EveningRose

When I see this question, here or on the infidelity board, I usually (always) answer NO. We all know it rarely does any good.

And yet as summer comes and my birthday approaches, I know I'm going to once again get the mushy I Love You Daughter birthday card from my mother--the same mother who doesn't appear to have noticed she and I haven't spoken in about 4 years; the same mother who is telling untrue and ugly stories about me at church; who has spent decades telling anyone and everyone, including my children, husband, best friend, and in-laws, untrue and ugly stories about me that affect my relationships with them; the same mother who will tell me to my face I deserve bad treatment from other people because I did such and such (when in fact I did no such thing and have no clue where she even comes up with this stuff, as these are people she doesn't know who live thousands of miles from her.)

This would be the same woman who never misses a Sunday at church, tithes, goes to Perpetual Adoration, says her Rosary daily, is active at her church (although I hear other people are relieved when she isn't at their table), and considers herself a paragon of virtue and long-suffering.

She's the most negative person I've ever known. She makes snarky, nasty comments about people she doesn't even know when she passes them in a store. She tells ugly stories about people long after they're dead. She's passed on to me her negative opinion of one of my siblings, my cousins, my aunts, uncles, grandfather, and father.

And yet, I think she's got severely twisted thinking to the point of mentally ill, but functioning. I think she really believes these things about me, though God knows why. I think she's locked herself so deep in her own bitterness that it really doesn't occur to her that she's badmouthing me and damaging my relationships with other people. I think in her heart she believes she means it when she sends these cards claiming to love me.

Each year, I just stare at them in amazement, wondering how someone who says and does the things she does to me can claim to love me.

Do I finally write her a letter and explain that her behavior is not in the least loving, that it is cruel and harmful and unjust? Do I bother pointing out yet again the truth of the situations she is twisting against me? In some cases, I have told her exactly why I did what I did, yet she insists on telling people differently, so apparently she also thinks I'm a liar?

Or do I pound my own head with a 2x4 and remind myself that virtually none of these attempts at communicating with toxic people ever, ever, ever, ever helps anything?

I open these stupid cards each year just in case there's an actual letter, an actual attempt to mend fences with her own daughter, and I'm telling myself I'm being stupid and to just toss them from now on, unopened.

Melbadaze

Hi, I am estranged from my foo. Yrs ago when I first entered recovery i made the mistake of contacting my mother believing that she would respond too me differently . She didn't. I had begun to change but her insanity remained. It took me a long while to get back to where I was before I contacted her.

It's been 5yrs now and I too sometimes wonder what it would be like to make contact. You see it's the part of her I loved that hoped too connect with but the reality is , it will be the part that hurt and abused me that would be there still.

Sorry not sure if this helps.

DavidG

I can't relate to the exact situation... the situation I had was I was bullied and scapegoated by my family, including my mother...

...I expected my mother to be above that. Mum was #7 in a family of 8 kids- and she ran with the hares and hunted with the hounds.

When our dad died he left his share of the property to his two favourites. I had paid the mortgage, rates and water for years. And kept him in his home. So in the end we lost our home and property. and the information floating around was false.

And mum did nothing to check it out or to correct it.

I actually shunned her for two or three years. She got the message. Then I sent her a well timed letter. it just set down clearly what my grievance was. No blame, no shame from me... just the facts... She never mentioned the letter... ...but things turned right around- We spent time together- went horse back riding together- I helped her with her animals and painted her roof...

...as she was dying I spent time with her in her home.

That was a good finale for me...

ESH... all we can give, all we can offer... If I can care for myself I can care for anyone!

:>)

David.

EveningRose

Silly question, but what is ESH?

It's interesting to hear a story--yours may be the only I've ever heard--where The Letter actually has a positive effect.

And reading it made me realize I don't even know what it is I'd hope to gain from sending it. I don't actually want to spend time with my mother. I realize how much I have no interest in spending time with her on reading your post; how much I simply do not even like her or want to be around her.

I actually quit calling and going to her home not because of anything she said or did to or about me, but because the last time I was there, she spent the whole time criticizing other people, complaining, ranting, and just generally directing a three hour monologue at me with absolutely no interest in anything I had to say--which is pretty much the way it's been for the last 45 years.

You've given me more to think about.

Maybe I hope the upshot of the letter would be for her to stop and think and just quit smearing my name, although I realized some time ago that most people who know me don't give any credence to her words, and I don't much care anymore about the opinions of those who do believe her.

Chris1000101

ESH is Experience, Strength and Hope.


I do not know about anyone else on here but I have cut all ties to my biological family except my sister. She changed her full name and has also cut all ties. Should I receive anything in the mail, and it has been years, I return it to the post office, unopened, with the stamp, “Deceased – Return To Sender”.

DavidG

oh ESH stands for "experience strength and hope"!

What we experience in our FOO [family of origin] is...
er... well I should say what I experienced...

crisis, drama, years of no communication, put-downs...
all of which I took personally!!!


Here is ACA we can talk about stuff... we can talk about
what we want to do, what we would like to do... etc etc...

...so we get to >think< about our situation...

this might seem simple or stoopid to a lot of people!

But not to in ACA... taking baby steps... to learn what
I/we need to learn to live well...

-Da.

DesertEyes

I used to get those too. What I figured out, after some 12 step work and a couple good therapists, is that the problem was not with _them_. The problem was that _I_ was speaking in a different language from theirs. In _my_ language the word "love" has some nice definitions involving kittens and bunny rabbits and respect and consideration and so on.

However, in _their_ language, the sounds that put together sound like the letters L.O.V.E. are _not_ refering to _my_ language. In my family of origin the sounds are more like the sounds made by a vulture as it stakes out it's territory over a carcass against a flock of competing vultures.

Once I figured that out I was able to translate from their language into mine, and it all made perfect sense. I decide I liked my own language with the bunny rabbits a whole lot more than their vulture language.

Well you can, but wouldn't it be easier to just xerox one explanation and just keep sending that instead of repeating yourself? ( okay, bad joke )

When I was opening my letters I was not looking for an actual letter, or an attempt to mend fences. What I was looking for was a magic wand. No really. I was looking for some kind of magic that would allow me to change my parents, change my past, and give me the childhood I never had.

Every time I read one of those christmas cards ( mine were christmas cards, they could never remember my birthday ) I was trying to read between the lines and see if maybe, somehow, I had missed some subtle little angle into their mind that I could exploit... open up a tiny crack and begin the process of changing _them_ .

Maybe, if I could change them, I would not hurt so much anymore.

Eventually, thanks to recovery, I figured out that my need for a "magic wand" could be replace with a "magic clock". ( yeah I know it sounds silly but my first therapist was all about personal myth therapy ) The idea is that whenever I felt hurt by my family I looked at a clock and noted the time. The time on the clock is _now_. The time when I was hurt was _years_ ago. Getting them to change was not going to change the past. Continuing to try to change the past was actually hurting my future. I was not living in the present, how could I ever have a future?

That whole business about ACoA's living in the past in order to change it and wasting the future is where the original version of the ACA serenity prayer came from.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the past I cannot change
The courage to change the future I can
And the wisdom to start today.

Well, I never actually tried that What _did_ work for me was to do something nice for myself whenever I felt that overwhelming pain. Something small. I would allow myself 30 minutes to read a fun book, or go walk around the block and enjoy the trees just because, or if it was late at night spend 10 minutes looking out the window and see if I could spot a star through the smog.

Hang in there EveningRose. From reading all the other posts on this thread I can see that we all feel much the same things, and we all get well little by little. You will too, just keep working at it one small bit at a time.

Mike

tromboneliness

Get the clue-by-four!!!

But you knew that! Seriously, there is no way she is fooling anyone (other than herself) when she badmouths you.

My Codependent™ sister used to actually write and send letters to my Dad -- they always just got him annoyed, and nothing ever changed. But the write-sleep-on-shred method is sometimes useful -- get the stuff down on paper, for your own benefit, and then don't actually send it, because it "just wastes time and annoys the pig" (as in "Never try to teach a pig to sing.")

T

Kialua

Even when I got nice cards from my folks, it just didn't mean much. I didn't really care. But again I think that's because I forgave them so long ago and didn't expect anything in return. My Mom continued telling lies till she died, and I continued not expecting any different. I must say the last lie was a doozy, but water under the bridge.