Handling Duty/Obligation as the "estranger" ;

Just want to say that I think your post is very moving icanhandthemback especially when you said "Even she has to chuckle" .

Something I've noticed over the years is that I have had the absolute most compassion, empathy and understanding from those who had good childhoods...

I've seen it said that people who had good childhoods had no understanding but I think really too many people had various stages somewhere in between amd people often have a sense of a good childhood compared to others...

This leads to measuring others against themselves in a bit of a " well you had it better than me" amd I'm OK" sort of way

But that's not what matters

What matters is the symptoms, not the disease.

The important part is that the treatment works.

Lovely post icanhandthemback
It's a shame your mother was never able to move on from her own traumas and find a healthier way to be a parent. She's very lucky to still have you in her life and I have utter respect for the way you have found to handle your relationship with her.

With other EAC we just get it, we can see where each other is on that healing journey, we can give advice on how to handle it... we don't have to JADE with each other (justify, argue, defend explain)

For the EAC who come from abusive backgrounds I can't even put into words just how much that matters and how much spaces we can do that mean.

hugshelp

Lovely post icanhandthemback
It's a shame your mother was never able to move on from her own traumas and find a healthier way to be a parent. She's very lucky to still have you in her life and I have utter respect for the way you have found to handle your relationship with her.

To be fair, hugshelp, she wasn't born in an age of information or therapy. Even with 2 suicide attempts when I was a child, my mother never had the support she should have had. We are so lucky to have all this information at our finger tips to reflect on our experiences. In her own way my mother did realise her inadequacies as a parent and sent us off to boarding school when she realised she couldn't control her temper. If she hadn't, we'd have been sent to our father's control and the abuse might have been unthinkable.

I also think that, for those of us bought up not that long after the end of the war, life was "harder" anyway.

Our parents and grandparents had often had a tough time during and just after those years, with very little help available, of any type.

Parents tended to be stricter, teachers most definitely were and life wasn't "child centric" as it is now.

Nothing is an excuse for some things, but, with reflection, I think it's easy to understand that society has moved on a great deal in the last 60 years or so.?

Very insightful thoughts icanhandthemback
As you say diamondlily society has moved on a great deal.

It is not always easy for one generation to see the world through the lens of another. Our perceptions are coloured by the world as we have experienced it, different societal values and pressures, modes of interaction, moral consensus, changing expert opinion and new research. I'm sure thing will continue to change and evolve for generations to come. We can all only do our best with the tools we have been given and the values we have imbibed along the way.

icanhandthemback your post at 13.08 was one of the most balanced, emotionally intelligent and insightful posts I've ever read on these estrangement threads. Through your own self insight, hard work, and a conscious decision that you didn't want to carry the burden of baggage from your childhood around with you forever, or replicate the past with your own children, you've come out the other side with much learned and a lot to be very proud of. The fact that you still have a functioning relationship with your mother is astonishing.

icanhandthemback

Thank you for your kind comments. If I'm honest, I spent years thinking it was me because my relationships outside my family were highly toxic too. I didn't realise that I was replicating what I had known all my life. With lots of therapy, lots of support from one of the kindest, down to earth people I have ever met who had had the sort of childhood we dream about, I was able to work on me. In learning about myself, I was able to look at my mother's childhood and realise that she was brought up in a toxic environment too but didn't have the sort of support I had nor the self awareness to change but I was able to put down my boundaries, avoid conflict by not challenging her beliefs whilst quietly getting on with mine. Recently, I have realised that she can still manage to guilt trip me and I have worked very hard on resisting that. Now she is in a care home, when she starts, I just tease her that her greatest talent is emotional blackmail but I am now very good at letting it roll over me. Even she has to chuckle. When she is really vile, I change the subject or leave.
We all have to deal with the toxic behaviour we meet in the best way we can. For some it will be estrangement, for others it will be finding the best way forward whilst trying to limit the damage. One of the things I noticed about my mother was that she drummed it into me that your mother was the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON in your life from a very young age. For some that makes it very difficult to extricate yourself because it goes against everything you have every believed.
I would never do that to my children. I tell them that it is important to be able to trust your parents to be truthful with them and I hope they pass that onto their children. I hope I allow them to be adults having brought them up to negotiate and to have the courage of their convictions. I am there for them if they need me but I don't expect them to need me or look after me. I expect to earn their respect. I hope I have.

Well, I'd certainly respect you if I was one of your children.

You've broken a very toxic chain, in a very compassionate way.

It's not easy to hang on in there, after a bad childhood, and it's to your credit that you have managed to do it.

Best wishes. ?

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