What the hell do I do with this? I can't get over my mums confession.

[missrandom]

Hi everyone

Firstly, I didn't actually know where to post this. I'm on mumsnet a fair bit(namechange) and so out of all the forums, it kind of made sense to post in in the realtionships section, although it's a very distressing situation and one which I can't seem to move on from.

I don't really know where to start. My mum had a very unconventional and disturbing upbringing. I always knew that she was reguarly beaten by her mother when she was growing up and by regularly, I mean every week at exactly the same time. I feel sick writing this, I really do, but I need to get this out and hopefully get some advice. Recently though, I found out something else, which is much more disturbing and upsetting than my mothers regular and almost ritual style beatings. One day I decided to take my mum out for a drink and after a couple she decided to confess something which she instantly regretted telling me and which will probably change my life forever. She explained that there was a lot of inappropriate behaviour in her house and then burst into tears. I assumed she was talking about the issues she had with my gran, but no. She went on to tell me that her dad, my grandad, used to sexually abuse her. I went numb for a while and then I too, burst into tears. I could have been sick and I was surprised that I wasn't. She said that it wasn't when she was really young and it wasn't rape, but that there was a lot of touching and requests for her to sit on his knee for a little bit too long and i'm sure you know what I mean. She believes that it's because he was so screwed up because he had such a horrible start in life, but for goodness sake, a lot of people do and they DON'T turn out to be sexual or any other kind of abusers! She promised that I don't tell my sister and she is the only person that I really want to tell because she'll be the only person who knows exactly what i'm feeling.

I really don't know what to do with this information. I'm feeling hate, anger, shame, sadness, but above all i'm feeling completely helpless.

Has anyone got any advice on how I can help her? I don't even think she sees it as abuse. I'm really struggling and i'm desperate to be able to talk to someone about this properly. I can't believe that both my grandparents were such monsters.

Thanks for reading.

I've no experience of your specific situation - but I have been the confidant of a parent with unwanted information and it's not at all nice a position to be in - so to be given such unpleasant information must have come as a terrible shock to you too - and it's not surprising that it has made you question so much about yourself as well as wondering how on earth you can help your Mum.

Missrandom, I'm so sorry your mum was on the receiving end of such vile and cruel abuse and has carried it with her all these years.
I'm very pleased that she has chosen to talk about it now and glad that she has you to help her do this by giving your unconditional love and pointing her in the direction of a good counsellor.
However I have also been the recipient of news of my grandfathers serious sexual abuse of his children so I know how shocked, angry, sad and bewildered you must be feeling - more so that you cannot share these feelings with your mum who has just started to process her own feelings. I would seek counselling for yourself and be honest with your mum about it. It's not a story that is easy to hear but she bears the greater burden, by far. Don't be afraid to tell her it's not easy for you but that you want to make sure her healing is not impeded by your own confused feelings.
Best of luck to both of you.

Well I can't be bothered name-changing, what the heck...

OP, I do feel for you. It has been a shock to you - I will never forget the look on my mum's face when I finally got the courage together (also after a few glasses of wine) to tell her the truth.

But imagine how awful it has been for your mum, living with this all her life. Did you know that the terrible thing about childhood physical and sexual abuse is that when they are young, survivors often feel they can deal with it. It is only when they get older they look back and realise how vulnerable they were, and how awful it was that people took advantage of them in such a callous way. In other words, it gets worse and worse as you get older - until you get to the point where the memories seem to magnify and you realise you will always have them until the day you die. Which is a fairly dangerous state of mind. It still scares me now.

She has shown great courage in confiding in you - indeed to anyone at all. She may not be ready to speak to a counsellor for some time. After so long, it will probably be a very gradual process for her to come to terms with her experiences. It is incredibly painful to go through it all. It is painful for you too, but understand that she is probably feeling on the verge of a breakdown, and now feeling terribly guilty that after all these years she has "cracked" and finally shared this awful secret with someone she loves. Which is why she doesn't want you to tell your sister. She can't cope with spreading the poison too far just now.

That is why some posters are saying "It's not about you".

For now, I would simply tell her how much you love her, how courageous she has been to live with this all these years, and that there are organisations which can help her if she is ready. Make sure she knows you are shocked but pleased she has shared this with you, and you want to help her in whatever way you can. Say to her you think it would help you both if you could share this with your sister, and ask her to think about doing that - but it has to be her decision. Do not rush her, and respect her confidence in you by not telling your sister until she is ready. She deserves that consideration.

Also, does she have a kind GP? That's where I finally got the help I needed. But it took a very long time for me to get to that point - around 20 years.

She may not have that long, but nevertheless she has to do it at her own pace. And you need to come to terms with the shock, for her sake.

You don't want her to feel that she has to keep it all in to spare your feelings or the feelings of others, not to rock the boat etc. That's how she might have felt as a child.

So personally i feel that although its ok to say how sad you are to hear that it happened to her, you must be very careful not to burden her too much with your own feelings right now. Maybe in the future but not now. One wrong word from you and she may well bury it all again.

I agree with poopoo which is why I think counselling for you is a good idea

OP, please look at these sites:

www.nspcc.org.uk/help-and-advice/worried-about-a-child/online-advice/adults-abused-in-childhood/adults-abused-in-childhood_wda87228.html

www.napac.org.uk/

They can help you and your mother, when she is ready.

*I also think that you are focusing too much here on how it makes YOU feel and how YOU were nearly sick and who YOU want to tell. You're a grown up, deal with it!)

God, that's nasty.

OP, this is a forum YOU have accessed, no doubt wanting help with processing YOUR feelings about something that, yes, happened to your mother but which has come as a horrible shock to YOU. There is nothing wrong with that, it is perfectly understandable, especially since you have no one to talk to about this in RL. Please do not let anyone make you feel guilty about that.

All you can do is try your best to support your mother and be a non-judgmental listening ear for her. If you do start to find the whole thing overwhelming, then counselling for you might help-try not to tell your mother how hard you find it, as she then might feel guilty about telling you and unable to share further.

Eldrich. It came across harsher then i meant it. That's been happening a lot lately

I've been a victim of sexual abuse myself and i know how horrendous it is. So i suppose if i don't initially have a huge amount of sympathy for 3rd parties or those that have been confided in and who it hasn't directly affected, that is why.

I rephrased it at 10.48

What eldritch said. No one is saying that ops mum does not have the bigger issues to deal with but this is a horrible thing to have to deal with and poopoo I don't think anywhere the op said she got hysterical! Your statement was nasty and the op doesn't deserve that.

Xpost I can understand your viewpoint but being told that abuse has happened to someone you love is also a big thing to have to deal with. You can't say it doesn't affect someone at all even if not directly. My whole family life including cousins and their children have been affected by this one cunts desire to abuse his kids. I've had depression partly due to family issues and I've had to deal with the fact that my mum (and others in my family) are alcoholics probably due to this.
If you don't have any sympathy then maybe you should leave the thread as this is support and guidance for the op right now not her mum.

Hi missrandom - massive hugs and supportive thoughts.

How devastating to find out that someone you love so much was hurt in this way. I understand that you want to confide in someone, but your sister is not the right person. Your mum is suffering from parents who had no respect for her physical or psychological boundaries, which is why it's even more important you respect her boundaries now.

However, it's important that you have someone to confide in so that you can be supportive to your mum, so contact Rape Crisis and ask for support.

Your mum may not feel ready yet to go for counselling or to stop making excuses for her Dad (I wasn't that young, it wasn't that bad, etc), so don't push her to see a counsellor. Just gently reinforce the message that it wasn't her fault and that she has every right to be upset and that you love her.

Best of luck x

missrandom, you are allowed to have feelings about this - I hope you know that. Please ignore unhelpful comments about how 'it's not all about you' and 'you're a grown up, deal with it!. Words fail me at some of the insensitivity shown on here sometimes.

Your poor mum - how absolutely horrible. I do agree with other posters that it's really important you do what she needs you to, and if that includes not telling your sister, then so be it. She's been so horribly betrayed by the people who were supposed to be loving and protecting her, she needs you so much right now to be on her side. Let her call the shots. I agree that counselling would be a great idea and in fact, I can't imagine she will be able to truly move past this without specialist support. But this must be when she is ready, not before.

As for you, listen to your feelings and take time to process this dreadful information. You feel whatever you feel and it's important you allow yourself to do that, just do it away from your mum so she's not having to deal with your feelings as well as her own. Confide in other people who don't know your mum if possible - online is an ideal place. Take care of yourself, you sound like a lovely person

Yes well, PooPoo I have relevant experience too, but I do recognise that it is an awful, hard thing for family members to deal with. It's perfectly natural to feel distressed when you find out someone you love deeply has been so ill-treated.
I do hope the OP has not been put off from posting.

Ripples in a pond............ everyone is affected by what these cruel people did, and your mum knows they too were affected by what happened to them.
My mum chose never to talk about it, no doubt because of the way people treated her when they were removed from the family as children. My aunt told me at my mothers funeral. I know that when i grew up I was aware that 'something' had happened, and certainly was affecting me and my mums relationship.
I also know that having spoken about it since, peoples reactions have been almost unanimously cruel. I have had people cut me off and stop speaking to me. I can't even fathom what their reactions have been about so I can't begin to know what my mother went through to make her so tight lipped about it. But what I do know is that it continued to lay a shadow over her close relationships all her life. I remember when I was proud to have gained a qualification in counselling, my mums response was to tell me that counselling was dangerous! I hope both you and your mum can talk about this together, maybe with professional help so that you can accept your feelings as well as each others even though you might not feel the same way. I hope you are always able to love each other and let that be the overiding base for mutual support. Best wishes.

Thank you everyone for your kind and thoughtful words. Poopoo, I really sympathise with the fact that you have also been a victim of this, I genuinely do and I appreciate you attempting to rephrase, but I still feel that dismissing the family's feelings as self absorbed is actually really awful. When my mum explained that this had happened, she was more concerned with my feelings than her own. Of course this is wrong. It's all about her really, but even so she didn't for one second think, why are you upset? This is about ME, not YOU! I'm going to leave it at that though. I think you understand what I and others are saying.

back2, I actually understand why you would feel like that. That's what's so awful about this kind of abuse. The fact that it makes our thinking a bit twisted because we don't and can't understand the mind set of such a monster. But that's the point, they weren't a monster at one stage, they were our father, grandfather, uncle. You never stop seeing them as that and so our anger somehow gets turned onto ourselves. Hence, the classic "it's all my fault". You know deep down that it can't be, but the idea of accepting you have such a person in your family, is too much to take in. I know one of my first thoughts was one of guilt. I wasn't even alive! I couldn't have helped or prevented anything, so why do I feel guilt? Again, another fucked up idea. But we're not the fucked up ones, they are/were. We're just trying to make sense of something we probably never can.

berts, I hope one day she will stop making excuses for my grandad, but at the same time i'm dreading it, because that's when it will get much harder before hopefully, it gets better. I remember her sitting in the car when I was about 16 or 17(now 27) and her crying uncontrolably repeating that she only now has accepted that it wasn't her fault that her mum used to beat her every week for absolutely no reason, not that there ever is a reason. I couldn't believe that she ever thought that it was her fault, but she genuinely did.

YNK that's truly awful!

FWIW missrandom I think your tears will have helped your mother in an odd sort of way. I was abused and when people have reacted to me telling them with genuine anger (towards the abuser) or upset (for me) it has been massively helpful because it has made me feel like my feelings of anger and upset are valid. Also, abuse can make you feel worthless and you can start to think your feelings about it don't matter. If someone else reacts strongly towards it it can spur you into feeling again, and realising that it's ok to not be ok with it, if that makes sense.

In other words, it gets worse and worse as you get older - until you get to the point where the memories seem to magnify and you realise you will always have them until the day you die

that has made me cry

I agree with what others have said. Counselling for you would be a good idea.
But maybe your mum won't ever want to talk about it. I don't ever intend to 'talk about it' the thought of that just makes me want to run away.

IMO the sense of it getting worse and worse as you get older is more likely to be true if you never talk about what happened. If you hold it in it blows up and up in your mind. If you share it with someone understanding it starts to lose some of its power.

Agree with CailinDana. It's easy to underestimate just how much abuse shatters your faith in yourself and your ability to trust your own feelings. I am extremely careful about revealing my history (emotional abuse in family, domestic violence with ex-P) to people if I feel there is any chance whatsoever that they will minimise it or trivialise it. One of the most helpful things anyone said about my family was my DP who just came out one day with 'they're bloody awful to you, you know!'. It really spurred me into thinking that I was justified in feeling angry and I really believe that comment put me on the path to not blaming myself any longer. So yes, I think your mum will have taken a lot of comfort from your reaction.

A huge turning point for me in dealing with the abuse I suffered happened when a friend started crying when I told him about it. I was shocked at first, then said "Why are you crying?" And he explained he was very upset and angry that it had happened. For the first time I felt, actually, yes, what happened was really wrong and he's right to feel that way. I had been minimising the whole thing for so long that I didn't know how to react to it any more.

Also, I went to see a hypnotherapist/NLP person and something she said really stuck with me: 'you developed ways of thinking about this that were helpful when you were a child, but those ways of thinking are holding you back now.'

It's similar for your mum - she's learned to make excuses for her Dad as when she was a child she needed to believe he loved and protected. Now, those thought patterns are damaging, but it's going to be very hard for your mum to let go of them as they're hardwired in from childhood. Standing back and just being there for her is probably the most loving thing you can do right now.

You sound like a brilliant, loving and thoughtful daughter.

YouveCat you have to be ready, but I now wish I'd beeb able to get help earlier. I think 20 years of my life could have been quite different - and an awful lot easier not just for me, but for my loved ones too.

Hi missrandom

Like FinishedMyChores I also found out that my mum had been sexually abused by my grandfather - she told me when I was about 12 or 13, I think. In a way it was almost easier to find out at that age as I didn't really have a good conception of what it meant (and she didn't mention any details), and I can totally understand your shock at the whole situation, especially only finding out now. I would agree with some of the great advice you've already been given on this board, especially that from olgaga - and I do think that counselling would be really helpful for you, whether or not your mum decides that she needs it.

My mum had a lot of therapy which I know has really helped her. We do still see my grandparents occasionally, but it's a bit of a strain, especially knowing now why I was never left there alone when I was a child

Sending you strength x