I have spoken in detail about my family situation and I have gotten some fantastic advice on here but I wanted to talk about how to manage the fallout for my children.
Some basic background: Until 4 years ago my family of origin were bopping along in a very on the surface getting along, but bubbling under the surface there were serious issues. It came out then that my sister had been seriously sexually abused and raped by my eldest brother for decades. I had also been abused by him but less seriously in terms of scale and duration. I have only one sister but I have 3 brothers including the abuser. The abuse was at the extremely serious end of the spectrum and it was what could be considered ongoing in that there had been abuse within a five year period of when this had blown up and possibly more recent than that. So I thought at the time upon hearing this that my family would react to this situation in some meaningful way but I was to be extremely disappointed.
My father decided a couple of weeks after hearing about the extent of the abuse that he was continuing his relationship with my brother and never mentioning it again and I was to like that or lump it.
My brothers and sister cut off my abusive brother - in my sister’s case, she has done an awful lot of things to drag my abusive physically brother back into her life (he lived abroad but she set up a situation where he moved to her locale) but she doesn’t speak to him any longer and she hates him but she has serious psychological damage and her actions are not in any way self protective.
I have run around like a headless chicken waiting for people to actually react proportionately to the scale of the abuse in the family but they simply don’t. My parents cut me out of my family with their behaviour, my siblings accepted that, my other relatives accepted that and they have moved on pretending everything is fine and dandy and life has moved on.
My children though are devastated at their loss of family particularly for them as we always holidayed with my (other) brother and my nieces and nephews and even after this whole thing broke down fully while I tried to give my brother the chance to come to terms with the reality in his family we continued to holiday with them.
The problem is that I have PTSD as a result of what has happened in the family and the symptoms are really brought on by engaging in any way with my family of origin. My children want a relationship with their cousins but I want absolutely nothing to do with my brother any longer because I am sick and tired of his excuses for my father’s/parent’s betrayal of his/their daughters.
Participating with my family in any way for me just feels like I am participating in my family of origin’s scapegoating abuse of me and my family and I end up dealing with the PTSD symptoms for days and days after. It is honestly like sending a soldier back into battle trying to deal with my family in any way.
I don’t want my husband or I involved anymore in any meet ups with my nieces and nephews except to facilitate the meeting. My eldest daughter is 16. We would facilitate any meet up they want but my brother is very unlikely to let his children participate.
I honestly would love to have the whole lot of them out of my life at this stage because to me they are just cowards who lack integrity but I feel completely trapped by my children really wanting a relationship with their cousins.
I would love some advice.