Would you forgive your mum of neglect if she didn’t know any better?

[Ifyousayso1]

I’ve been tormented my whole life because of my upbringing. My mum was abused by her own father and had a terrible relationship with her mum. No emotional support from her at all. My own mum gave me no emotional support. She developed an illness which causes depression. I did not have a good childhood. I developed anxiety at a young age. I had no idea that is what is was and had many tests.

Im 40 now. I’m 4 years past an abusive marriage and with a nice man and have 2 children. I was married 12 years and suffered emotional abuse by a narcissist who I tried to “fix”. He also offered me no emotional support and was only interested in himself.
My anxiety has reduced substantially but I suffer with low self esteem and feelings of rejection.

My mum although never offering me emotional support has helped me financially and in other ways. She will never be able to give me anything emotionally as she has never had that herself. She suffers terrible with rejection and has M.S.

Although she has messed up my whole life I’m finding myself feeling forgiveness. She as I am doing is the only thing she’s known. She was never intentionally bad but the effects were the same.

Could you forgive?

I take it you are not an abuser of your children are you OP? I didn’t think so.

No I wouldn’t forgive her.

Yes. Well actually I'm not sure forgiveness is the right word necessarily but maybe acceptance? Not exactly the same but one of my DPs definitely did things during my childhood (and tbf adulthood too...) that really hurt me and my siblings. That hurt and it's effects I don't think will ever go as it's shaped us as people into adulthood. However, this parent had some really major trauma as a teenager and beyond. They love me, they tried their best, they still do. Nobody's perfect.

I can forgive people who did the best they could with what they knew at the time. Forgiveness is for YOU, to set you free, not to benefit anyone else.

Its a hard decision, I wish you peace x

Yes, I could.

But really, it doesn't matter what other people think. Forgiveness can be a wonderful tool for self healing and finding peace and if you can forgive her then you don't need to worry about being wrong.

This.

I have diagnosed c-PTSD from my childhood. I often look back and wonder but then I remind myself she chose to be a cunt to her children and I didn't. It's that simple imo.

My mum was similar, she couldn’t give emotional support, and she genuinely didn’t seem to know or understand her kids. It was like she was on a different planet to us. It affected us all in various ways.

Ive learned to accept (forgiveness is too loaded a word for me). My mum had a difficult life herself and I think it left her unable to parent us in a supportive and loving way.

Thankfully my sisters and I have broken the cycle with our kids.

I don’t agree that lack of emotional support is necessarily or always child abuse. It depends really on what OP means by that.

A child raised by abusive parents can actually end up shutting down all their emotions as a defence mechanism. Then in adulthood some are so damaged that they are perpetually numb themselves and so unable to identify and empathise with emotions in their own children. This then leads to lack of emotional support.

So, in a situation like that where a parent has overcome 90% of a shit abusive childhood and broken most of a cycle abuse but was unable to 100% overcome it and provide a completely good childhood, I would be able to find not forgiveness so much as acceptance that they really tried and they did the best that they could.

This sounds more like active emotional abuse than lack of emotional support.

forgiveness is for you :)

Im trying. Having my own child has made it harder. His life is such a stark contrast to my childhood.

I love my mum...she was a victim of DV from the age of 17....she wasn't always kind to me and my sisters but she had been left at the age of 21 in a new town by a man who beat her.She was young with three kids and she did things that i would never do to my own kids, hit us with slippers, chucked us out in the street in our Pjs, hit on the head if we moved whilst she was torturing us with a the brush. My mum slept with a knife under her pillow so as i was growing up it was my dad who I stopped bothering with...my mum despite her issues was there for us 100%..

I've drawn a line under it with my mother. I couldn't quite bring myself to cut her out but I keep a distance and pretend I've moved past it. Having my own children and realising actually no matter what I went through as a child I can still meet their needs adequately and not cause them the emotional harm I experienced reawoke my resentment of my mother. Knowing what it's like why keep the cycle going?! But I did have therapy and my mother did not.

Now I accept shes intrinsically selfish and her criticism of me is just her insecurities.

But no I don't think I could ever fully forgive. Maybe if I hadn't had children but now I know what it is like to parent and have had the neglectful childhood leading to abusive life and she failed and that's unforgivable

@AP5Diva

This sounds more like active emotional abuse than lack of emotional support.

It was neglect in many forms. Sorry I just took neglect form the title and didn't really pick up from the OP it wasn't the same thing

I've come to terms (most of the time) with the fact that my mum is unable to be most people's ideas of a "mum".

She did her best from the abusive, poverty-stricken childhood she had, and she tried to break at least some of the patterns. I've been less angry and more sad since accepting it. I don't know if that's quite the same as forgiveness.

I say "most of the time" though because there are still occasions when I'm still desperate for a real mum who would be loving and kind.

My mum had an awful childhood, her dad was an absolute bastard. So she's very damaged and treated me terribly too. So did my father, but I know my mum did the best she could given her early life, and her lack of ability to overcome it and treat me better. She also did many many things for me and I know that despite her many failings she was trying to do her best with no support.

My father was a selfish, nasty prick and continued to be so until he died.

So I've forgiven my mum, and accepted what my dad did, in order to move on .

I can’t, no. I know my mum didn’t have the best parents growing up but they were there. She split from my Dad when I was 2 and we moved in with my grandparents and she pretty much did the same. “There” but forever out at work or with friends or whatever boyfriend she had at the time. Both my siblings and I self harmed from very young ages and had depression (none of which she sought me any help for) and this pretty much went on my entire childhood until we moved out. I believe her to be a narcissist, everything is always about her.

I have come to an acceptance that my parents were not ideal. They were flawed in their parenting style. They weren't the worst, and they didn't receive the best parenting themselves, but I wasnt exactly nurtured as a child.

I did have to have some psychotherapy to reach this place though. And it keeps me awake at night that I may not be doing any better with my own kid.

I'm similar. My mum had an unhappy childhood, my dad was controlling and she was very much influenced by him and life with him. I never felt loved growing up, was often snapped and shouted at and had no idea there was such a thing emotional support. She wasn't intentionally cruel, I think her anger came from the stress she felt from my father.

My husband was abusive. I obviously didn't have any idea of what a good relationship was.

She's a different person since my father died. I understand and accept why it's all been the way it has but forgiveness isn't really something I'm considering because I don't blame her.

@Ifyousayso1 would you want to tell your mum you forgive her or is it just for you to feel? Are you able to talk to her?

I mean I don't think it's a blanket excuse. Do you emotionally neglect your children because that's how you were raised? Or do you work hard to given them what you didn't have in that respect? I don't think it's inevitable that you do what was done to you. If it was, no one would ever break generational trauma.

You can't undo the past and so I think you just have to decide, if after all that has happened, does having her in your life feel better for you than not? If the answer is yes, then I think you have to just accept the relationship as it is (and not harbour false hope she'll ever change). And if the answer is no, then you'd be perfectly reasonable to distance yourself and focus on what does make you happy.

My mum was abusive. She also has a learning disability, which I found out about later in life. I have tried to have compassion and I do feel it sometimes, but I can’t get over how differently she has treated me to my brother. I didn’t speak to her for years but we’ve had some contact in the last 2-3. I get absolutely nothing from the relationship. Actually, that’s a lie, I get a big fat headache.

She doesn’t ask how I am, only talks about herself and my brother. She doesn’t even know what I do because she’s never asked. I drove 300 miles to see her last Spring and afterwards invited her to my home, which she has never seen. I offered to arrange it all for her. All she would’ve had to do is get on one train to London and I’d have picked her up from there (bear in mind she doesn’t work and is only in her 60s, no physical issues). Oh yes, she said, I’ll book it. Then nothing until last week, when she casually mentioned she was coming for a holiday in a town near me, with a friend, so she might have some time to meet.

Recently, for the first time in my entire life, I asked her for some money as I am really struggling. She is not short of it by any means and I figured I had nothing to lose. ‘Not really’ she said. Then, literally two minutes later, she started talking about buying another house so that my brother could live in hers as he apparently can no longer afford his mortgage. As she does not work this would be a cash purchase.

So long story short, I thought I could forgive and rekindled the relationship with the view to forgiveness. But I can’t. I’m fucking raging all over again and don’t know why I even bother.

Yes. I am from a large family and my childhood wasn't great. We were fed and clothed, just about, but there was no affection, no pride in any of us, no sense that she wanted any of us. (She didn't). She was poor and worn out and had no support of any kind. However she herself was an only child of very distant parents who married late and didn't expect to have dc, and considered her a nuisance. Even now she is emotionally distant, i have very low self esteem and no confidence in myself at all which has resulted in me losing out on a lot of opportunities, and has kept me stuck in a crappy marriage, but it is what it is, she is who she is, and I love her very much and absolutely forgive/accept.

I think deep down you'll know if despite her flaws she did her best. I am not sure it's comparable to look at how the newer generations of parents might be able to break the cycle of poor parenting with whether previous generations did. We are talking about people who were parented in a different way , with little access to other ideas , little opportunity to talk to others about difficulties and where the physical aspects of running a home were harder , less acess to pnd support etc. I'm not making excuses, there have always been people who make a decision to do things differently but it isn't surprising that many struggled.

OP, yes, kind of.

My late mother was sometimes loving but actually very abusive. She was mentally ill and had been abused as a child.
My father was subjected to a very harsh upbringing.
Both, I'm guessing based on their behaviour and my insight, were as autistic as fuck. As am I.

My mum's been dead nine years, and I think of her as a pleasant, healed, part of the universe. It took a few years for my thinking to reach this stage.
My dad is old and needs some looking after. I am the only one available to do it. I could go over and over what a bastard he was when I was a child, but I don't. On a day to day basis I think of him as the little old man who did his best like we all do and now needs a helping hand. It works for me. I'm at peace.

So if you're feeling forgiveness, go with it. You'll be better for it. Even if others would think you're too forgiving and the abusers don't deserve it. We all have to get through this life the best we can.

You say your childhood wasn’t great and that she has given you no emotional support (but did give you some financial support etc..,)

You don’t say whether she was actually abusive or how your father was (I suspect it’s nit a very nice man but I might be wrong there)

I think that if you feel forgiveness, then that’s how you feel. You don’t need others to tell you how you should feel.
I could make The same description than you gave of your childhood. Some stuff wasn’t great but I never felt it was abusive. I’ve learnt ways to be/react that aren’t great or helpful to me but again I’m slowly unlearning them.

And most importantly, I look at how I am, how I have been with my own dcs and i can see that I’ve both done my best (and thought about how I could do things better/differently etc…) AND how I’ve fucked up many many times too.

So yes I’ve forgiven the lack of emotional support. My dad’s rages (still present btw). Because I know that they’ve both tried their best from the bottom of their heart. Just like I did with my dcs.

No. I am no contact with my own mother. If someone doesn't bring positivity and good energy to my life, they have no place in it.