Community Chat

[Greeneyedlady21]

Some men aren't meant to be fathers either, and are not nurturers.

I am only speaking of my own situation. My Dad was abusive and not emotionally available. Not nurturing. It was only closer to his death last year that I learned things about him, and put things I already knew about him into a focused picture. I felt very sad for my Dad, and understood him so much better.

I am so grateful that for three years before he died, I had the relationship with him that I always wanted to have. As a child and adult, I had previously been afraid of him.

This is only my experience, I don't judge the experiences of others. Family pain is painful beyond words.

[chickenbutt]

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@suzyQ3 wrote:

I hope that some can benefit from reading the book. Personally, I've dealt with this as along as I can remember. It is hard-wired in my brain. It formed who I am.

There is not anything that could dissolve the heart of the problem for me. But I can say that withyears of retrospection, I can live with it most of the time.

On good days, I find some amount of empathy for her; on very bad days, I feel an indescribable rage.

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  I hear that.   I do have to admit that I would struggle to feel empathy for my so-called mother, but I try.  I think he own self-loathing was much of the impetus to how hatefully she treated me. But she broke me in so many ways about the best I can do is struggle to not hate her so much that I wish her a long and painful death.

Like you said, it bakes into you and becomes a part of who you are, so that pretty much stays the same.   I don't dwell on any of it, but it's stil there.

Although it was she who made it where I couldn't have had kids, in the end, it's a good thing because I KNOW I could not have done it.  Just too damaged from all those years.  

I think you know I have great respect for you.   I'm so glad for those who, like us, experienced such profound abuse and were able to go on and have kids of their own and were able to be good, caring, loving parents.    I'm as sure as I'm sitting here that I would have been a terrible parent.  I just didn't have any of the tools.   I went out into the world having no idea how to even 'be', much less to be for children who would be shaped by my behavior toward them and the world.

[GrailSeeker]

I had the double whammy of protecting my mother from the truth about my abusive father, then finding her turn on me and become abusive and narcissistic herself.  I was in my mid-30s when the truth came out, but nobody was really too interested in the particulars of that truth.  She was in a womens' shelter, but decided she "didn't want to live in an apartment" and went back to him.  

I don't forgive either of them.  It is a hurt that never goes away, but my own children and my jobs kept me for years from thinking about it very much.

Now in my retirement, I find myself thinking how my life was effected in terms of a ruined childhood, teenage years spent crying in my bed, choosing a partner who never cared for me, and what I would put up with in low-paying, beneath-my-ability jobs because I was not valued or good enough.  I was a gifted child who was told that girls didn't need to go to college.  I was told all kinds of "stuff". 

Sadly, I was reading a few days ago about how up until the early 1980s, neither doctors or law enforcement had any guidelines on how to deal with certain kinds of childhood abuse in the early days of child protective services.  One report said victims were in a vacuum.   Nowhere to turn. 

I suffered both rage and depression and still do.  

[ECBG]

@furbabylover 

Your mother's life may appear on the outside to be quite idyllic, yet you will never know.  If she was mean or harsh, those are learned personality traits.  She was once a blank slate.  Something happened or she was just born hateful.

I don't suggest everyone here look into their parent's past, only if you want to know.

I just suggested some possible avenues to explore or not.

I wasn't lucky at all.  Then I had a stepmother that became hateful if she had a glass of wine.  Over 15 years ago, I felt I had done my best and couldn't help anything to be better.  I thought to my self, I chose to no longer fight this battle. 

Her parents were wonderful, her mother very gentle.  I think the strength came from her father, but he was very nice when I knew him late in his life.  I could never picture him harsh.

She is no longer invited here, and the migraines I thought I had magically disappeared, which tells me they were stress. 

[sunshine45]

this has been such a sad thread to read.

i am so sorry to hear that some of you are and were abused, frightened, alone, and unnurtured. wishing you all strength, wisdom, self love, and happiness as you move forward.

[furbabylover]

@ECBG  I am so sorry you endured such treatment. Each of us has to find her way. I was in therapy for much of my teens, and scattered years in my twenties and thirties. I had endured horrendous abuse at the hands of my mother and my alcoholic stepfather. Because of societal pressure, I never believed my own instincts about my mother (she was brilliant at gaslighting) and pretending to be a good mother around others. So all the therapy never touched on "the hole in my heart". But now, through many, many studies, it has come out into the open about women not being born with a maternal instinct. Its the luck of the draw. I am so relieved to learn that my instincts were right, and now, through books like Peg Streep's,  maybe women can deal with this issue openly, without pressure from society to believe the myth of motherhood.

[ECBG]

@furbabylover 

Thank you for your kind post.  We can step into the light or embrace the darkness.

My past, (and there's another volume of that time period), lead me to teaching and being there for some who needed someone to light their pathway.  I could understand where others were blind to what was affecting them. I led students to graduate by making them my assistant to watch over them, and pull them to school.  One, my most difficult became a marine and came out to be over our city's fire department eventually.  I also talked and coached his mother through college.

I'm still coaching in a very real way and helping ladies, many of whom have lost confidence, realize that they are indeed, beautiful.

[furbabylover]

@ECBG  You exemplify the kind of outcome we all wish for. How wonderful that you have directed your own destiny by coaching others! Yours is a good and kind heart. In Peg Streep's book she mentions amazing statistics about how a majority of women who have been in our position have consistently achieved great things in their lives. I have had "three lives" I guess, by having three distinct careers. I was a fashion designer (hand painted silk dresses) for Hollywood celebrities for ten years, then a clinical electrologist, and then the owner and operator of the first coffee roasting business on the Gulf Coast. I believe that my hard work all my life of trying to achieving success was driven in part to prove to myself I was not the unlovable vessel my mother portrayed me to be. Its funny how it all works. Life is a great mystery, isn't it?

[CatsyCline]

Some mothers have narcissistic traits. this is another good read:

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

by Dr. Karyl McBride Ph.D.

[Porcelain]

In the past, women really had no choice about this. If you were female you had to get married and have kids. There really wasn't much else to do. The exceptions were truly exceptions and those women were considered a bit odd and unfulfilled as "true women." Schoolmarms and old maids and maiden aunts left on the shelf. And of course the fallen women who inevitably got pregnant via all their "sin" and were not allowed to keep their children once they were born in disgrace.

Whether you even liked children had nothing to do with it back then. Now we have more choice. That' doesn't mean there aren't abusive mothers anymore. There clearly are. But I tend to think things used to be even worse when domestic abuse by either parent was not considered serious and was regularly swept under the rug.

Those are the bad old days and we need to keep moving away from them to a day when all children can be safe in their families and loved.

Edited to add:

You know what though? History is interesting. But who cares about why bad mothers were awful. I'm sure the mothers have all sorts of excuses. Just having a sense of perspective about what was going on for someone who hurt you doesn't change what happened.

It's a moral crime to have a child and then not nurture her. Not giving love is just as bad as not giving food. Neither crime needs understanding of the perpetrator as step one. Intervention and rescue for the good of the child are step one.

All children deserve love and protection. I have no satisfactory idea why some of us don't receive what we are all entitled to. But I know for sure it isn't the fault of the children.