I’ve mentioned before that, like many people in a weary world, I grew up with some rough stuff. Many of us did. If you didn’t, I’m truly happy for you, and I hope you’ll take a moment to appreciate the awesome people in your life who made that true for you. If you grew up with rough stuff, too, I’m truly sorry it happened to you, and I hope you’ll take a moment to appreciate the ways you are able to make informed choices about your life today, and the amazing people you’ve quilted into your family.
Informed choices are there for us to make every day. The Offbeat Empire is a place that celebrates our sometimes non-traditional but always authentic-to-us decisions about life, style, and lifestyle. What has worked for me may not work for you, but in looking back over the last few years, satisfied with my informed choices, and able to glean lessons from my experiences, I want to share — because maybe you or someone you know is in my shoes.
Let me explain — no, there is too much; let me sum up
My parents split when I was eight. I was ecstatic about this. My father was equal parts terrifying and teacher. I learned so much from him, but I also experienced incredibly damaging physical and emotional abuse. I have many scars, visible and invisible, from the battlefields of his ire. His temper was tempered by honeymoon periods of all the crayons I could wrap my chubby little hands around, and getting to go with him to Long John Silvers. He made no secret of the fact I was his favorite, his eldest, and his golden child. This was a mixed message that still gives me pause sometimes, because I was also the target of many of his worst blowups and beatings. I cringe at the cliché “you only hurt the ones you love.”
My mother spent the next ten years trying. She was equal parts martyr and creative. I get a lot of my love of crafting things from her, but having found the strength to leave her husband, she subsequently sank into a quagmire of shifting blame for everything that happened to her from then on to him — everything was his fault. She made valiant efforts to give her children resources so that we could heal, but she also made huge mistakes that sabotaged those efforts and damaged us in new ways. She made no secret of the fact that I was his favorite, his eldest and his golden child. No matter how hard I worked to be amiable or to please her, I was branded his, and worse, I look like him. I cringe at the cliché “a face only a mother could love.”
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger
I think it’s fair to admit that it can bring us to our knees and leave us feeling weak as newborn babes, too. Rough stuff isn’t simple to recover from, and healing doesn’t happen overnight. However, it’s my firm belief that there is a lesson in every experience, and learning the lessons helps us to avoid making the same mistakes. Sure, we may make new ones, but we don’t have to make the same ones. These are the lessons I have learned.
Parents aren’t perfect, but there’s a difference between imperfect and unhealthy
We all make mistakes. As parents, people make mistakes, too. Sometimes these mistakes have consequences. There’s a difference between making mistakes and creating patterns of behavior and treatment that are unhealthy for your family. It’s one of life’s hurdles to reach the point where we look at our parents and say “you are not the god-like beings I thought you were when I was small. You are human, just like me, and you have thoughts, reactions, and feelings that are human. It is ok that you are not perfect.”
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The realization that grown-ups who have huge influence and speak with authority are just as human as I am is a turning point. Life is less capricious and arbitrary when you realize that “because I said so” is a grasp at straws, and that someone just as human as you are is on the other side of the orders and decisions. Suddenly you can see where parents make choices, and yes, sometimes mistakes. You also start to recognize that patterns of behavior and treatment are either mostly healthy or mostly unhealthy, and the difference is staggering. When your parents’ behavior or treatment is unhealthy, it’s time to take a step back and assess.
Assume best intentions, but recognize bad intentions
Realizing our parents are only human is a turning point. Assessing unhealthy behavior and treatment takes stepping away from your relationship and putting on your objectivity goggles. In any relationship, I believe it’s fair to approach any interactions assuming best intentions. Parents usually make decisions for their children’s welfare hoping to do the right thing, even if they do make mistakes. My father’s honeymoon periods of crayons and hushpuppies were a genuine best intention to make up for what he recognized to be poor decisions when he abused me. My mother’s attempts to make resources available so I could heal from that abuse was a genuine attempt to help me heal and apologize for allowing the abuse to happen. Assuming best intentions lets me strip away the venom of my anger about their actions.
Recognizing bad intentions, though, is important, too. Even with the best of intentions to “make up for” abuses, my father couldn’t seem to contain or restrain himself. For years after their divorce, I was his punching bag literally and figuratively. There is no magic quantity of crayons and battered fish that could even the scales, and his bad intentions — to take out his anger on his child — have to be recognized. My mother, ever eager to bemoan the lack of resources available to people in our position, slipped into a martyrdom where she turned away help from those who would have given us everything we could need. She relished explaining our “situation” to people and rebuffing their assistance so that she would be seen as a strong woman making it on her own. We went without, impoverished and hungry, and we shouldn’t have. Her best intentions — to offer us therapy — aren’t outweighed by her bad intentions — to play the part of the martyr.
Recognizing that even in the face of assuming best intentions, there can be bad intentions is another turning point. My parents were going through rough stuff of their own, and they were human, I’d already realized this. Now, recognizing that their patterns of behavior and treatment were both unhealthy and sometimes made with bad intentions, I had more information.
Halp! I need an adult!
The best decision I’ve made in my life was reaching out to the people who I trusted to be grown-ups. People who were not my parents, but who had better intentions and healthier patterns — people who I could want to be like when I, too, grew up. Their advice, love, and parental guidance filled the voids I had.
Where do you look for a grown-up, especially if you’re already supposed to be one, yourself? I looked to my best friend’s parents, to start. I’d been slowly adopted into their family already, and I realized one day with a start that her mom was a mom. That I’d always gently envied their relationship, and that I trusted her implicitly. One day, while driving home with them, I asked her mom if she would mind filling in for mine a bit. I wanted to bring home my guy to someone who’d make sure I was treated right, and I didn’t trust my mother’s confidence or experience in that arena. I know I surprised her, but she agreed. When I brought my now-husband home to meet her, she knew I’d found the right guy. When she came to our wedding, she introduced herself as my “other mom” and she was so right. She’s been my other mom for a long time, comforting me when I am in sorrow, celebrating my joys and triumphs, and just spending time with me, knitting, quilting, or watching basketball. My best friend is like my sister, and her mom is like my other mom, and I get to love and be loved. It’s a huge win.
Another place to look for a grown-up, when you’re already supposed to be one, too – your extended family. I grew up Roman Catholic and when I was baptized, my mom’s youngest brother was named as my godfather. When I’d done some of the soul-searching required to recognize that my parents didn’t just make mistakes, they were unhealthy, and that they didn’t always have good intentions — when I was ready to reach out for grown-ups — I reached out to my godfather and his wife. My life has been better ever since. The first night that I mustered up the courage to ask them what they knew about my rough stuff, we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, talking openly and honestly, and it was as if the dam burst inside me. From that point on, when I have had grown-up questions, needed advice, or just needed a home, they’ve been there for me. They’ll talk — or listen — and help me work out what to do in tough situations, and whatever I decide, they support me. They’ll argue about football and politics and play Cards Against Humanity. They’ll feed me, clothe me, shelter me, love me and let me love them right back.
Where else can you look for a grown-up? Maybe it’s a friend, a mentor, or a distant relative — whomever you find to be your adult can help you navigate the murky waters of rough stuff. Finding a grown-up who is healthy and has best intentions doesn’t mean you’ll never make mistakes again, but it does mean you can observe and emulate patterns you admire and appreciate. I want to be like my best friend’s mom and my godparents when I finally grow up. Now I have them to look up to.
You get to choose your own adventure
For me, coming into adulthood has meant a transition from compliant child, eager to please, to a self-sufficient woman with healthy boundaries and informed choices. I am not a statistic. I am a person. I still people-please, and I still find remnants of patterns I don’t like, but I get to recognize them and work on them. I make my own choices. I am not bound by the patterns I learned from my parents. I can choose to build new patterns based on the healthy, well-intentioned grown-ups in my life. I am an adventuress, and the star of my own life. It is not up to me to be the best supporting actress in my parents’ lives. Their adventures have been cobbled together by their own choices. I get to choose my own adventure.
Know when to walk away, know when to run…
Life’s a gamble. Here’s the thing: Sometimes, your own best intentions and healthy patterns can’t cancel out the choices your parents make. It isn’t an easy decision to come to, to make, or to act on, but sometimes estrangement is the right choice for you. It was for me.
My father’s abuse was a no-brainer — running and not looking back wasn’t hard for me. I grew to have only fear and anger toward him, and removing him from my life was a great relief. Your mileage may vary and all situations are different, I know this, but for me, the day I decided he was out of my life was a red-letter day. A jubilee. I celebrated the anniversary of it for a few years until one year the date came and went without a thought — and that’s when I knew I had let him go. I’m quite content to have severed our relationship.
My mother was a different story. In my family, women never age past 29. Your 29th birthday is a thing. I’ve had three 29th birthdays now, and I hope to have as many as my grandmother did. It’s a teasing, sweet, funny quirk about the women in my family, and something I looked forward to in the few days before my first 29th birthday, a few months before my wedding. My mother and I had argued a few months before and she’d told me she didn’t like me very much and she never wanted to see me again. Some part of me still thought, “but it’s my 29th birthday! She’ll call!” She didn’t.
A few days later, I called her. In curt phrases she told me she didn’t like me very much, she didn’t know if she loved me, but she’d think about whether she’d make it to my wedding. I was gutted.
I summoned my strength and stood up, even though we were on the phone, and took a deep breath. You see, I already knew she was unhealthy and operated with bad intentions. I’d already found adults to emulate and I was choosing my own adventure. I had made healthy patterns, boundaries, and informed choices. It was time for me to walk away.
“Mom, I’m sorry you feel that way. We’ve chosen not to invite anyone to our wedding who doesn’t love us and like us a whole lot. I’ll be sending you a play-along-at-home kit with all our favors and an invitation to watch our ceremony streaming on the webcam, but I’m afraid I can’t ask you to be there.”
Gulp.
“You don’t want your mom to come to your wedding?” she was surprised
“Of course I do. But I won’t have anyone there who doesn’t love me and like me a whole lot.”
“Oh. So you’ll send me a box?”
“Yes.”
Gutted. I’d offered her a healthy relationship, but only confirmed that she didn’t like me very much, and wasn’t sure she loved me. She didn’t come to our wedding. You know who did? My other mom, and my godparents. My godfather walked me down the aisle. I didn’t miss my father or my mother. I was choosing my own adventure, and had assembled a party of adventurers whom I loved and who loved me.
You get to write your own epilogue
My story isn’t about my childhood. It’s not about the mistakes my parents made or the unhealthy behaviors and treatment patterns they created. It’s not about their intentions. My story is about choosing my own adventure, about assembling my avengers and quilting together my family. My story is about making informed choices and consciously deciding to buck the statistics. It’s about finding people who love me and let me love them back, and about letting go of the people who don’t.
My story is not your story, and you have to choose your own adventure. I hope that if you ever have rough stuff, the lessons I’ve shared help you smooth it out. In the meantime, if anyone needs an adult, I think I’m almost ready.
I love this so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart
This is so spot on to my childhood, and attempt at adulthood, that I feel incredibly vulnerable and naked reading it.
You’re not alone… and we can do this.
This is beautifully written, and even though I was not abused in exactly the same ways, I have come to a place where estrangement with one of my parents is the healthiest option for me and my family. It’s a hard decision to make, and only made more difficult because our society still has a lot of messages about family that people use to try to make me feel guilty or unreasonable: family first, you only have one mother/father, they did the best they could, etc. Sometimes forgiveness and understanding don’t keep our parents from continuing to hurt us and damage our growth. Thank you for writing this.
This rings so true. That societal guilt can be pretty heavy, too. Sometimes, as much as we hate to admit it, “doing the best they could” even if it’s true, isn’t good enough. Your choices are your own to make, and only you have all the information to make them. Thanks for your insight.
It’s nice to know there are others making this decision. I’ve come to a point in my life where my three of my siblings and I are effectively estranged from my father as a result of events over the past year. The issue is that we want to continue a relationship with my mom, but she is still with him. It makes navigating this a little bit tricky.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!!:)
I love this. I experienced a lot of physical and emotional lashing out on the part of my mother, and I know all about the martyrdom. I know that I’m not my moms favorite (but I was my adoptive dad’s favorite) and I’m not entirely sure she likes me all that much even though she’s never said it.
She’s never said she’s proud of me, not once in my life. I have three kids and I know she loves them, but unless I drive out to visit her she’s not overly involved in our lives like I see with other grandparents.
I always thought I needed support and people backing me up for me to thrive but I’ve realized at the ripe old age of almost-twenty-five that I need my haters to be my motivators! I’m living the best life I can, making the best choices I can, and being unconditionally supportive and annoyingly affectionate towards my own children and never letting them doubt that they are loved. I make mistakes and I apologize for them, but at the end of the day I feel like I’ve succeeded if they don’t have to question that I do love (and like!) them.
The up side, I guess, is that my sister and I are really close as adults in a way that we definitely weren’t growing up. There was a lot of sibling rivalry and dislike for each other. But now we bond over the fact that neither of us learned how to be an adult or have a healthy relationship! We support each other and give each other motherly advice, so I’m grateful for that.
I love Offbeat for this reason. Reading other people’s soul-baring stories that reflect my own and knowing I’m not the only one!
You’re not the only one… and we can do this.
Amen.
I shared this in my own comment as well, but I wanted to make sure you saw this too because it has helped me so much! For 30+ years I never realized why my relationship with my mom was unhealthy, I had never considered that she may be narcissistic. If your mom sees only her problems and cannot seem to express empathy for you, please consider reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Ever-Good-Enough-Narcissistic/dp/1439129436
Thank you for sharing your story. You deserve to be loved, and even though I don’t know you, I am glad you have made your own family to surround yourself with.
“In the meantime, if anyone needs an adult, I think I’m almost ready.”
Wow. You’re strong.
This is incredible.
I had a different kind of childhood growing up, similar in many ways as far as the bad things go. And people gawk at me like I’m insane when I say I’m not sad that my father is dead, or that I don’t like speaking to my mother or most other relatives anymore. It’s quite a lot of stuff to go through. But it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who feels the the same way for similar reasons. Family doesn’t mean “blood relatives” to me anymore. It means “those people who give a crap about me and that I also like to be around.”
You are so strong and brave, and I commend you. Thank you for writing this.
My own parental situation is strained. My mother raised me without a healthy roadmap. I was a quiet, perfectly groomed little girl and people praised her to no end for being such a good parent. From the outside, it might have looked that way, but they didn’t see the bad boyfriends (relationships she started with guys who didn’t like kids or didn’t want to raise someone else’s) or hear her own admitted dislike of children. My mother had me because she wanted unconditional love, but unlike the puppy she later adopted, as I grew older, my love had just as many conditions as her own. In my early twenties, I put a big chunk of physical distance between us and that has really helped. We stay in touch, but the pressure to be mother/daughter BFFs isn’t there anymore.
It isn’t a perfect solution, and sometimes I worry what she will be like with grandkids (something she’s been asking for since I moved out). People tell me it’s a completely different skill set so I guess I’ll just wait and see.
Automatic grandparents’ rights aren’t a thing anywhere I know of! So, good news.
If you don’t like the thought of her grandparenting your kid, you can either not allow a relationship, taper it off, or cut it off. Have a look at your local laws, I’m betting you have no legal obligation to let her grandparent. 🙂
You also don’t have to have kids for her sake. So there’s that. 🙂
I just want to say how happy I am that you can still find a place to fit Princess Bride references, even when talking about tough stuff.
I felt like I was reading my own story for a lot of this. Trying to shed the choices my parents made is a constant battle for me. Trying to learn what is actually healthy and what’s not is a daily struggle. Constant worry that I will be like my parents to my daughter often wears me thin. I hope one day I can live life without giving my every move a second thought. I hope I can find the courage to always surround myself with only the people I love that love and like me right back. I hope they can have the patience with me to teach me how to pick myself back up when I fall.. I hope I can be patient with myself.
Thank you for sharing this. 🙂
I’ve watched my husband struggle with his relationship with his parents. They were not what I would call parents, not even close to my experience which had its ups and downs. I watched my own parents struggle with what that meant, with the idea that they would not be meeting his parents and that his parents would not be at our wedding. I have since watched my dude discover what it means to have a mum who loves him (even if she hassles him about eating his veggies). We have talked long and hard about what kind of parents we want to be and the things we do not want to repeat. We’ve talked about the families we’ve created in lieu of the ones biology and legality designated. So it is really meaningful to hear you share your story and that you did, indeed, come out the other side. There may still be shadows, and may always be, but you found a new path.
wow that was amazing thanks…..
Thanks for sharing. Most people I know have similar stories to share – some better, some worse. I all somewhere in the middle.
My younger sister does not talk to our mother and has a loving relationship with our father. My older sister manipulates both our parents in an effort to get back at them. I have made my peace – realizing that our parents did the best they could under those circumstances, and that they came from pretty bad places, too – and try to have a grown-up relationship with them. This takes a lot of love – luckily, love is the one thing that does not become less when we share it.
My husband dealt with a LOT of tough stuff in his childhood, and my “mother-in-law” is a woman who “adopted” him. His biological mother is some woman that I have met 3 or 4 times in over 5 years.
I love his “adopted” family, and I don’t know what I would do with out my “mother-in-law”.
I never thought of my husband as having writen his own adventure…but that is most definatly what he did.
Thank you for this article, becasue even though I did not have the kind of childhood you or my husband had to suffer through it helps to understand it.
My mother told me once that there are people who are super people, who are able to rise above their situation and become amazing. My father (a victom of an alcholic father and absent mother) is one of these people, and I am proud that my husband is also a super person. It sounds like you are one hell of a super woman yourself.
Liz,
If I’m being honest, I don’t even remember how, when or why I subscribed to this blog, if I am being honest, most days, I just delete the emails that come into my inbox because most days, its overflowing, but not today.
Today I opened the Offbeat Families email and read something that stuck out to me, the title of your post “My mom doesn’t like me…” and suddenly without even attempting to read the summarized post in my inbox, I ended up here. I admire you level of sharing and sadly, I could relate to so much of it, that reading your story brought me to tears. No, you didn’t share or divulge everything, but you shared enough for me to know, that my situation, still impacts me today.
My father was to say the very least abusive to our entire family, I remember spouts of drunken behavior and arguing, abuse in the silent hours of the night and not a mother in sight to save the children, because she couldn’t even save herself. When I was 11, she left him and so did we (the children), but she didn’t save us, we saved her, as we grew into teenagers and adulthood, she became helpless, we were pawns, we cooked, cleaned, worked and paid bills, I remember being in high school and responsible for turning the electric back on, or moving out on my own, when I started my own family, and having to pay a large debt on a phone bill that I never had, and when I needed her, she used me, it was her own form of abuse, that made me feel like, she just didn’t like me much.
I am 33 and the same patterns continue, because she lives in my home, the home I’ve created with my family. You see, she’s always in need of something and is almost always the victim of some harsh behaviors, but never takes responsibility for her own actions and behaviors. I don’t know why I am responding only to say that I read your post and related tremendously. I strive to be the very best me every single day and some days, I think I’m an epic fail and others, I feel like I have overcome completely. I find that I am still hindered by my inability to let go.
Hey, I am a work in progress, so I am happy to report that I am in the first step of the process, acknowledgement and I am striving NOT to create the same patterns for my children. I congratulate you, I applaud you, and I am so happy that you have found people in your life who will love you and allow you to love them in return! I’ve found love in older women who have “mentored” me through friendship and sharing their experiences with me. Otherwise, I’m not sure who I’d be, as I have no other family (I do, but we don’t speak) aside from my mother and siblings.
I’m grateful to have found family in my spouses family and a sense of love and belonging, something I’d always longed for when I was younger. Thank you for be open, honest and candid, I appreciated that about your post. God Bless you and yours.
xo,
RARE
We are all a work in progress, and you are a strong and beautiful soul. I’m glad you’ve found family to love you and embrace you. I hope that you find peace, too, in whatever shape that takes for you. Thank you for your blessings, and many blessings to you and yours in return.
Thank you so so much for posting this. I’m currently in the position of wanting to estrange myself from my mother but not having, well, enough gumption to stand up for myself and voice my issues with our relationship.
See, I was well into adulthood before I started to realize that maybe something wasn’t right with how I was raised. It took my father’s death to really set my brain into overdrive and figure why I have the issues I do. Before my dad died (to whom I was super close – he was my champion) my parents basically admitted that I was not the favorite, but rather my deadbeat awful brother (who I’m gladly estranged from), and that I’d been “given the short end of the stick,” as they termed it. While they apologized for having treated me this way, it was kind of a wrecking ball on my memories of childhood — I hadn’t realized this was the case all along, I had always just believed there was something intrinsically wrong with me. Cue low self-esteem and depression and suicidal thoughts – issues that I was too embarrassed to address because I was trying so hard to be a perfect kid so I could get some attention & recognition.
Add on top of that the martyr behavior of my mother, the constant victim and the consummate queen of guilt trips – it’s incredibly difficult to deal with her. I see my phone ring and I just know I’m going to be in a worse mood. She expects me to be there for her at the drop of a hat but hasn’t done the same for me. Because of that she stopped talking to me for months on end.
It’s a million times more complicated now that I have my own 10 month old daughter, whom my mom has seen but once, through no effort on her part. I can only use my childhood as a benchmark on how I don’t want my daughter to grow up. And maybe in the meantime, I can have some healing of my own. My daughter will never question how much I love her, at least. It’s a bit terrifying to realize how much power you wield as a parent, how much damage you can do.
Thank you so much for writing this article. It helps me realize that I’m not in alien territory disliking my family. And for maybe inching me closer to getting the negativity out of my life completely.
You’re not in alien territory at all. You also get to choose your own adventure. You can be the person, and the parent, that you want to be. Here’s to a smooth journey on your adventure.
Reading your story seriously reminded me of my husband’s story. The favoured other sibling, dreading calls from a parent. Trust me when I say you aren’t alone and you need to make the choices that keep you healthy, whatever those may be.
Thank you – really there’s nothing more I can say. Thank you!
This really hit home! Thanks for sharing.
Wow, you are so incredibly blessed to have found substitute parental figures who love you and were open to “adopting” you. I had 13 sets of foster parents in a 9 year span, but never found that, as each and every one was almost more abusive than the parent from whom I had been taken away. (Ironically, the best set of parents I had out of the 13 were simply happy weekend alcoholics.) I would have killed (figuratively) to have found people like that, but being as damaged as I was, I doubt I was in any position to have recognized them anyway.
Thank you for writing this. Learning to set boundaries and not allow parents to have that god-like hold over you is so hard…it’s almost unfathomable at first. You are amazing. I don’t know you and yet I am proud of you!
Ah-HA!! Thanks for the epiphany!!! Reading this made me realise that I have estranged myself from my abusive mother (it’s a bit more complicated you see, because she’s dead)…..but I have estranged myself from her in my head. I didn’t ‘memorialise’ her in my recent wedding because she wouldn’t have been invited if she were alive. So she didn’t get invited dead, either. Thank you for helping to define my relationship with her.
I hope this doesn’t come across too callous or flippant – I’ve arrived in this space after many many years of soul searching. I am letting her go, in peace, because it’s the best thing for both of us (she didn’t like me very much either). I am choosing my own adventure, and who gets to be in it 🙂
I am so glad you’re choosing your own adventure — and who gets to be in it!
I’m also happy you’ve found an epiphany to help you define your feelings and relationship. Giving something a name (in this case estrangement) is powerful, and I’m thrilled for you that it gives you peace.
This rang so true for me – and it’s so helpful to hear other’s peoples stories around this. Thank you for writing it.
My father walked out on our family when I was four years old. I have five older siblings, one of whom was physically and sexually abusive towards me. I had a very rough childhood, and throughout it, I had regular contact with my father, who knew of and saw much of the abuse, but who did nothing about it.
However, as an adult, I always strove to have a relationship with my dad, because I figured that no matter what he had done, he was still my -father-, after all.
Its surprising to me how quickly my father has dropped out of my life. I always tried to be close to him, and we talked weekly on the phone. But then I invited him to my wedding – and he refused to come, with no explanation. I asked him why, and he didn’t appreciate my questioning of him. The holidays were soon after that, and he didn’t return any of my phone calls. When I finally emailed him and asked him why he wouldn’t return my calls, he promptly emailed me back a list of reasons why I was a bad daughter. He told me he didn’t really like me very much. Then he said that he would respond to emails if I really wanted him to, but asked me to please not call him any more.
I was absolutely floored. I couldn’t believe that after how hard my childhood had been, HE didn’t want to talk to ME. I feel like this article covered almost every aspect of it except this one – the anger you can feel when someone who has wronged you so deeply declares that they are angry with you, that YOU are the problem.
I am living a very happy and healthy life, and I don’t dwell on things that have happened in the past. I love my life, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. I do still miss my dad, though – and I still have a hard time with the fact that, after everything, he just doesn’t like me, and he will never be able to love me or to be the father I wish I had.
This is something I still struggle with, and haven’t found a way to talk about with encouragement and grace yet. The only thing that soothes the sting of this feeling (albeit slightly) for me is knowing that their anger is a coping mechanism of a wounded creature. It helps me temper my anger with pity, but it doesn’t yet help me forgive that pain. I hope we can both get there someday — releasing that pain.
Good journey, fellow adventurer. You are amazing.
Your phrasing could not be more perfect: human mistakes vs patterns of unhealthy behavior. I went back and forth for a decade – my entire 20’s – trying to make a relationship with my own distanced mother before giving up and realizing she’s had too much of her own damage all along to have ever been a ‘mom’ in any sense of the term. I too found other ‘mom’s’ along the way but being aware of my own patterns and knowing if I’m ever in the Mom Club I’ll do my best never to repeat history (and honestly, don’t think I have it in me to do so anyway) is what lets me know the insanity stops here.
Thank you so much for writing this.
I am getting married in April and can honestly say that I feel such a sense of relief that my parents will not be there, despite others trying to incite guilt in me (I realise that they are coming from their own place of guilt). I made the decision to sever all contact with my abusive mother almost 2yrs ago and I have never felt so free, my father made it clear he did not approve of my decision (despite my parents never having been together in my living memory) and our already feable relationship has since broken down.
I love your sentence “I am an adventuress, and the star of my own life. It is not up to me to be the best supporting actress in my parents’ lives.” I think you told your story so beautifully and with such warmth.
I too have found adults I can trust, I feel closer to my sister every day, my uncle is going to be giving me away and I have a new mum, soon to be my mother in law. Amazing.
I can’t wait to begin my own parenting adventures . . . thank you, MaiMai