Making Peace

Old 01-23-2009, 05:48 AM
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Making Peace

Earlier tonight I came across a baby picture of my mother that makes me want to cry every time I see it. There is a look of fear and anguish in her eyes, and I know where it comes from (I'll get to that in a second). But everytime I see that photo, all my anger towards her simply evaporates and I just want to hug her and tell her that I'm sorry.
I'm crying right now as I write this, I'm really emotional right now with a combination of PMS and withdrawals.

My mom had a very crazy, terrible childhood. She was my grandmother's first child soon after my G-Ma moved to the US from Russia. My mother was conceived in Shanghai, China during the revolution. My mother does not know who her father is, and my grandmother, after sixty years, still refuses to tell her. This has been very hard on my mom, and a huge source of resentment, especially over the last few years.

My G-Ma, with my then three year old mom married a farmer here who had a few kids of his own. They both had six more kids. The horrible man decided that since he wasn't technically related to my mom, he could have his way with my mother whenever he wanted under the nose of my grandmother. He molested her for many years, and she was raped by one of her step-brothers.
My G-mother treated her horribly, especially in comparison to her other kids.

I am not sure what happened between the time my mom left home and when she married my older sister's father. I know she was not well and pretty messed up after all that. Unfortunately back then, there wasn't much attention to parental abuse, counseling or self-help books. So, like many she turned to drugs and alcohol and a crazy lifestyle to numb her pain.
She met my sister's dad, got married, he turned out to be abusive towards her (though now, I think alot of went both ways). I think my mom was acting out her anger towards her step-brother and her step-dad on men she got involved with. Just a theory. My dad wasn't that much different, but alot crazier.

Fast forward to five years old, me, my mother and my sisters are all living in a crazy house with the electricity constantly being shut off. My mother is drinking almost every night to the point she can't walk and my eldest sister has to take care of her, and as a result, my other sister and I too.
My dad, who is freshly out of prison for armed robbery and trying to turn his life around, is privy to this and sees it as an opportunity to have full custody of me. He does, for a short while, until my mom get sober and gets me back. She is sober for seven years, though very emotionally unavailable, distant and treats me as a burden. I am fifteen when she relapses and she turns from quiet and despondent to raging psycho. Acting out violently to me or anyone else who was around and blamed the other person (most often me) for her attacks and generally gets away with it, destroying my character to relatives, family friends and even neighbors by telling them what a horrible, ungrateful daughter I was to her. This goes on for a couple of years until some circumstance or another allows me to fully remove myself from her. Nothing has been resolved. My sister's marriages and childbirths kind of stole the limelight away from me. Now all my mother's attention is focused on them and our relationship now is very strained. When we do talk (which is rare nowadays) it's uncomfortable and there's an unspoken rule that I'm not allowed to bring up the past or I'll get hung up on.
She is still drinking, though I don't know to what extent or what damage she may be causing. I have a feeling that she's probably never going to stop on her own. She has tried to stop many times over the last couple of years, but I think she has given up trying.

The feeling I have alot lately is that time is running out. She's sixty, she's not in the best of health (chain smokes) and is on a variety of prescription medications for this and that which cause her to have bad side-effects and have to get more drugs to get rid of the side-effects.
I a worried sick about her and I feel I need to make amends to her somehow, soon. Who knows, maybe she will live to be ninety, but my biggest fear is her passing away and not making peace with her. Second to that, my biggest fear is her passing and not having any idea what kind of hell she put me through while growing up.
I have pretty much accepted the fact that she'll never be sorry, or that she'll ever really know. So I know that my apology will be one-sided. I am really sad for what she went through while growing up herself. It's an interesting and very awkward paradigm of what came first, the chicken or the egg?
"Mom, I'm really sorry for what you went through during your childhood. Now will you apologize to me for what you did to me during mine?"
Whose is worse? Who should be the one whose sorry?


Thank you, I really just needed to get this out.
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Old 01-23-2009, 07:26 AM
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"Mom, I'm really sorry for what you went through during your childhood. Now will you apologize to me for what you did to me during mine?"
Whose is worse? Who should be the one whose sorry?
This is the tough part, for me at least. I know I can't ask my dad (89-year-old alcoholic raging tyrannical control freak) to apologize -- he has no recovery and certainly feels that he has nothing to apologize for. I don't have as much knowledge of his childhood as you have of your mom's -- so that's tough to gauge.

I don't think there is "a one who should be sorry." I certainly think my dad should be sorry -- but that ain't happening. Asking for an apology would be just as effective as asking him to stop drinking. (I might add that from time to time, he does "try to cut down," but it never lasts. That's how it usually works with alcoholics -- there's nothing we can do about it.)

What I'm getting at is that we are powerless over alcohol, people, places, and things. I'd like to be able to come to terms with my dad while he's still living -- but that seems impossible, unless he has an epiphany and goes into recovery (which seems unlikely, although stranger things have happened). Short of that, I just know I'm going to have to keep working on it while he's still here and after he's gone. I don't see his eventual passing as some kind of point of no return, though, where I have to make amends while he's still here or I'm going to be messed up for life. I'm working on it now, I'll keep at it while my dad's still living, and I'll still be doing it after he's gone. If he's not receptive, he's not receptive -- that's not going to stop me from recovering.

We may "make amends to such people wherever possible," but we're really doing it for ourselves, so we can let go, heal and move on. And -- just to use a cliche -- expectations are premeditated resentments -- so I have no expectation that my dad is going to apologize for anything... even though I think he should!

T

Last edited by tromboneliness; 01-23-2009 at 07:28 AM. Reason: changed "know" to "now"
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Old 01-23-2009, 08:14 AM
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Hey LaDita. Your mom's story sounds like a terrible one to live, and it sounds like she was very isolated from learning healthy life skills. Two thoughts jump at me when reading your post.

(1) Remember it is not your place to apologize for your mom's childhood; you didn't make it terrible for her. And based on how you've described your mom, she has not dealt with her pain at all (does she have the strength to put it into perspective? or does she avoid even talking about it all the time? "past is in the past" - that kind of attitude). I think you deserve to have this conversation, but starting out with an apology might increase her hostility and resistance to hearing what you have to say. You'll focus her on her pain, and then try switch her back to yours. Just my two cents on that.

(2) I understand the driving need to feel validated by a parent who has done their child genuine wrong. But be prepared to be let down. Your mother has been incapable of recognizing your needs for the majority of your life; she might not be any closer to recognizing them now (whether thru avoidance or denial). Use this conversation as an opportunity to put your side on the table, and try to leave it there with her. If you don't get closure from her, at least accomplishment that. Leave a little of this load behind knowing you did everything you could to save your relationship with your mother before needing to distance from this source of toxic feelings. Come back and tell us how it goes. Know this right now: no one here will tell you it's your fault if it doesn't go well.

(3)
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Old 01-23-2009, 04:14 PM
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LaDita,
In an ideal world, forgiveness would lead to remorse from the forgiven, and the remorseful would always receive forgiveness.
We don't live there.
Alcohol is a high octane fuel for denial. We can't expect to be forgiven nor can we expect remorse when we do forgive.
Forgiving and asking for forgiveness are an acts of opening a door - a door to freedom for both. Once you ask for or give forgiveness, you walk through that door to freedom from anger and guilt. The other person can choose to walk through or not - that is their decision.
Lewis Smedes wrote an excellent book (The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How 1996) on forgiving that I read a few years back. Regarding reciprocity in forgiveness, he says:
Six good reasons for forgiving people who wounded us even
though they do not seem to care-six reasons to forgive people
who never say they are sorry:
1. Forgiving is something good we do for ourselves; we should not
have to wait for permission from the person who did something bad
to us.
2. When we forgive someone who does not say he’s sorry, we are not
issuing him a welcome back to the relationship we had before; if he
wants to come back he must come in sorrow.
3. To give forgiveness requires nothing but a desire to be free of our
resentment. To receive forgiveness requires sorrow for what we did
to give someone reason to be resentful.
4. We cannot expect to be forgiven without sorrow for the wrong we
did. We should not demand sorrow for the wrong someone did to
us.
5. Repentance does not earn the right to forgiveness; it only prepares
us to receive the gift.
6. A wounded person should not put her future happiness in the hands
of the person who made her miserable.
You could write a letter to your mother and leave it up to her to read it, or you could semi-casually mention that you are reading about forgiveness (Smedes, the bible, the koran, whatever) and keep bringing it up. Just a suggestion.
Forgiving (yourself and your mom) is an act of empowerment. It is something you can control. Not forgiving or not showing remorse is an act of giving power away to someone else.
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