don't talk about the fact that I don't want anything to do with my mother or SF anymore) and I do realise that she will have probably been told a load of rubbish and a pack of lies about me but she's basically my only family now and I felt like I'm not even much of a muchness to her, which basically just leaves me with no family at all.

The second incident that happened last week was on Saturday it was my younger brothers 21st birthday. His girlfriend posted a picture on FB of him blowing out his candles with the caption "bf blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, thanks for a lovely day (my mother)". Another comment from someone "That's what mum's are for...and bf really has got the best mum."

Stupidly this upset me for 2 reasons. My mother was never the 'best' mother to me, far from it. I know my mother, she will be going out of her way to 'prove' to everyone how nice she is, to make me look like I'm totally unjustified in cutting her out of my life. Why could she never put as much effort in to being my 'mum'? She seemed to put lots of effort into making my life as miserable as possible.
Ok the other thing is that I've never had as much effort made for me on one of my significant birthdays. I can remember when my brother turned 18, she made him a scrap book of his life so far, with photo's and memories. I never had any fuss made of me, my significant birthdays were just like any other. In fact when I turned 30, 2 years ago I never even received a present from her.

The thing is I know there is no answer to my question and if there is I will never know it. Why me? Why only me and not my brothers?

DaughterandSon so many of us apologise all over the place for writing our stories on this thread when we first open up. You have nothing to apologise for. Your feelings are valid, and we understand them (and share the same ones wrt our own parents). Your voice deserves to be heard. Your feelings deserve to be acknowledged - believe that.

Your mother spent your entire life convincing you that you had no right to your feelings, no right to be heard. She was wrong, and her behaviour harmed you. You were a child in her care, and she harmed you. You have every right to be bloody angry at her.

You are now a capable, unique and lovable adult. You can heal the hurt that you suffered as a child. It will take time, but you are now safe, and strong enough to protect and nurture yourself. Unlike the small child, the grown-up you can say "no" to hurtful words and behaviour. You're probably not used to it, but it does get easier with practice.

Twinkle I am so glad to hear that you are tackling your toxic mother now. I was on your first support thread under another name (both of us were) and I have been rooting for you from the very start. I am so impressed at how much you have achieved in a few short months. You are amazing.

Your mother failed you throughout your childhood - not just recently wrt AP. You have every right to feel nothing but anger towards her. Find ways to express that anger, to let it out so it doesn't fester and hurt you. (I used a combination of therapy, writing angry letters I never sent, breaking dishes against my garden wall where I would not disturb anyone, and just last week finally telling her in a measured way how her behaviour made me feel, and cutting her out of my life. It took about a year to process all this anger, but I now feel at peace with the situation - sad, but accepting.)

Thanks Hot and mampam thanks for the welcome. I have been very angry with my mum for a long time. Before i moved out at 19 I was so full of resentment that I literally couldn't allow myself to stay in the same room as her because I didn't trust myself. i forgave her when I moved out though. I moved 200 miles away and told her we should draw a line under the past and move on. I struggled to do this as we had many tense phone conversations where she would push the boundaries of what is acceptable. She then tested my patience again when i fell pregnant, telling me "you need to get an abortion. you know you have mental health problems. you wouldn't be a good mum and what if you panicked and left the baby in a bus shelter or something?" NICE! The first time ever that i refused to listen to her in a non confrontational way was when I told her I was having that baby. she was reeling for weeks. and then now this. Ive just had enough. we had so many conversations growing up about how unacceptable it was that she allowed my SD to ignore me and shun me, that i should be neglected. All the time she would tell me I was being selfish, didn't I care about her. and at one point when I was 15 told me she couldn't take this anymore that I needed to stop putting her in the middle. She wasn't in the middle!!! she should have been on my side! I always clung to the hope that because I wasn't a mother I didn't understand - that I was missing something which explained why she had done the things she had. But now having wibble I am more unforgiving because I could never ever treat wibble that way. I recently told a social worker with much force that I would never allow wibble to feel the way I had growing up and on that basis she has said she no longer needs to be involved in my family's support - she said it was good that I could see a need to break the cycle. I will do everything i can to protect my daughter from the pain and anger I have experienced. I am such a mess because of what she has done and desperately need lots of counselling!!! Im on the waiting list atm.

oh dear I seem to have rambled on a bit! It feels good to have posted. Just reading your stories has confirmed for me that it really WASNT me - it was her. and part of me is finding it easier to begin to let go.

and i need to let go because I have spent so long trying to convince her that Im not a bad child and now I could spend years trying to convince her that I wasn't lying about AP ramming his fingers up my back passage. That I wasn't lying about being raped when I had to quit my job 4 months before I moved out. That i wasn't lying about the things she did. But I am beginning to accept that she will never be convinced. For her own sanity she has convinced herself of so many things. she wont accept that my dad killed himself. she has lied about him and how he died for aslong as I can remember because she cannot accept that she has made mistakes. I could spend years consumed with trying to make her and my other family understand. or I can walk away and become consumed with being happy and raising my beautiful daughter. she is going to be 1 on 16th April and I have spent most of this year battling people who are manipulative and who will hurt me and her. Enough is enough. I just hope that I can find the strength to pull us both free from all the negative influences in our lives and forge a new life for us. I believe I can.

Twinkle that is exactly how I feel too. Like you I will also do all I can to protect my children from the pain and anger that I experienced and that I still feel now. I also believe you can forge a new happier life for yourselves. I have and I've broken the cycle.

I've been free of my toxic mother, step father and older brother now for almost 16 months. These have been the best months of my life. I finally feel like I can be the person, the wife, the mother that I've always wanted to be (if that makes sense?). I can express myself, I can talk about my feelings without being deemed weak. I am no longer judged. I don't have to live up to my mothers standards and continually feel like a failure because I don't. I'm no longer criticised and put down, ridiculed and not taken seriously. I no longer have to feel inferior to my siblings. I no longer feel so angry inside. I am accepted for who I am. I can be me.

It was hard to begin with but like you, enough was enough. I had couselling which was a tremendous help. It seemed that I had lots of issues going on but at the route of all of them was my mother. One thing that the counselling really help me with was to show me that it doesn't matter what the other people think of me. Like you I was always trying to make people understand what she was like........you can't explain, there's too much and you end up making yourself look petty whilst they triumph with their false persona of niceness to everyone else. Counselling made me realise that the people who count are the ones that know the truth and you don't have to explain it to them, anyone else doesn't matter.

Believe me my mother is a total expert at coming across a such a nice, wonder person, a fantastic mother. I have distanced myself from those people who think this, who have no idea.

Anyway I've waffled on enough

I am sorry for my last post, I tried to start from the beginning and realised it would take too long.

I have written lots about my current problems with my mother on another thread. I am not ignoring the lovely support that is on this thread. I am just concentrating on the other thread atm, although I am reading this thread and it is helpful. I can see that other people should not be treated so badly by their parents, but I can't seem to apply that to me atm. I do feel like I am moving in the right direction though.

If anyone is interested in the thread where I have explained my most recent problems much more fully, it is here.

I hope I have not been too forward by linking to my thread. Apologies if anyone thinks I have been. I will let someone else get a word in now.

I am sorry for my last post

Sweetheart, don't be. There is no apologising for ourselves on the Stately Homes thread.

I've read your other thread and am glad you are able to get so much out and so much support from it.

I can see that other people should not be treated so badly by their parents, but I can't seem to apply that to me atm.

Our upbringing by these types of parents conditions us to believe that we deserve the abuse; that we are at fault. Think of it this way: for a small child, survival is the most important thing there is. We depend on our parents for survival. So, when our parents are cruel to us, we cannot speak up about it, because to do so would jeopardise our survival by alienating those god-like creatures we depend on. Therefore, in order to make sense of it all ("Why is Mommy being cruel to me?"), the answer cannot be "Because Mommy is cruel and doesn't love me as much as she needs to protect her own ego", and instead it has to be "Must be because I deserve it."

So that's what we then grow up believing, deep deep down within ourselves. It's a very difficult belief to uproot now.

D&S your thread has some very good advice on it and you seem to be working through things and seeing things more clearly.
Your mother is truly a very nasty and immature woman who you simply need to distance yourself from. The greater the distance the stronger and more self assured you will feel. At the moment she is undermining everything about you, this is not because you are weak its because she is very horrid.

I am still wading through Toxic Parents and learning a lot. I'm swinging between believing that I'm making it up, my childhood was hard but thats because we were very poor and my parents didn't love each other and not because they were/are toxic. Then I start a chapter that really hits home and I start to remember words, phrases, situations that really hurt me and I'm in tears again trying to fit it all together.

Its like the smell of daffodils, most of the time I could not tell you what they smell like and I don't even think about it then I smell them and I am instantly six years old, out in the front field picking daffodils on a warm sunny spring day.

HandDivedScallopsrgreat Thank you very much for your response to me. It has helped an amazing amount because it feels like validation for how hard it has been. I guess this sounds selfish but in the past the responses I have had when i've had to tell people something about my past has been 'oh yes lots of people have bad childhoods but some people get over it quicker than others' and i've wanted to scream that they don't understand how bad it was. I've always felt quite pathetic, still finding things hard but i've realised now that i'm actually very proud of myself for still being here and not giving up. I'm hoping to stop putting pressure on myself to be perfect and do everything really well. I did surviving hell pretty well so I guess I can be allowed to fail at other things :o

I'm sorry I haven't read everyone elses posts. I'm dealing with a lot of things to do with my mother at the moment, but more the way I have taken on her view of me.
She has done so many things similar to everyones elses stories and I can really relate. I'm finding it hard to not just laugh bitterly and can't find anything supportive to say so am not responding. I do care though and wish everyone lots of strength to get through it.
If it helps anyone, I am so much happier now my mother is well and truly out of my life. She can pull whatever shit she wants now and I will just laugh at her. It has taken a long time and it still hurts to not have a mother but at least I can see that she never will be one and she will never have a hold over me again. It does all come good in the end

NHAN Repeat to yourself "This Will Pass" and say it again and again. It will take a little time to feel a bit more "normal and together"..... You will get there.....

"As a last resort she goes pathetic. When she?s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It?s all her fault. She can?t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn?t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right."

Sorry, but I've pinched this quote from meiinlove. But my God, this is my Mum to a tee.

The funny thing about my Mum is that as the eldest, I was the only one who verbalised that I felt that my Mum was a bit toxic. My Mum has been hospitalised with cirrhosis of the liver 3 times in the past 8 months. I've now had conversations with my brother and sister who have been making their own mental journeys through this time, and we are all on the same page at last.

I do use stronger, more direct language about my Mum because I've done a bit of reading and read threads like this one. But to hear the two of them say things to me about our Mum, that have been on my mind and which I've kept to myself, for fear of being called a drama queen, is a relief and I now feel that my experiences are vindicated by others now........

She now gets pulled up when she's casting one of us as the golden child or another one as the scapegoat. We're all sticking together and presenting a united front.

I don't feel quite so alone anymore......

... just read that back, sorry for the awful spelling!!

Would you "forgive" your family? My birth mother, for reasons known only to her, allowed a paedophile to rape me just before I was 4 years old. When I say she "allowed" it. She actually invited him round the house and left me alone with him. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse herself and it is as if she wants her own children to go through what she went through. I have an elder sister who herself had been raped by the time she was 6 years old. The thing is, my birth mother, my sister and other family members keep having a go at me even now and trying to stop me continuing with therapy. I don't really discuss the abuse with either of them (there'd be no point) but I have said to them that it's not on for a kid (or indeed for anyone!) to be raped and they turn everything on to me and call me bitter and tell me to forgive and let live. I've reached point where I actually think my sister and mother are sick people. My sister is even indirectly involved now in other young girls in her community being molested.

karmak you're breaking the cycle of abuse. It's not going to be easy but you need to keep up with therapy. Do you need them in your life?
What you went through is awful and them normalising it is very damaging and nearly as sick as possibly still being involved.
I discovered something recently. To forgive is not to forget, reduce the pain and trauma or to in any way condone it. It is to accept it and let it be, For me anyway.
I don't think you can choose to forgive something so damaging. Not without damage to yourself anyway, I think it is something that happens eventually

I'm having a

Who is asking you to "forgive" your mother, Karma? Is it someone in your family, or a voice inside you that is telling you to stop making a fuss and get on with it?

Either way, those voices are wrong: it was a terribly, hurtful, damaging, breach of the most important link of trust in the world - the one a child has for his/her mother, as guardian of that child's wellbeing. You do not need to forgive: it was a despicable act that deserves no forgiveness. But as NHAN says, you can eventually accept that it happened, accept that your mother really was so inadequate in her role, accept that it is nothing you could have changed at the time, so that it stops hurting you.

(((big hugs)))

Have been reading your dating threads, btw. Don't hesitate to put the dating on hold while you re-set your twat radar, which was so badly skewed by your upbringing.