Understanding estrangement

I'm not probably "there" in the forgiveness rankings because I'm still upset.
Sara is it just me (?) but I don't think it's always very helpful when one parent tells you stuff like this about the other? I've also had a similar thing said, but feel even if it WAS true that it doesn't help me to know. In fact, I'd rather NOT know. It shattered any happy illusions that I did have. Do you ever wish your Dad didn't tell you?

I'm so sorry for your pain.

OnwardandUpward
I don’t know why my dad told me, the trouble is I don’t really know anything, everything was covered up, I am only really guessing, but I think there was probably undiagnosed mental illness, and I feel sorry for what my dad had to put up with, it cant have been much of a life.
I wish now that I had talked to him before he died, but honestly, I don’t think he would have opened up very much.
I am free of my mother, I will never see her again, I can be magnanimous enough to wish her a good life, I don’t want to be any part of it,

Were they still together when it was said? Mine weren't and I feel that the attempt to smear one parent by the other was very bad, considering that all the time they were together it was a closely guarded secret.

There was diagnosed mental illness in my family which accounted for the reasons why. I dont want to put details out there but will PM if you want to chat Sara.

I hope the decision helps you heal, Sara. I'm so sorry about the loss of your Father. I think there are some things it might be better not to know. If it was serious enough, if would of course be on our health record but I have never wanted to "go there" either.

OnwardandUpward
My parents were together, they weren’t people who would ever have considered divorce, it would have been scandalous.
They had nothing in common, no shared interests, they had made their bed and they had to lie in it.
I would so much like to say it’s all in the past, and although I feel free, and no longer feel any guilt, it’s obvious we can’t move on completely, or we wouldn’t all be here trying to make sense of it.

Absolutely Sara "it's obvious we can't move on completely, or we wouldn't all be here trying to make sense of it".

As for forgiveness, that's not easy is it when the pain is great and the damage has been done. For me, it's a work in progress and I think will be so for the rest of my life.

I agree that we may be able to forgive and to move on with our lives with or without forgiveness, but I know I will never forget; if only I could.

Yes I think mine is a work in progress as well Smileless

Forgiving is not forgetting. It's remembering and letting go.

Thank you for bringing up the topic of forgiveness. It is something that I struggle with and flip back and forth on.

For the most part, I feel nothing about how my childhood went. But I do have days when I get angry about what was expected of me as a child (parentification) and the emotional abuse that no one ever "saw" because it was so veiled. I guess I have had enough time to move on, plus I like who I am right now and I know that every day of my life since birth has created who I am today. It made me stronger.

I am having a harder time forgiving what she did to my child. If we had been married it would be called parental alienation. Though that is more recent, a mere 3 years. And we are still working through the trauma with our youngest.

On other days, I struggle to forgive myself for allowing her such a close relationship with my kids. I wasn't ready to see that what I experienced was abuse though, it was "normal"" because that is how I was raised. And she seemed to love them so much. She even lied to my face and told me that she would never bring the kids into our issues.

The #1 thing I struggle with is flipping between feeling sorry for her and feeling nothing at all. She is old and going to be alone after my dad dies. None of her 3 kids want anything to do with her any longer, nor do any of her grandkids. She has also alienated her entire family, 1 of 6 kids. She has no friends left because she is miserable to be around. Is that my problem because she gave birth to me? No. But could I leave her alone? I would normally not be that person. I do know that I will never serve up my children to her again.

I think forgiving a parent or child, is the first step to accepting that you aren’t to blame for everything. If you forgive them, there has to have been something to forgive.
For people like me, who blamed everything on myself for many years, that’s definitely a step in the right direction.
I still know I often made things worse with my attitude and my mouthiness, but I also feel sure that I was not the only one.

Freedomefromthepast thats so sad for her- that shes a victim of her own circumstances, but also that she is probably unable to see this. Therefore she can never work on putting things right or learn...

For yourself, it's been a massive pain for you and now dealing with the aftermath of what she's put your children through. I'm so sorry for your pain and suffering. Is your Dad an enabler? Because someone always has to enable this for the behaviour to be able to continue. One of the hardest things I had to face was not what one parent DID, but that the other one enabled it by turning a blind eye.

I think the elderly narcissist's life is a sad one. If you feel able to, you could stay LC and help her when necessary, but leave the kids at home so she has no chance to mess them up further. Therapy would be good for them as well as you.

Forgiveness. Yes, we have to forgive ourselves for thinking we were the bad ones, the black sheep. We have to forgive them for not being perfect, for being flawed and for not getting therapy before they had kids to prevent them from passing on the family trauma to the next generation.

WE have to get therapy so we don't pass on the family trauma to the next generation. Forgiving is a part of letting go of what was, but I am not all there yet. I am still in therapy and still healing.

I remember when I was young I had a lot of accidents and I remember her hurting me but I still don't know if I trust those memories. They happened while she was a single mum so no witnesses. I remember being really poorly and she wouldn't take me to a doctor and things like that. All the things that happened while I was a child are really unclear and my counsellor says that I shouldn't try to make them clearer or I could fill in the blanks with imagination. I find it really hard at times as I wanted a good relationship so much and letting that go is harder than estranging in a way. I think that forgiving and not forgetting is the right thing isn't it. If you forgive and be in a relationship then they just get away with it and this way they don't.

You're definitely not alone Allsorts. I am here as part of a toxic sandwich in which I have a Nparent and N enabler parent and a child who has estranged me who has qualities of both GP. I've had a lot of therapy and am still in therapy. I'm pretty sure I'm not N, but may have some qualities?
I suppose time and space do help, but overall we came from someone, somewhere and our identity remains the same. That's why we are always thinking of that person or persons.

Yes there is another thread, but I can't see the harm in having more than one. Smileless does an amazing job, but has her own life to lead and can't be expected to read everything!

Armadillo I'm so sorry to hear that. I have similar experiences that only a look in my medical notes would confirm. I have chosen not to try to look, though for some time I was very tempted to.

Yes, I think ultimately forgiving and letting go, remembering the good bits but not accepting harm back into your life is a good way forwards. I have heard it said "I don't want them to starve, but they aren't eating at my table". You can want the best for them, without wanting anything to do with them. No bitterness. I'm working on it.

As long as we are always trying to be better then that's good isn't it. One of the last things my mum said is that I used my children as pawns. I read all this to my counsellor as I didn't get what she meant as my boys are too old for me to boss around. My counsellor said that it's strange she would call them pawns and that she is obviously viewing it like a game yet view's my boys as the smallest pieces in it. I ended up laughing because one of my boys likes chess and when he was young he used to call them prawns. Its made a change to laugh in counselling and I stopped crying. I don't think we can understand them can we, even things that do make sense are all choices they made that they tried to hide with abusive behaviours. We just need to understand ourselves and keep getting better. I would like to like myself. I feel like I like myself a lot more than I did but I'm always hard on myself all the time over things I can't help like being ill and not physically capable of doing things at times.

I’m so pleased therapy is helping some of you.
Personally, I don’t think it would benefit me, I don’t trust all of my memories, and I think there’s an awful lot of things that were covered up and never spoken about.
To be honest, I’m a bit afraid of remembering things that are better left forgotten.

"I'm a bit afraid of remembering things that are better left forgotten" I totally get that Sara.

Our minds are extremely complex and can and do repress painful and traumatic memories, sometimes for years. I know this from personal experience when I began to have flash backs about a period of abuse I'd suffered as a small child.

The memories began to re surface when I was 19. To begin with although they were making me feel uncomfortable, I didn't know why so asked my mother what they could mean.

She broke down, filling in the gaps, shocked and horrified that I'd remembered anything at all. Repressed memories are repressed for a reason, we're not ready to deal with them. It's our mind's way of protecting us.

It's a mine field isn't it and then of course we have the frightening issue of false memories, where someone has a 'memory' that isn't theirs but has been 'given' to them by someone else.

This is what has happened with our ES, 'memories' of incidents that are not in fact from his childhood but from his wife's.

Smileless
Yes, the false memory thing is a worry, my own daughter remembers things differently to us, and her siblings.
I know without a shadow of a doubt that some of her recollections simply never happened.
Occasionally I can prove her wrong, but it worries me that a lot of things I think I remember didn’t happen.
When I was pregnant with my last child, I kept getting flashbacks, total recall, I could see myself, smell smells, see what everyone was wearing.
I couldn’t even think about it for years without crying for that poor little girl who was me, my husband said I was dreaming, but it never felt like a dream.

Prawns made me smile too Armadillo That's kids for you. So funny!

I think flashbacks, particularly smells, can be pretty normal Sara and Smileless . I asked for help and was called a liar, so I learned to hide my feelings and bury things.

Fake memories sound awful because I suppose they remember feeling bad about something and then their mind makes sense of it . The main problem with fake memories and pain is that they are probably just as painful as if it actually happened because they think it has.

Hi , I am new to this forum, but I would like to say that I honestly thought I was the only one who was being frozen out of my children's lives. I review over and over what I have done wrong. Heaven knows I am not totally innocent, but nothing to deserve keeping me from my grandkids. It is painful and so hard to see all the beautiful posts about their father {who never had a thing to do with them until they were grown} The grandkids were my life and now some say ["oh well just don't talk to them!] How do I go on ?

LanoyLanoy Hi, you are not alone. So sorry for your pain and I hope that talking about it will help you in some way. I think there is an amount of shame we feel when we are cut off by somebody, but the thing to remember is that it's not OUR shame. It's theirs.
I am still figuring this out for myself, but welcome!

LanoyLanoy
Welcome, sorry you’re going through some hard times.
You may not find the answer to your problem, but you’ll always have a sympathetic ear.

"Is your Dad an enabler? Because someone always has to enable this for the behaviour to be able to continue."

Yes he is. Plus he has an air of his own toxicity. I remember my first day in my new career when I was in my early 20's. I was hired on the same place he worked (my mom worked there too). He stopped me going to my first shift and instead of telling me to have a good day he told me that he worked hard to build a reputation there and I better not mess it up. He then would come to work each day and work the area I was working that day in order to try and catch me messing up. Sadly it was my mother who he should have been worried about. She stole money (Govt job) and almost got him fired. The only reason they didn't press charges on her is because he had a long career there and she was made to cash out her retirement account to pay it back.

For the most part, he stood back and allowed her abuse and didn't give a whit. As long as someone was cooking and cleaning up after him (always me) he was fine.

I have only 1 single memory from before age 4. The dentist. It was traumatic. I though ti was normal for most kids to not have many memories from childhood. I dont want to try and recover them. Like Smileless said, the brain is a complex thing and it has repressed those for a reason.

Freedomfromthepast
I feel the same as you, no good can come from churning up a whole lot of memories.

It must be difficult to have had a bad childhood, it obviously stays with you throughout your life. I just feel for anyone that grew up not feeling safe and loved.

I admire all of you had had awful childhoods and still suffering the effects to this day. I know what my husband and dad went through.

You are more forgiving than me. I can never forgive my son of throwing me away as if I don't matter. If he had faced me and said I can't see you again. I would have been upset but if he was doing it to keep his family together I would have understood. But to paint me as this evil witch that has made his life hell. Is unforgivable.

He and my daughter had brilliant childhoods. After my husband died did everything I could to help them both in anyway . When my son asked for a loan I gave it to him even if I knew what he wanted it for would end in disaster and it did. But never interfered. He always paid me back as he knew I couldn't afford to give him money. Anyway both him and my daughter in law where working full time . My daughter doesn't know about the loans as it was between my son and me .

If I was a rotten mom,mother in law and grandmother then they way he broke with me would be understandable . But I am not. How he did was cowardly and cruel. And that is unforgivable. I would never have said he was a coward or cruel until that email and the following letter .

I still love him very much but don't hate him or my daughter in law. Don't want nor need hate in my life . I have to much good in my life for hate.