Realising Childhood issues after parent has passed

[MNUSER123]

Hi Everyone,

My mum passed away last year and since then I have been reflecting on my childhood. It was triggered when I got to a point in life and I couldn’t recognise myself, who I was or what I wanted from life and I wanted to work out why I’m a classic over achiever who puts everyone’s needs above mine.

There were a lot of things that happened during my childhood, that at the time I thought was just a bit lazy parenting/ never being a priority but now I think that these things have conditioned me as a person and my life is a product of just going with the flow to not rock the boat.

The thing is that I’m not really sure what I can do to get closure now that mum has passed and I can’t simply ask why I was treated like this.

Some of the things were being told from a young age that if my siblings were rude or nasty I should just ignore it and they’ll get bored and stop, nothing was ever done to correct their behaviour, I was asked to adapt.

I was never taught in anyway how to take care of myself as a female, I wasn’t taught about periods but was told that I was unhygienic for leaving tampons in a bin wrapped in toilet paper, I should have taken these outside. I wasn’t taught to do my hair, or makeup or anything like that.

my mum missed major life events, she missed my high school and uni graduation, at the time I think she had felt uncomfortable to ask for the time off work, but she did make it to my siblings.

Mum never really helped with much when I moved out and would often cancel babysitting my kids in favour of my brothers.

sorry for the novel, but I’m hoping someone has advice on how to move past this now that it is too late to address.

Thanks for reading!

OP's mum wasn't doing the best she could if she constantly prioritised OP's siblings over OP, i.e. never correcting their behaviour when they were nasty to OP, attending their graduations but never OP's.

Therapy is a good idea.

Therapy would give you the tools to better understand your family dynamics and understand and maybe forgive her for her failings as your DM. Noone can be a perfect parent or get it right 100% of the time, and after a bereavement we have time to reflect back on relationships and as well as grieving for the person we loved and the relationship we had, wonder how we can use what we learned for the future?

My own late DM and I didn't really gel, and she was a better grandmother than mother. But DM was a product of her own upbringing and I know her own mother was difficult (but again was a product of her own difficult upbringing after WW1). Generational learned behaviours, preferences, and personality were all mixed in and repeated. I've tried my best to break the chain of some of the more "unhelpful" learned behaviours with my own DC so that I don't repeat patterns and I hope to be a more supportive DM. DM used to say to me as a stroppy teenager "just wait until you have your own DC" and whilst I now understand what she meant I hope I've done a good job in raising them. Maybe I should ask them for feedback?! 😉

I understand what you mean OP. I sometimes think we overrate 'closure' and just need some help living with what is, trying to chart a different course.

I don't always have the easiest relationship with my Mum but I do understand that in the context of her own very difficult upbringing she was doing her best. This isn't to say I have excused everything, sometimes she still does and says things that a few years ago would've really knocked me off my perch for a while. But I went to therapy and whilst we didn't really get into some of the issues it did help me find some distance between the things she says or implies about who I am and the person I know myself to be.

Give yourself the gift of being able to vent to a neutral third party. I can imagine it's really complicated when you've lost the person you have some perfectly reasonable resentments with. A therapist might be able to help you detangle some of those, grieve for your mother, and move forward with your own life.

Good luck.

It hit me when I became a mother. I would drift back to a moment in my childhood when I or a sibling was that age and just couldn't fathom beating a toddler - or I'd be reminded when I saw the surviving parent's utter lack of patience with small grandchildren. My parenting is deliberately different from how I was parented.

What has helped for me is to do a bit of armchair psychology on why DP's were the way they were. In many ways, they appear to have felt they were doing their best, but they actually fell short of what was actually required for parenting. They got better with SS involvement which helped the younger siblings at least, but it was a bit too late for us older ones.

Looking back to their dysfunctional backgrounds helped me understand that a lot of it was borne out of ignorance at what actual parenting should be - though not all of it. Some of it was and is personality. I won't ever get answers directly. One is deceased and the other doesn't have the self reflection required to do so. When I've had a good mull over a particular memory and analysed the fuck out of it in a more detached way I then look at my own parenting and ensure that it stops at my generation.

“Noone can be a perfect parent or get it right 100% of the time,”

Wow. Bold of you to assume OP had failed to work this out thus far.