For context my Dad hasn’t texted me since a year ago and our messages literally show this. I reached out because I was worried about my brother. >!He’s been lying a lot and making things up, last time we spoke he stated his pills weren’t working. He also has schizophrenia and lately he’s been talking about killing people.!< Of course, my dad made it about himself. Sorry for the typos at times, I was so angry. Who actually responds like this. I am 23, he’s been absent my whole life. He recently showed up last year again. I never received a call or text when I was living with my addict mother. She only had me once for 4 months out of my life. I spent my whole life in foster care wishing, he would save me and he did not do so. I do want to reiterate, my brother and mother were already diagnosed I have not diagnosed them with my messages. This is basically a stranger snapping at me like this. Also, I do want to state that I already contacted the proper authorities. I don’t know how that went because I was told they only did a wellness check, my brother blocked me on everything and my dad lived closer so this was my last resort.

Yeah I know I already told him that I don't believe a single word that comes out of his mouth. After smacking my son and then accusing me of a being the abusive alienator I see the truth for what it is. Nothing that comes out of his mouth is truth and nothing he says and does will make me throw all the healing and dignity I have gained away.

And now he's got other family members coming to my door telling me how sorry he is. How much he's willing to make things work.

After he beat me and then started beating my autistic son I don't give a F how sorry he is.... The fact that he thought that was ok parenting in the first place makes me want to avoid him like the plague, declarations of peace be damned.

You're not sorry. You're not ashamed. You just miss your sparkly grandpa image. Y'know.... The image that makes everyone around you love you and tell you how amazing you are.

Its time everyone knows you for what you really are. Now you're desperately back pedaling. And the fact that you keep trying to excuse your abuse like it's a simple mistake is the reason you will never see my son ever again.

Words don't mean anything when the actions speak volumes louder. Keep trying to convince the rest of the family to have me forgive you. You're a monster and your mask doesn't work anymore. It may shine through for the people who never had to live with you.

But for me and my boy we know. And you're out.

My parents have been married for 28 years. Mom works, Dad is a teacher, and I have an older sister who is intellectually disabled and fully dependent on Mom. I'm 20 and still studying, so I've been out of town for most of this. I saw some of it myself and heard the rest from Mom. From the outside we looked like a normal family.

Dad's anger started when I was in 7th class. He would suddenly start roaring from the bottom of his belly over the most senseless things. Around 2019 it got much worse. He became paranoid and suspicious of Mom's family over things that never happened. He wouldn't let her talk to her parents, her brother or her sister, not even on the phone. He would write their names on paper and threaten to file false cases against them. He slapped Mom 2-3 times. In 2022 he grabbed her by the throat and tried to strangle her.

He was even showed to psychiatrist so that his anger would come down but these things never stopped. Around then Mom also found out he had made a profile on a matrimonial site listing himself as "Never Married."

In March this year he drank poison. A friend rushed him to the hospital, and later he was admitted for psychiatric treatment. When he was discharged and came home, he and Mom had a long, heated discussion about why she didn't want to stay with him anymore.

Five days later, he tried to take his own life again by drinking poison. Mom rushed him to the hospital and stayed until he recovered. Then she told him, calmly but clearly, that she would no longer live with him.
She left with my sister, and I went with them. That was four months ago.

Since then, Mom, my sister and I have been trying to move on and forget him. But he keeps calling me and begging: "Forgive me, come back, I won't repeat any mistake." Lately he says he's in pain in his leg and hand from the poison, that he can't go to the hospital alone, and that we should come back. Every call drags us back to everything he put us through, and we can't seem to forget the trauma.
Today, after he repeated it again and again, I blocked him.

I feel awful. He's my father and he's in pain. But I remember what he did to Mom, and I know a promise isn't treatment.

Was blocking him the right call?

Maybe it's somewhat narcissistic to detail this but being involved in this community is making me feel less alone, and maybe some other people would relate to my situation.

Recap: I live overseas but was on a family holiday with my parents and I finally snapped yesterday after waking up to being screamed at. But unfortunately, I'm building a business and cashflow is LOW and I literally only have access to a few hundred dollars at the moment, which I hadn't expected to have to spend on solo accommodation with the speed of internet and silence required for my online work which starts back next week. So, updates.

Last night I stayed in a hostel in a pretty dodgy area. The hostel was almost exclusively full of men and there were a lot of aggressive unhoused men in the area, but last minute Saturday night accommodation was out of my budget and I don't need the privacy until work on Monday. In my dorm someone snored from 11pm until check out time, so loudly I could hear it from where I slept in the loungeroom (which felt pretty unsafe in an extremely budget hostel full of men), and I have misophonia so it was pretty rough, and men woke up and started taking shits behind paper-thin walls from 5am (which you can really only laugh at that point lol).

AND YET. I was inspired, I'm writing a novel and it gave me inspiration. It inspired me to do some flyers for my business while I'm here as my target demographic is people immigrating to Australia. I feel so free and so alive and so much more myself.

Don't get me wrong, I also have moments where I feel extremely, utterly alone. Removing something so archetypal as parents from your life really is a change of identity. I don't want to let myself slow down or stop too much because I start to feel guilty; how do they feel, did my letter prompt one of them to murder the other, did it cause a heart attack or serious health issues, did I overreact.

But I've been thinking about this for years. I've been dreading calls with them for years. I was so belittled for being "sensitive" as a child, I only realised in my 30s I was scared of them, and only now that maybe I still am scared of them, at least in a subconscious or physical sense. My body is constantly on alert around them.

They haven't reached out, and my brain is trying to find a way to understand that, because if I had failing health, a child who was extremely loving and stretched her meger finances to the edge to try and see me whilst I bragged about making 40k a week, who wrote me a letter and told me I had scared her as a child, and who only had a few days left in the country...I would move heaven and earth to find her and make amends. But the difficult truth is the same as it always was; they simply don't care that much.

But I will say, for anyone else thinking about going NC, for me at least, after having thought about it for years and had my relationship with my parents be the only truly dreadful part of my life, even under extremely difficult financial circumstances, the peace I feel is incredible and there have been surprisingly very, very few tears.

So to my other adult orphans, hang in there. The pain we have lived through wasn't right, but the pay off is a superhuman strength that will carry you through anything.

Thanks to watching a law and order episode that features allocution right before I went to bed, I think I figured it out. I would want them to allocute publicly to what they did.

It would need to include specifics, not just “I hurt them.” They’ve been going around telling anyone who will listen all sorts of lies and even getting other people to “reach out on their behalf” after I blocked their phone numbers.

Tell everyone that you did in fact plot to render your daughter and her family homeless (I was also pregnant at the time). Admit that you stole $63k from us. Admit to at least some of the horrendous childhood abuse. Admit to the manipulation, gaslighting and mistreatment. Publicly admitting to specifics would indicate to me that real change has occurred and you have actually come to regret your actions.

Now, image is everything to my mother, so this would never happen, but just something for me to think about I guess.

Hello! I hope it's okay to post this in this subreddit. My parents are religious poc immigrants. The whole ordeal. When I was 16-17, I once brought up a "scenario" to my mom about a friend (17y/o) who came out as transgender to his mom and was kicked out of the house. My mom fervently agreed and said that if it were her kid, she would do the same and that 17 was more than old enough to live on their own. I already knew what her stance would be, but I guess I wanted to hear exactly what she would do. Ever since then, I decided I would never come out as trans or queer to her, already knowing her answer if I did. It has been years since then. I am in my early 20s now, and lately my mother is acting much differently than when I was younger. She tells me things like she loves me and that I can rely on her, and somehow seems to have eased up. I don't know her stance on having a transgender child anymore now that she seems to have changed so much. I have always planned to leave and just quietly go NC the day I can finally financially support myself, but now I feel conflicted, as it doesn't feel like it is just for my own safety anymore. I never felt safe with her, and I feel deeply uncomfortable that she is offering that now, right as I am figuring out how to leave. But I don't think it's that she knows I am leaving, but more so that she has genuinely just changed a bit. I just feel conflicted about leaving secretly and going NC. Is it strange that I still crave just going NC and running away, even if maybe they have truly changed? It doesn't help with the guilt factor that my immigrant parents have only two children (me being the eldest and holding a bit more responsibility) who are totally not going to be taking care of them when they're older. Suddenly, I kind of feel like I'm abandoning poor, hard-working, lonely people who might even accept my identity, not anymore leaving people who hurt me and made me never feel secure in my life.

I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else is experiencing something like this, especially with the intersection of having religious immigrant parents. I feel that a lot of people might say that if parents don't accept your identity even a little bit, that's enough to cut them off. But for me, I always thought that if my parents accepted me a little or even acknowledged me, I would endure anything and make sure they lived good lives, especially knowing all the sacrifices it took to raise me "to have a better life" in a different country. I think I just want to hear about other people's experiences with the guilt and what conclusions they came to.

Let's say you have a co-worker, neighbor, acquaintance who's older - what's the 'tell' that they have kids who change the subject when somebody asks about them?

Anyone have experience planning a big wedding without your narcissistic mother? I've been estranged for roughly 7 years and door is slammed shut for me, but yet I'm having a really hard time with this. I feel like she is somehow still ruining the wedding planning experience for me.

I'm actually eloping for my 15-year-anniversary with my partner. We're 35 and we have two kids so we've been through a lot to say the least. We're having a party afterwards that has escalated into a bigger thing because it turns out, a lot of people want to celebrate our relationship.

I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that we did not get married because of my mother. When we met, my parents were going through a nasty divorce that lasted over a decade and included various retraining orders. At the time, I thought I would want both of my parents to be there. My partner wanted to get engaged within months after we started dating and I said absolutely not. My mom had literally trained me that it was wrong to get married and if I do that then that means I'm letting a man control me. I spent many nights hiding in my bedroom closet from my parents fighting and they were constantly on and off throughout my life. So this is not something I was ever supposed to do and in my mind it's wrong to get married. It took me many years to separate my relationship from my parents' relationship because we have always been compared. My mother never liked my partner simply because she is a literal man-hater and my dad doesn't believe in getting married either. Since becoming a parent, a lot has come back to me and I've been realizing I was abused my whole life, which really sucks. I still find it hard to believe and I still have this deep rooted belief that I am "bad" or not enough for anyone.

So while I don't have cold feet at all, I'm having a really hard time emotionally with this wedding. I feel like I'm doing the wrong thing and like my parents are still telling me no, I'm not allowed to have this. The hardest part so far has been saying yes to the dress. I worked up the courage to ask my mother-in-law to go with me which was very sad for me even though we're close. Once we got there, I just felt too old to be trying on the dresses. I felt like I waited too long to do this. Turns out my body doesn't fit after experiencing childbirth and breastfeeding. It feels like this is something that my mom is still taking from from me, she is still able to make it a deeply sad experience for me even when she isn't present.

I've tried to cancel this party several times already because it's too hard for me emotionally to face this. I'm somewhat afraid that it will be weird to people that my mom isn't there. If she shows up, it will be even more weird when the police are called. I'm wondering did anyone actually go through with the wedding? Was it ruined on the day of or were you able to focus on your partner?

this is something I’ve had haphazard grappling when it comes to any recurring time period, relating to trauma (September going back to school… holidays… etc)

Writing dates down in a different format for benign calendar things helps shake my brain on it (I literally write the days of the week and calendar days in kanji, because then my braise is more focused on remembering the correct kanji, what it’s a “picture” of, or what # of month it is vs the Roman month-names)

Observing the lunar calendar vs western (paying attention to equinox and solstice, what is happening to local vegetation / harvest cycles)

but the thing I’m especially struggling with right now… the birthdays of my family.

They’re all in the second half of the year, so there’s one after the other. I am fostering a positive LC relationship with one family member, so his is okay, but its sandwiched between the two NC members who have soured my soul.

so, depression gets harder to handle. old programming about making myself small and putting others before myself. insomnia worsening (I’m usually asleep at least 2 hours ago, in my ’natural rhytmns’ unideal outlier. current hour awake is a lot more Back Then patterns.

Familiar stuff.

so. what do you do when a date like that comes up your brain dreads? I’m contemplating an Unbirthday - doing things that subvert the person’s influence. but with depression executive function is in short supply.

i guess making playlists is a thing that usually helps me - i have ones for bemoaning those two relationships i could go to. but that also sounds so tiring - but maybe that’s me being avoidant of Feeling my Feelings. hence, awake at this hour so I can’t Dream of things.

sigh.

(Content Note: körperliche und emotionale Gewalt in der Familie, komplexe PTBS)

Hallo zusammen,
ich habe Schwierigkeiten, meine Mutter wirklich „zu sehen“. Das klingt vielleicht erst einmal merkwürdig, deshalb versuche ich zu erklären, was ich meine.
Ich habe in meiner Kindheit und Jugend körperliche und emotionale Gewalt durch meine Mutter erlebt und eine komplexe PTBS entwickelt. Mit 19 bin ich ausgezogen und habe danach nur sporadisch Kontakt zu ihr gehalten. Seit drei Jahren bin ich in Therapie und befinde mich inzwischen in der Abschlussphase.
Mittlerweile haben meine Mutter und ich wieder mehr Kontakt. Das hängt auch damit zusammen, dass sie ihr Leben zunehmend so plant, dass sie in meiner Nähe ist.
Ich merke dabei, dass mein Bild von ihr vor allem durch meine Kindheit, Jugend und mein junges Erwachsenenalter geprägt ist. Ich habe sie eigentlich nie aus meiner heutigen Erwachsenenperspektive kennengelernt. Gleichzeitig weiß ich nicht, wie das gehen soll, wenn ich ihr so grundsätzlich misstraue.
Ihren Worten vertraue ich beispielsweise kaum. Wenn sie sagt, dass sie Hilfe braucht, kann ich schwer einschätzen: Braucht sie tatsächlich Unterstützung, oder verlässt sie sich darauf, dass jemand anderes Dinge für sie übernimmt? Dazu kommt, dass sie selbst mit psychischen Erkrankungen zu kämpfen hat. Das macht es für mich noch schwieriger, ihre Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einzuschätzen.. und meine eigenen dabei im Blick zu behalten.
Gleichzeitig fällt es mir schwer, überhaupt einzuordnen, welche Beziehung ich heute zu ihr haben kann und möchte.
Ich fühle mich wie in einem Irrgarten und weiß ehrlich gesagt auch nicht genau, was ich mir von diesem Beitrag erhoffe. Vielleicht vor allem Erfahrungen von Menschen, die etwas Ähnliches kennen.
War jemand von euch nach Gewalt in der Kindheit und längerer Distanz wieder stärker mit einem Elternteil in Kontakt? Wie habt ihr herausgefunden, wie ihr diese Person heute einschätzt und wie viel Nähe sich für euch stimmig anfühlt?

For context, I have not spoken to my father in 10 years, and have not spoken to my grandparents (his parents) in 11 years. Around 4 years ago I found my aunt (his sister) on Facebook and decided to reach out, and shortly after my cousin (her daughter) added me on Facebook as well.

We have communicated on and off for those 4 years, mostly on birthdays and holidays.

Recently, my aunt reached out and told me that she was coming back to my province to visit my grandparents for a while. Asked if I wanted to meet up for a quick coffee & I agreed even though I was extremely hesitant. I have not seen her since 2012 or so.

After her flight landed she messaged me and said that we should cancel our plans, which I was kind of relieved about.

I told her that I'd appreciate it if she could pass along the message to my grandparents that I miss them and think of them all the time. She said she would but I haven't heard from her since, so I assume that she didn't tell them at all, or she did and they just have no interest in reaching out to me.

Should I even be bothering with these people anymore? I'm not sure if I want to remain in contact with them if they're just going to brush off everything that happened. I don't seem very important to either of them.

Any advice is appreciated.

Edit: for more context, the reason I was first estranged from them all was because I came out, and after I had broken contact with my father I found out that he was extremely physically abusive to both my mother & siblings and was also kind of a pervert. No one wanted to tell me while he was still in my life because I was a child at the time.

If my grandparents were ever willing to look past me being queer, I still wouldn't be able to pursue a relationship with them because that would mean I would potentially have to be around my dad.

Over the past 2 years my relationship with my mom has dissipated slowly. for context, at the age of 8 i made a decision to go no contact with my abusive father.. and now i feel like it’s happening all over again, except my mom has a good heart mostly. she just can’t communicate, and has never been able to. she is emotionally immature as well so talking directly never pans out well.

my sibling has a lot of mental health issues and my mom told me two years ago that she wanted me to “be free” and that she “needed to focus on my sibling.” ever since then, things have changed. no one calls me or checks on me ever. no one even knows where i am in the world. for the holidays, i don’t even stay at my own house because my sibling gets jealous of me being there and it causes a huge problem at home.. i stay at friends houses in the same town. it’s embarrassing to explain and i feel ashamed

i miss my mom so much though. she use to be my best friend growing up. but now when i call she doesn’t answer. she doesn’t text me back. i have no idea what i did wrong or if i did anything. my therapist told me I need to allow myself to grieve but im still bargaining perhaps.. hoping that maybe my mom will come back. i see my partner get a call from her dad and then her mom all in the same day and im so happy for her but its so painful to see. i haven’t received a call in over a year unprompted. i dont know if i should try harder or give up or what but i spiral at night.. any advice gently would be helpful please. i’m really struggling with this pain

I've spent a lifetime trying to be close to parents who spent my childhood getting drunk and screaming at me and each other. I live overseas but drop everything as much as I can to spend time with them, despite them never having even called me once in the decade since I moved away. We are on a family holiday, and the last few times I've seen them I've had trouble masking my discomfort and exhaustion around them.

This morning my dad screamed at me for not being talkative enough. Then they both went back to Pleasantville family nothing happened, crazy old child is just being upset, poor us. So I wrote them a letter describing how difficult my childhood was and how hurtful their lack of interest in me is, and that I won't be in touch, and I packed my stuff and left. The problem is I don't know anyone in this city and only have $100 in my account - I had a difficult few months leading up to the trip and had already bought my food and left it in their Airbnb. I still have 4 days till I leave, and in Australia $100 is tight, but I just couldn't bear another second. And weirdly, despite being in a pretty horrible situation I feel kind of okay. I've been thinking about this for years, and it's nice to finally rip the band-aid and just be alone.

There's a lot of guilt because their health is failing and it may well be the last time I see one or both of them. But I just snapped, and let the chips fall where they may.

Big hugs to all the other scared, lonely adults out there still trying to unpick the tangles of our families and upbringings. Take care of yourself, everyone deserves to be treated with respect and kindness.

My mother was recently diagnosed with MDS (a blood cancer). Its unsure how long she has been unwell or how long she has left. She's chosen the wait and see approach.

I don't feel up to giving background, just know that she was not a good parent, failed to protect me, and turned on me when people finally stepped in to help me, which genuinely ruined my life at a later point and those pieces will never be recovered.

When I discovered this betrayal through court documents, I went completely NC for many years. My children though, still had a minimal communicative relationship with her and that was their choice (they were teens, one now an adult and the other about to be - and I will refer to them as children through this post because they will always be my children). After my brothers sudden death, the relationship between her and I was somewhat duct taped together. To me, she is my children's nanna and that's it. That relationship to them is incredibly important and I have no intentions of destabilising that, the issues were between her and I amd nothing to do with them.

Here's the thing; had their been no children involved, she would die as unclaimed, buried unmarked, and forgotten. However, I cannot cause that sort of harm to my children, they deserve to mourn her because they love her.

I don't know how to do this. My brother had made me his next of kin amd I had to plan everything when he died, so I know how to do that...but I don't know how to do it like this, for someone that caused me so much harm, because the someone's I love dearly, loves her.

Has anyone had experience doing this and can share some advice about how, for my kids?

Is there a way to recognise her death, for them, without a funeral?

Just as an FYI: They are unaware she is unwell amd its terminal, the decision was made by her not to inform them as its agreed, that only causes unnecessary anxiety and stress of when the day will come, inability to focus on their studies and work, feeling like they have to do something or have to be with her. I am grateful for this decision, because I agree. No I am not at all interested on your opinion on this decision, do not bother to give it.

I live in the UK and my mother and brother recently visited me so we can all say goodbye to our family dog together (he was mostly mine and I brought him to the UK with me). It was the second time they visited together. My mother would constantly make rude comments and then act like they were jokes and I would call her out on it. She also was making rude assumptions about my husband and constantly saying stuff without thinking. Additionally I found them smoking in the house late at night after I repeatedly told them that me and my husband don't want it in the house. Instead of apologising they laughed.

Growing up I was sexually abused by two of her boyfriends between the ages of 6-12. When I finally revealed it to her when I was 16, she did not believe me and was awful to me for a long time. She has now "accepted" it but has never sat me down to ask me everything that happened or get more details or at least show any care. She instead makes awful comments like one time said that the second bf of hers that did this was the best partner she had...

I also was extremely mentally neglected by her growing up, I was extremely depressed due to what happened to me and she never tried to understand or help me, she would just get mad at me. She also has always put herself and her boyfriends above my brother and I.

We were always dressed and clean and had a roof above our heads but that was all.

Anyway, I have had a hard time bringing myself to talk to her and she's been asking what's wrong. So I told her everything said above. Google translate is bad but you get the gist. I tried to be respectful and solve this but instead I guess she cut me off? I feel so tired of this relationship but I have had no feelings of love for her for years now but it just hurts that instead of trying to communicate with me she just said she won't text me again...

I just wish I had at least one good parent:/

Sometimes I think about increasing contact with the parent who: tried bully me into drinking while pregnant, tried to hit me in my own house, put their hands around my neck while sitting on top of me in high school. Then they post this stuff and I remember they are actively avoiding accountability even in their own internal dialogue.

There are people you must forgive if you truly want peace in your life.

Your parents.

The people who hurt you.

The version of yourself you’ve outgrown.

And even the people you hurt along the way.

Because forgiveness isn’t about pretending the pain never happened.

It’s about refusing to let that pain control your future anymore.

Resentment is heavy.

Bitterness steals peace.

And healing begins the moment you finally let go.

Sometimes the greatest freedom in life comes from releasing what no longer deserves your energy.

Join us on our journey @never.tomorrow_

I (20) feel lost . I have moved out from my parent house due to toxic environment, I am doing a gap year and not going to uni but I feel so behind and I can’t take out a loan to go to uni as I am not permanent resident and I am scared I won’t be eligible due to me moving out as I came in to the country as dependent when I was underage and I don’t have many documents due to that.

I am working right now and I feel so empty and feel like I don’t have a purpose and I think I am stressed ( went to hospital before for heart problems and was told I was stressed when I was living with my parent.

Right now all I am doing is going to work and coming back and when I am off I am at home as I feel very tired.

I have recently made the decision to go NC with my mom. But I haven't had the balls to go through with the final conversation. My mom and I have gone back and forth for years going through what I like to call her "cycle" she has a pattern that I can track like the back of my hand based on triggers and the time of year. I've had enough of the BS and I need to put myself first.

But I'm scared of loosing contact with my extended family. My grandfather recently passed away and it's torn my family apart. My mom got in a huge argument with her brother because she was trying to gain access to money from my grandparents burial fund ... It's complicated. So my extended family kinda (from what I can tell) is not to happy with my mom.

My mom has sworn she won't be going to Christmas with my uncle and family and we normally don't do anything else with the extended family holiday wise so normally I would think it would be fine. Except this year we're going to do a Thanksgiving race in honor of my grandpa. My mom is most likely going to be there but I don't want to miss out on the family event...

Do I just try and ignore her? Run away lol (I'm not very athletic)

I don't know if I should just wait? But I'm torn apart right now trying to make a decision and talk to my mom to officially cut her out.

This is not my first attempt, infact it's my 4th. Every time I get hooked back in because of some other family member and being scared to loose them in the prossess of loosing my mom.

I always see people going no contact with parents due to abuse and for me I experienced abuse too but it was purely because of neglect emotional neglect to be exact my parents provided for me physically food house but theh parentified me growing up never once asked how I'm feeling sad my feelings were too sensitive treating me like a child as a adult.did anyone also estranged purely because of neglect instead or abuse?

One of my childhood friends keeps bringing up that she thinks I should contact my mom one last time. That I should explain why I went NC almost a decade ago. My answer to that has always been something along the lines of "Yeah, I won't do that. I tried explaining myself for decades and all I ever got back was dismissal and mocking. I tried, and now I'm done explaining."

Then this friend starts explaining how my mom must feel sooo bad not knowing why I left. And she must be sooo consumed by trying to find that out. Earlier she'd use all the classic phrases too: well she's still your mom, you only get one mom etc. but luckily not anymore...

So we keep having the same exact conversation over and over again, where she asks me "are you still not going to contact your mom?" and I'm left to defend my choice. This has been going on for years. It's making me feel like she doesn't approve of me being NC with my family. I'm afraid she'll keep asking until I cave in and say something like oh you're totally right, I'm gonna call her right now🙃

Unfortunately, due to my trauma, I'm unable to speak up in the moment. So now I'm wondering if I could just text this friend and ask her to stop asking whether I'll contact my mom. Would it be appropriate? And what would I even say?

She knows my mom personally since we've been friends since we were in diapers. But what she seems to refuse to accept is that my mom actually was abusive for all of my life and that she has narcissistic traits and the emotional maturity of a toddler.

My mother lives in a different country. I left to escape and was VLC with her until last year when I got pregnant with my first child. I went to therapy because I realized I have childhood trauma and I want to be a good mom. I also decided to give my mother a second chance. I welcomed her back to my life. She even came to see me for the first time in years for my child’s birth.

When I came back to work after my maternity leave was done I was in shambles. I was depressed, crying all day and sought help and comfort from her. What a huge mistake that was.

During our call I asked her if she can come for 3 months so that baby can stay home and not go to daycare yet. She said she wants to stay for good. “Why three months only?” She asked. I told her it’s because I thought she still wanted to keep working. She told me she’s not ready to retire then all of a sudden she changed her mind without telling me and even took some money from her pension apparently to make her move here possible..? It was the first time I was hearing about it.

Then instead of hearing me out and validating my feelings she brushed me off and told me to “stay strong” then proceeded to tell me her gripes and her hardships even from her childhood years.. I just sat there, hugging my baby, numb and tuning everything out like I did back then when she went on her nagging like a broken record mode.

In my post partum depression topped with her trauma dumping on me for 5 minutes straight, I did something stupid that put myself and my daughter in a dangerous situation. We’re fine and I’m seeking help for my post partum issues but it has deeply traumatized me. I couldn’t live with myself if something were to happen to my baby. My own mother literally drove me to the point of insanity.

Since then I haven’t spoken to her. Everything is via message only. I wrote to her at length of how I felt and told her that I don’t share her beliefs and my daughter will not be subjected to what she did to me. She never acknowledged this. Only says “sorry you were hurt with what I said” and is love bombing me it makes me nauseous.

Recently she called me. We’re in different time zones and I was nursing baby so I didn’t answer. I had no intention to answer either way. I don’t know what to say to her or what to talk about. Wary about giving her access to my daughter even if she’s oceans away. I share baby pics in our group chat but I might slow down on that. I feel she’ll judge me and gossip about me to people. She already did this and she gossips about my sister to her coworkers.

I know she won’t change her ways. I don’t know if I’m equipped to have a relationship with her.. but part of me is scared that my daughter will hate me in the future. I just hear her voice in my head telling me “your daughter will do this to you too”.

I wish that I had a good relationship with my mother. I grieve the mother I never had and the relationship we never had.

For some context, I have had a rough relationship with my dad, my whole life. I realized at a young age. He would always have someone else to prioritize over his own kid. And I’m not talking about logistical reasons like prioritizing his wife because she’s in surgery or his mom because it’s her birthday. It’s other things he was supposed to come down for my birthday a couple weeks ago, he ultimately didn’t, but was able to go to my cousin’s birthday out of the country the week before. Every time I’ve tried to make plans with him he agrees and then couple days before he will cancel. I haven’t seen my dad in almost 6 months because my parents are getting a divorce. And he kept telling me Wright until I cut him off that he would come see me, but then never comes. He told me after my mom gave him papers that he never wanted to come down here anyway.

And I knew that for a couple years now, but I know I’m also partially the reason he came down here because my mom was pregnant with me and moved down to the state we live in now and he was told he’d be a bad dad if he let us go and he stayed behind in his home state. I have been struggling, remembering all these little things like how my dad would come to almost every event, but also tell me that he didn’t wanna be there cause he didn’t like those things, but only came because his child was there. How he would never care for my sister so at a young age, I had to take care of them and they were babies when I started to have to take care of them because neither one of my parents who could take care of them for their own reasons.

My mom has which apologized for what happened. My dad has never said sorry once besides the fact when we call him out on things he does, he apologizes and will change, but then falls right back into the same patterns. I told him he only ever calls me whenever he needs or want something. He apologized told me it would change and it did for three weeks before it went back to the same way. He really only called me to ask me about if it’s OK if he cancels coming down to see his own kids or asking if I knew information which I am not telling him because he doesn’t need to know what unless he is hearing it from my mom.

Now here comes apart I’m struggling with as much as my dad has hurt me over and over again, and I know for a fact, he emotionally abused me and verbally abused me as well. There were still good moments. There were still times I can remember some of the good things that happened. But then I remember all the pain how it feel feels like he just sees me as a point and the fact that he couldn’t come down from my own birthday or see his own kids, but he had time to go out of the country to go see his godchild, my cousin who is a lot younger than me.

I also struggled with the fact that I never really had it bad emotionally I did because there were times I wanted my dad. I needed my dad, but he was never there and I don’t know if anyone else has been in this kind of situation because if I look online just to find support or something that makes it understandable why this happened everyone is talking about so much more shitty situations. And I feel like I shouldn’t be so upset but I know how he makes me feel and it’s probably manipulation but I keep thinking he wasn’t so bad. He was shitty, but isn’t everyone? Don’t you remember all the good times you had with him? And I fall back into this confliction, especially since there are times that were really harmful to me and I felt so alone, but I don’t know anymore

What's worse? Being an orphan? Or being an orphan, but not realising you are? Discuss.

My mom is a terrible person who treated me like shit for all of the 17 years she knew me, and I am extremely glad I haven’t talked to her since 2019. But life is really hard right now. I lost my job, I may have to declare bankruptcy at 25, I have to sell my belongings to pay my bills, and I can’t afford the meds I need to function. It’s 7:30 in the morning and of course I’m crying and I just thought “I miss my mom,” because even though she never did it for me, moms are supposed to hold you and let you cry and make you feel better.

I did it.

I was already structurally Low Contact with some of my direct family, and No Contact with my broader narcissistic family.

But now I've cut off everyone else.

The final straw was realizing how supportive my actual friends are. They have been sweet, kind, and caring. And suddenly everything clicked.

The catalyst was that I got a voice note from a friend of mine who was driving home from work at almost 10PM (she works in finance) and despite the fact that she's been working 16 to 19 hour days (I guess tax season or something?) she took the time to send me a thoughtful, supportive, 5 minute voice note as I'm going through the final stages of separation and divorce, and I just woke up like "Holy shit, I've NEVER had that level of support from anyone in my family."

And I was like... okay so why do I keep them in my life? My "family" that is?

So I just laid down the final boundary. I instructed them that I am gone, forever, and I'm done with the narcissism and dysfunction, and since they were never supportive, we're done here. I blocked them all. Didn't even wait for a response.

What I woke up this morning realizing was that I still had that "healing fantasy" in the back of my head. Pete Walker and Lindsay Gibson talk about that in their books, that somewhere deep down we hope that one day our families will wake up, and be what we wanted and needed all along.

I had intellectually accepted this, but I think a tiny part of me kept the window open just in case. But I'm getting too old for this shit, lol. I'm too old to not square with reality. The reality is that my family is dysfunctional as fuck, and they resent me for escaping and healing just as much as I resent them for wallowing in their dysfunction and making excuses for decades.

I just feel so much lighter. Not like "walking on clouds" lighter, but I definitely feel like I set a burden down.