Here’s what I would. Start with a non-committal, “Yes, I got your message”. If that doesn’t end things (it will with some people, but I am reasonably sure it wouldn’t’ve with my mother), then say something like, “I have my reasons which I would rather not talk about.” It might work, but probably not. Next, “Look you do not want to know my reasons, so bugger off.” After that you must play it by ear, but in the end tell her, “Mom you asked for it, so here it is.”
I think what you said was just right, and nicely diverted the conversation elsewhere.
I don’t know you or your mama, but I can say this.
I carried around The Secret for 35 years. First person I told was my Mig, and then only after we’d been together for years. My daughter heard us talking so she knew then. Then friends online. Then a few friends in real life. Each time someone knew, I grew a little.
I was always so scared to tell my big brother though. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because I was terrified he wouldn’t believe me. My brother is the person I admire most in the world, but he has a lot of burdens, didn’t want to add to them, didn’t want his relationship with my father to be tainted…ANY EXCUSE I could find not to tell him. I thought my dad was gone forever anyway. I hadn’t seen him in 20 years or so and knew I was safe (after years of counseling) with him on the other side of the country so it was best just to keep it quiet and let them have a relationship of occasional phone calls and visits. My brother knows my father is a bit on the messed up side. Drinking, floating about through life, never amounting to much, so my brother doesn’t think he’s some perfect good guy; but he doesn’t know what I went through.
But then my father decided to move to town. To LIVE with my brother.
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I told him a while back. Not everything, and he didn’t ask for details. I think he may have thought I was exaggerating, but whatever. The truth is out and I feel better. My brother, well he’ll just have to get over it. These things hurt but if the truth is keeping you and your mom from being closer, tell her the truth.
Heh, I gave my brother a little outline a few years ago at my sisters wedding - we don’t meet up much. My dad died when my bro was about 16, so his memories have a bit of a rosy glow - or did have. I’m really the black sheep of the family and getting a bit tired of it, now at least he has an idea why.
My sister I mentioned a few things to some years ago, poor sis, she’s a year older than me and immediately said “where was I?” That’s pretty sad because of course she feels she could have done something to protect me, but we were all just little kids. Dad used tricks to get them out of the way, and they fell for it. She said it helped to understand me better. I was painted as the difficult child.
**
Hari Seldon** - you’re right, if she mentions it again I’ll take it further. There was some confrontation, social workers, hospital trips and a spell in a childrens home for me (I can’t remember how long), so some things were done, I don’t know if this bloke was before or after she thought it had stopped. I guess if anyone starts saying what a wonderful person he was I’ll put them straight.
I’ve always felt like the black sheep too. I was always the troublemaker although I really wasn’t that much of a trouble at all. It’s not easy on a kid or an adult to keep such secrets is it?
Speaking from the other side of the issue, sometimes I wish I had kept everything a secret. I was kind of outed against my will and it was like a bomb going off in my family, with everyone pointing the finger at me. I was never a black sheep – I was the Golden Girl – and I still got the blame-the-victim treatment. Not only that but the truth created rifts in my family that a decade later still have not healed, and probably won’t.
It’s easy to talk about the relief and value of the truth being out there, but there is always a price you pay for truth – such as finding out the true nature of people you thought you could trust, and being forced to defend yourself in a situation where you were not at fault.
I’m not just saying this for bitterness’ sake, but because sometimes I think we have a tendency to idealize what it will be like if everyone knows what happened. There is nothing, no amount of telling, or validation, that makes it better. We speak of the ‘‘truth,’’ but really, who can know your truth? Nobody can understand the ‘‘truth’’ of what you went through but you. They can understand the facts but they can’t understand the experience, and the only person on earth who can validate your experience is you.
That’s just another perspective, it might not be relevant to your situation. It’s just what I’ve learned from my own experience.
As a Mother, let me answer that I would absolutely 100% want to know. If there was any chance that by sharing this knowledge I could lessen my child’s pain (or as in this case cease to increase it!) I would be horrified that the information was not shared with me.
She has a right to the outrage she will feel. She has a right to offer you the apology you deserve. She has a right to be treated like an adult, and to understand the reality that occurred around her.
As a Mother, I might be angry that I hadn’t known sooner. But just think - she may even now be deciding against some small purchase, in order to buy flowers for his funeral. She has a right to know that’s a grave she should be spitting on.
Unless you have reason to believe that her response will increase your pain rather than decreasing it (and such Mothers do, unfortunately exist,) Tell her.
Everything posted here is helpful, whether related to my experience or not. She just sent me his obituary today, I’ll probably compose my own and just email it to myself, if I get prodded anymore I’ll email to my sis, bro and mum. My mother betrayed me in later years in other ways, and I’ve never been one for confrontation unless heavily provoked, probably part of the helplessness, defenselessness I felt as a child. It’s just my cake and I have to eat it. I have had counseling and have a couple of friends I can talk to, but all your thoughts based on a snap shot are really helpful. It’s very tough when this stuff rears its head and you know again it’s a huge part of your make up and have to work through your feelings.
Honestly you sound so level-headed and realistic about this it really speaks to what an incredibly strong, mature, and healthy person you must be. If my ex-step-Dad died tomorrow and everybody was going on about what a wonderful person he was, I think I would be in a much sorrier state than you appear to be. And remember that you achieved this stability without much help from your family. This can be a celebration of how far you’ve come.
[quote=“olivesmarch4th, post:29, topic:547594”]
In spite of and because of them unfortunately. The counselor said I’d been coping on my own since I was seven.
{{{{{Bam Boo Gut}}}}}
Hating isn’t going to get you no where or solve anything.
Hurting your mother isn’t going to help him
Just say “I’m sorry” and forget it. You don’t HAVE to be sorry, it’s just something to say.
The longer you carry around trash the more it stinks, it’s time to throw that trash out.
You probably need some counseling to help you. As cruel as it sounds, you’re not the only one this has happened to and you won’t be the last.
But that doesn’t mean you have to let it control you. You only get a short time on Earth. Once you’re dead, you’re gonna be dead a LONG time, so every minute you spend hating is one less minute you have to ENJOY life.
Start today, if you are still hurting from things in your past, you need to get over them and if you can’t do that, then get some help to do this.
It’s in style to say “You can’t get over something like that,” but you can learn to cope with it. There are people who were in concentration camps, look at the people in the Seige of Lenningrad, and all sorts of war horrors. They had it worse than you.
Hurting your mother is lashing out. It won’t help. Now is the time you can go on hurting or you can DO SOMETHING about it.
The choice is yours.
You will make a lot of decisons in your life, but I know from experience, you’ll never be happy with the choices you make out of anger and spite
Something I have been told to do to help me with some of the issues I have is to sit down across from an empty chair and imagine a person who hurt you is sitting there, and say all things you’ve wanted to say but haven’t or can’t. Do this when you’re alone and don’t hold back. Scream, curse, whatever. It actually does help and you can do this for each of the people involved. It can be a little emotionally draining, though, so choose times you can take it easy after wards.
I would like you to state a clear example from this thread where the OP has indicated she has not coped with this situation. She’s not talking about slitting her wrists, she’s talking about being sad. She’s not talking about telling her mother out of spite, she’s talking about telling her for the sake of their relationship. There is absolutely zero pathology here.
This is the second time in the past week I have seen you come into a thread and minimize someone else’s pain. Until your father has allowed several different men to rape you as a child I would really lay off the ‘‘oh, it could be so much worse’’ rhetoric. Chances are you can’t even fathom what it’s like, much less what ‘‘coping’’ with such a thing would actually look like. As someone who actually does have a clue, I assure you she’s coping spectacularly well.
And there is really no scientific rationale for ranking trauma by order of magnitude. There are so many factors aside from the event itself which predict psychological trauma that you can’t look at Holocaust survivor A and immediately conclude the experience was more devastating than for Earthquake survivor B. The only bit of knowledge we do have, however, is that rape is pretty much the worst trauma anyone can experience. The proportion of rape victims who go on to develop PTSD is higher than for any other trauma. We also know that repeated trauma, particularly during childhood, can have a much broader and more pervasive impact on a person’s psyche than if they experienced the trauma as fully-formed adults. So the only bit of data we really have for objectively ranking trauma indicates that nope, there really isn’t much worse than what the OP has gone through.
Bamboo Gut, I know you are older than me and perhaps further along in your healing journey, but I am impressed as hell with how far you’ve come. I really admire you.
Thanks Olives your posts are so valuable - I didn’t really have the energy to respond to people like Markxxx post except to say you can’t spell “siege”.
BBG, I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, but I wanted to give you a virtual {{hug}}. (You too for that matter, olive)
Or Leningrad (perhaps merging it with the other person who read a book on Marx [and isn’t Marx getting tired by now?]).
Not speaking your truth, out of a feeling of tenderness for the the feelings of someone who should have protected the child you, is misguided, in my opinion. It’s just more denial. And I think you can feel that, viscerally.
Own your shit, even to your, ‘tried to protect you but…’, mother. It’s empowering, always.
Not saying the words is just a rationalizing way of participating in someone else’s denial. It’s not blaming her to say the truth. If she gets all butthurt it’s just Mama Drama, you’ll know it when you see it. Rest assured, on some level, she knows it too.
You were actually injured, for her to act all injured, at simply hearing the truth spoken, is an attempt to manipulate you into supporting her denial. Refuse to. Do it once, and she won’t ever press you again on such things. Which is as it should be, actually.
Have you considered that your mother might be pushing this guy’s death on you (why does she think you’d want the obit???) to *begin *a dialogue about it? Maybe she has doubts about what actually happened and her part in it? She may be looking for reassurance that she did, indeed, protect you, but is fearful to learn the truth. I think you owe it to yourself and to her to discuss this history with her. She will feel bad when you tell her; she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t. But in my humble opinion, you two need to start being honest with each other. Get your counselor to help you set it up. Good luck. Wishing you all the best.
legalsnugs and **elbows **you’re quite right, it’s not as if she can say - hey did this dude ever diddle you? She’s been less than understanding in the past, quite derisive and worse, but then she’s not playing with a full deck. The nature of this stuff is that quite often you yourself aren’t playing with a full deck. It wasn’t until this guy showed up a couple of years ago that I remembered his part in all this. First an uncomfortable repulsed feeling, followed by a recollection of events, or rather he slide into place in a jigsaw of events.
I’m still in two minds as to what to do.