Navajo Proverb: You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

In the March Article “The Unheard Invisible Child; Being Seen and Finding my Voice” here in Emerging from Broken, a commenter asked a very popular question.  Here is the query;

“Now that I’ve found my voice, I have this strong desire to voice my anger towards my family. To tell them that they are wrong with how they have mistreated me. However, I don’t want to put myself in a position to be hurt again. Based on past experience, they will not hear me and will deny the truth & blame me for misinterpreting them. It’s been that way since childhood.

I’m an adult now and I deserve equal respect but like you said I have to “give up being heard from the people that silenced me in the first place”… I want to assert myself directly to my mom for something hurtful she recently told me, but what will this accomplish?… I will not be heard. Asserting myself and not being heard is insulting! However, if I don’t assert myself, isn’t that sending them the message that they can say whatever they want to me with no regard for my feelings? Please clarify…”   

Here are my thoughts expanded from my original reply;

I constantly hurt myself by accepting devaluing treatment from other people. I didn’t realize that it had become normal and acceptable to me. For instance take the phrase in the query; “I’m an adult now, and I deserve equal respect.” The false belief in that statement is when we become adults we deserve equal respect but the truth is that we always did deserve equal respect, even as children. Respect and authority are not the same thing. Adults have more authority over children, but in the true definition of love ~ respect and equal value have nothing to do with age or social status. 

When I finally accepted that the fact that they never heard me before was a pretty good indication that they were not going to hear me now, I decided to stick up for me; not so that they MIGHT hear me but because I needed to validate myself. It wasn’t so much about asserting myself. It was more about empowering myself. For the first time in my life I knew that I had a choice in the relationship with them. That brought a new clarity; I realized they had a choice too; they could try to hear me or they would reject me again. They could choose relationship with me which includes mutual respect or no relationship with me which is rejection.

Deep down I was afraid of rejection because I thought rejection would serve as proof of my biggest fear; that they didn’t really care and that I really was “nothing”, just like their actions were pointing to all along.  Accepting abusive and disrespectful treatment without question helped me avoid the actual truth about their actions.  But the truth set me free. The fear was never as bad as the reality.

On this journey to emotional healing and recovery the boundary is drawn in the heart. (which means that when I got it, they got it) When my family and friends knew that I was no longer going to bow down to them, many of them withdrew. They didn’t want me to change; they didn’t want me to regard myself as equally valuable. I realized that in their view there was really no relationship in the first place unless I was beneath them. That truth stung but it also clarified things for me and it spoke clearly; their actions and attitudes highlighted their disregard for me as equally valuable to themselves.

I was unwilling to live defined as beneath anyone anymore.

Not speaking up for me was sending the message that they could treat me how ever they wanted and I decided that those days were over. I made my new self empowering decision and I decided to take a chance on the outcome of standing up for myself so that I could live in freedom from the bondage they had me in. Taking a chance did not depend on them finally hearing me but I did have to decide to accept the outcome either way.

So much of my recovery and overcoming the past has been about looking at things differently. I knew my mother would not value anything I had to say in standing up for myself so I didn’t speak for her to hear me. When I said that I had to give up being heard by the people that silenced me in the first place I meant that I had to believe that being heard by them was the answer. I had to look at what I wanted to accomplish in a new way. I spoke so I would hear me. I had been focused for so many years on the end goal being for “them” to hear me. I think I started to get a glimmer of understanding that even if they heard me, the damage would not be fixed without doing some personal healing work. When I changed my focus on the end goal to healing and emotional recovery for myself, instead of “being heard by them” I was able to speak after all those years on MY behalf.

Not being heard IS insulting. And by looking at the truth of the whole situation I finally had the self respect to understand that I don’t have to accept that treatment anymore.

In the case of my mom I only got to say about three things on my own behalf and because I was still full of fear I kept it pretty mild but it was enough. It was validating. I took a stand. I said I was done with being treated the way she treated me. She asked if we could just forget about all of it and just start over. I said no. She said that in the past we had always been able to sort out our difficulties. I replied that actually in the past I always conceded. I always gave in to her and let her be right. I always backed down but now I told her that those days were over. I told her that I wanted to have a “real relationship” where each of us had mutual respect and equal value.  Much to my surprise, she listened to me. She even suggested that we might try therapy together.  I let myself get excited. I felt a new hope.

At the end of the call she told me to think about what we had talked about and let her know what I decided… My heart kind of sunk.  I had already let her know what I had decided. This was the same old “power play” where she put the ball back in my court and made it all up to me to carry the responsibility for the outcome of the whole mother daughter relationship between us.  I quickly recovered from my shock and reminded her that I had just finished telling her what I had decided and that this time it was up to her to consider if she wanted to work on our relationship WITH ME. A real relationship takes two.

That was the last conversation that I had with my mother. But that is okay. I have grown and flourished since that day. The truth set me free. In the years that followed I have seen the truth about our dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and I have grown stronger in my understanding. My mom had a choice. She chose denial. She chose not to give up her power. She chose to let me go. Perhaps she chose “being right” over being with me, I don’t know, but I have found the sunlight in my own life. I have blossomed into who I was meant to be and I am fulfilled. I have no regrets about standing up for my equal value because now I trust myself with myself. I have no more depression or oppression. I don’t jump when the phone rings. I overcame dissociative identity and multiple personality disorder. I have more confidence and self esteem than I ever thought possible.

Realizing that my own family would rather not bother with me if they had to listen to me or respect me was really hurtful. But the truth that I had to realize is that they had been hurting me for years. The pain was not new; I had been trying to cope with it for over 40 years.  My entire life I had been told that I had misunderstood them. They denied all accountability for any problems in our relationship and insisted that the problem was me.  The difference now is that I stopped believing it.

Please share your thoughts.  Please feel free to use any name you wish in the comment form if privacy is a concern. Only the name you use will be visible to other readers.

There is freedom on the other side!

Darlene Ouimet

Related posts: To Confront or Not to Confront; That is the Question

Facebook Parenting for the troubled teen ~ how kids are devalued

Adult victims of Child Abuse still need to be Heard

Conflicting feelings of Rejection when the abuser withdraws

It was her turn to be right; her turn to have impact and her turn to be heard. 

Abusers believe in the system and very often victims believe in the system too. The sick dysfunctional family system seems to have “worked for their parents” so why wouldn’t it work for them? It was the best that my (dysfunctional) mother had to hope for, but only because she didn’t believe there might be something better.  She accepted the reality of the cycle of abuse, psychological abuse and dysfunctional family as “normal” and functional exactly as it was presented to her and the cycle of generational abuse continued. 

She communicated to me that it was my job to restore her life and her self esteem; her mother had delivered the same message to her. I wanted to “save her” because I believed that if I could prove that I “loved her” then she would love me.  This cycle of generational abuse stopped with me when I no longer accepted the role of victim but I also had to stand up to the myth that I could be the savior or hero to these dysfunctional and abusive people in my family.

My mother’s actions and behavior indicated that she thought being my mother gave her certain “parental rights”; the right to disrespect me and the right to disregard me; the right to push me around and be unconcerned with my feelings. And this was not only about psychological abuse, but about all types of abuse. My value was not equal to hers. Since so much of the world operates from this belief that children don’t have rights in the ways that adults do and since this was also the way she was raised, she didn’t question her “right” to devalue me and regard me as less important than her.  She learned this from her own abusive childhood. Everyone had rights over her when she was a child too.

My mother, who was a victim to almost everyone in her life, needed a victim too.  Out of her victim mentality, she believed having a victim of her own would “prove” her worth. She believed (just like her mother believed) that if someone was compliant and obedient to her, she could feel better about herself.  If someone jumped every time she asked, that would be “proof” of their love for her. She believed that compliance and obedience was proof of love. The more I “jumped” the more I must love her. The more I “put up with and accepted” (sometimes mistakenly called “respect”) the more “proof of her value” she would have.

This is the depth of the false definition of love. Victim mentality and the message that my mother got in her life taught her that “the one with the most power wins” and she never “won” or felt her own worth until she could push someone else around.  In a dysfunctional family system, winning is about overpowering. Winning is about forcing someone to comply and making them jump to requests and wishes without question and without concern for personal values or boundaries.  And winning is mistaken for love. If I comply in that world it “proves” my love. In that world, “love” is compliance and obedience and putting yourself last.  In this dysfunctional family system, “love” is living in service to someone who doesn’t love you back in the way they believe love works.

 AND because this is not actually love, the victim can never comply enough. It is never good enough. The psychological abuser or controller needs MORE. They needed more and more proof of love. The empty hole inside of them is never filled so they ask for more respect, more compliance and more “proof”.  Sometimes the requests get more and more bizarre as the controlling person pushes the victim farther and farther for more “proof” that they are the most loved and important person in your world. I was expected to morph and change and never show any of my individual thoughts or personality because independence is the opposite of dependence.

But these controllers and psychological abusers (this applies to all types of abuse and abusers) don’t prove or even show their love for the victim at all because they are exempt from their own “rules of love”.

Victims and survivors of this dysfunctional family system grow up going one of two ways OR as in the case of my mother, going both ways;

a)      they believe that they can BE loved by being compliant and proving love to some people, and they believe that being loved is compliance and obedience from others.  My mother made me jump through her hoops just as she jumped through everyone else’s hoops. (This is exactly like a pecking order system; think about who your oppressors, owners or captors are willing to serve.)

b)      Others hang on to the belief that compliance and service is love, and they give in to their own children’s every whim falsely believing that doing that will ensure their kids love them. (which is a type of neglect)  But because that also isn’t love, that doesn’t work either.

All abusers come from abuse. All abuse has its roots in victim mentality and abusers abuse out of that victim mentality. The cycle is repeated because it is the accepted definition of love and many devalued children like my mother, learn to wait until they are adults so they can feel “loved” through expecting and forcing someone else’s compliance and obedience.

In the dysfunctional relationship model that I learned from them, I was expected to save them (by proving my love over and over, thereby validating them) and I believed that I was failing to do that. I believed that it was my role in their lives to do it so I believed it was my failure that I could not.  And I believed it was my job to do it because that is what I was taught.   

I had to let go of those false beliefs.  

I learned to let go of my belief that I could actually help them by loving them “the way they wanted me to.”

One of the major freedom keys in my recovery was realizing that the definitions of love and relationship that were taught to me (by example) were wrong.  The key was to realize that relationship conducted that way is dysfunctional and is never going to work. As long as I tried to function within that sick dysfunctional system, I could not heal. And because I could not heal, there were parts of the cycle of abuse still being passed on. I had to face the fear of standing up to it. If the truth was going to set me free then I had to find the truth.

And I did; that is what this entire website, “Emerging from Broken”, is all about.

Please share your thoughts on the cycle of abuse or on whatever this post inspires you to share.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

More related posts (also see links via colour bold words within posts)

~ “Emotional Healing does NOT depend on…”

Dysfunctioal Family Law

for more on “the cycle of abuse” see the wiki

MY Gun ~ MY power

Have you seen the video that was viral these past few days about the father who decided to teach his daughter a lesson by making a video message to her and posting it to her facebook page? In the video he takes out a gun, explains the power of the gun, they type of bullets and how they react when fired, and shoots her laptop as a response to a letter that she wrote to her parents on her facebook page. She didn’t intend for the letter to be read by her parents (father and step mother) but apparently, when she used facebook hide features to exclude her family and church from reading the note, she forgot to exclude the family dog; the dog has a facebook account. 

You will have to watch the video on YouTube in order to understand what I am highlighting in this blog post.  Please watch it here: “Facebook Parenting for the Troubled Teen”

Notice that the teenager has been defined by the father as a “troubled teen.” (I wonder how she got that way?)

This father tries to do damage control in another post. (Click Here) When you read the follow up post from the father, that I am referring to as “damage control”, don’t lose site of the “truth” of what he did on the video in the first place. The video is not what someone “said he did” but is in fact “what he did”. I am not referring to the punishment. I am referring to the relationship between father and teenager. Watch how he “regards her”.  The video shows a lot of the subtle and not so subtle ways that parents so often regard their children. Try to watch this in relation to yourself.

The father starts off by reading the letter written by his teenage daughter just as she posted it on her facebook page.  And then he goes on a rant about her and to teach her a lesson, he shoots her laptop full of bullet holes at the end of the video. This video is about the power position of the father, and his disregard for the message his daughter is trying to communicate. Remember that the father is the parent and think about what that means to you. Does “the parent” have the right to discount the daughter or force her to comply and “respect him” by publically humiliating her this way? Does the daughter have any “rights”? If the laptop was indeed hers, just because he paid for it, does that give him the right to take it back and if so, what message does that communicate to his child?

The anti bullying community and survivor communities are somewhat divided in their response to this video. Some find this man really harsh and out of line, but the majority are cheering him on as though he is the new poster boy for healthy and fantastic parenting.  The comments on the video are worse than the video itself if you want some insight into how society believes kids, especially teenagers, should be treated. There are the usual comments about “kids these days” and all that stuff that has been said since the dawn of time.  Please try to keep your child self in mind when viewing or reading this stuff, because your parent side may react in favor of the father. Remember that healing comes from relating from the view point of the damaged child within. 

 When I heard the daughters letter, (read by the father on the video) I heard the daughter saying that she felt that her only value in the family was in the chores that she has to do. She said that she has to lock her bedroom door on the weekends because her 6 year old brother would wake her up if she didn’t.  (This communicates to me that she feels the parents don’t care enough about her to keep the little boy out of her room)  She writes that she is tired from chores and school; that she has to get up really early in the morning and has a lot of responsibilities when she gets home. She talks about how she is expected to get coffee and stuff like that. 

The father calls her lazy and scoffs about the fact that she said they should “pay her”.  He goes on a rant against her which in my view shows exactly where she learned relationship and respect.  The way that he talks shows his believe that SHE “should and needs to” respect him and if she does not, he will “make her” and there will be consequences. He shoots her lap top to teach her a lesson. (he bought it, he can do whatever he wants with it) He tells her that she can buy her own laptop and whatever else she wants and that she owes him for the bullets too because they cost about a buck each…

Think about the message a child gets when a parent takes out a gun and shoots something to prove his point and his power. (over her)   

This video shows a perfect example of the dysfunctional relationship between parents and children that I talk about here in Emerging from Broken all the time.  Her father is a bully; listen to his tone and the way he speaks to her and about her. He is so sure that he is right in what he is doing. He is teaching her a lesson in public. This video is another example of how parents give kids LESS value then they place on themselves.  But the interesting thing here is that this Dad “seems” to be doing this out of love. It is however the false definition of love. His actions are not an example of “love” by empowerment, encouragement and understanding.  He won’t listen to her. Their relationship is one sided. He is right. Period.

If his daughter wrote that note, why hasn’t anyone talked to her about how she feels about the home situation? How come she felt the need to write that note? Why is it simply that she is ungrateful and disrespectful?

Kids learn relationship and respect from their parents. If this is the kind of relationship and respect that HE modeled to her, then no wonder she is having issues.  I don’t think that this is about “chores” I think this is about her value.  No one has helped her to see her value.

These kids (are us) grow up and the messages that we received (such as this very public message to this teenage daughter) don’t just “go away” because we are grown up.  I wasn’t treated with respect or value as a child, so I didn’t learn self love; self respect or have self esteem when I became an adult.  I learned to submit. I learned to comply. I learned that my value was in that obedience and compliance. I learned about being owned and about being a possession.

These were the types of things that I remembered from my own childhood that helped me to understand what happened to me and where my self esteem got derailed.  My value was defined as “less than”.  The dysfunctional family system was all about “do it my way or else” and “don’t you DARE step out of line or the consequences will be grave”. 

As I said, the comments in support of the father are worse than the video itself. The daughter is not being considered at all.  It is like this Dad has become the hero for all the bully parents in the world just because the daughter DARED to post her feelings on Facebook.  People say they would have been “a lot harder on her” as though he let her off easy. And I don’t even have to wonder what they meant by “harder” because I have thousands of comments on my blog expressing those stories of “harder”.  I think that “harder” means that the father should have showed LESS love and compassion then they think he has shown in the first place. This whole thing shows that age old attitude that KIDS are “the enemy”. But who the heck is raising these kids and how come they have NO accountability? Kids don’t get “disrespectful and ungrateful” when they have been raised with love and encouragement!

At the time of this writing the video has 230,000 likes and 20,000 dislikes. That reflects the judgement of society.

Again, very few commenters’ on the video are interested in the feelings of this kid and it is obvious that the father is not interested in her feelings or in her as a person. This is such a profound example of a parent misusing his power and control and making it look like love. It is such a great example of a parent who has defined his child.

The father mentions in his follow up, that he dealt with it the way that it would have been dealt with by his father.  (In public.) I mention this because of the aspect of “generational abuse” and how this cycle is passed on from generation to generation.

On one final note, I am not asking anyone to pick sides or to make judgements; I am asking you to look at the truth about what is going on in relationships so that you can take a look at the messages YOU received in your own childhood. I am using this video and the comments as an example of how society views kids and what “acceptable parenting practices” are. 

Please feel free to share. 

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time,

Darlene Ouimet

Related posts ~ Family Category; family category has a sub category for father daughter

Mother Daughter Category;

We are conditioned not to talk about family secrets. I was taught in so many ways that ‘some things are not talked about’ and I was so afraid of the consequences of bringing shame on my family that I ignored the solution to overcoming the mental health issues that I had. Rejection from my family when I was a little child would have meant death. I believed as an adult that it STILL meant death.  I had to overcome that fear.

Even when the family members are dead, the victims of dysfunctional family situations are very often STILL just as afraid to reveal the family secrets, which is very telling about just how deep this fear goes when it comes to the belief system.

People told me that they didn’t have a choice about keeping the secrets even when they became adults. I agreed with them because not taking my choice about telling enabled me to have an excuse to not have to do the work that it took to take my life back. I had to look more closely at what it meant for me to believe that I didn’t have a choice. I had to see that it wasn’t that I DIDN’T have a choice as much as it was just that I didn’t KNOW I had a choice.

This belief that I could not, must not tell was rooted in victim mentality and I had to keep in mind that this “victim mentality” is how I survived a childhood of abuse and emotional neglect. Victim mentality was my friend when I was a kid. It saved me. It was hard to understand that victim mentality was not my friend anymore. My mind warned me constantly NOT to see things differently, believing with all my heart that the only way to survive this life was to operate in that same child mindset that kept me “safe” from further harm.  Telling would have made things so much worse and I could not accept that telling (at least someone) was part of the answer now.

Victim mentality taught me to FEAR the consequences of honoring my choice to reveal those secrets. Victim mentality tells me that I am safer to keep the secrets and protect the perpetrator.  Victim mentality taught me to protect the person who covered up for the perpetrator, believing that I am less deserving than the perpetrator, BECAUSE that is what I was taught about myself through the actions of those who were in charge of me.  

When I first started this website I would have a fear related adrenalin rush when I clicked the publish button on certain articles especially if they revealed anything about toxic and dysfunctional family relationships. That was my childhood fear of going public with my past. It was not fear for what others would then know about me but fear of what the consequences would be if I “told” on the abusers and those that didn’t protect me or if I revealed the family secrets. I didn’t understand that fear based adrenalin rush then as well as I do now. I had to reassure myself that the consequences for talking would not kill me that I was no longer that helpless child anymore. I had to remind myself that hundreds of times.

Another huge fear that I had was that deep down I was sure that if I could love my mother the way she needed me to love her, then everything would be fine. Telling the family secrets was like giving up on the last thread of hope because I knew that if I told the truth about what had gone on in my life, I would burn my last bridge and ruin my only chance that my mother and possibly even my whole family would love me. “Telling” represented the death of that hope.  

I had to be willing to face the possibility of that rejection.

Today I see this so differently. Why was I willing to protect the people who never protected me? They taught me to believe that I didn’t have enough worth to have equal value to the perpetrators, the neglectors, the abusers, the withholders, the teachers and all the other adult gods in my childhood.  

I no longer care if the truth hurts someone else’s feelings. When I decided to heal and move forward with MY life, I had to stop taking care of other people’s feelings and finally validate MY feelings. When I finally put my own healing first, I began to see the dysfunction more clearly. I finally saw that I was contributing to the sick dysfunctional cycle by going along with it.

As I took those baby steps in the beginning and started to look at the dysfunctional family conditions that I had been raised with, I started to realize that in many ways I had in fact always been rejected. Not being heard is a rejection.  I had not been protected is a rejection. Not being valued and not having my human rights validated is a rejection.

When I began to see things through new eyes, I started to get a glimmer of hope that perhaps I could be good enough for me, and that if I could achieve that status, then others opinions including my own families’ opinions, would no longer matter. I began to realize that I had been agreeing with their rejection of me because I didn’t know anything else.  As I grew stronger I began to stop rejecting myself.

Perhaps the truth hurts, but does that mean that we should stifle the truth? I don’t think so anymore. It was important for me to look at who I was protecting and the truth about why I thought that they were more important than I was.

Please share your thoughts or feedback. I look forward to the discussion here.

Darlene Ouimet

NOTE: I did not reveal anything publically when it came to family secrets until I had several years of healing and I am not suggesting that you reveal your family secrets before you are ready. It would not have helped me to push myself too quickly and very few people choose to write as publically as I do. Please feel free to use a screen name. Only the name you use in the comment form will be seen by others.

Related Posts ~ Overcoming that Nasty Self Blame in Dysfunctional Relationships

The Ghosts of Dysfunctional Christmas Past  

When I was fifteen years old, it was my father’s turn to have us kids for Christmas. I was the middle child of three teenagers. We lived with our mother just outside of Toronto Ontario.  We were going to take the train to our fathers house in Montreal Quebec. But my mother didn’t want me to go that year. My mother guilt tripped me about how alone she would be and how hard it would be for her to be by herself for Christmas. 

So I stayed with her and my brothers went to Montreal without me.

My insecure and narcissistic mother was always painting such nasty pictures of my father, and deep down I was extremely torn between the two of them.  I knew it would make my mother happier if I turned against him and I was always worried about her happiness. I felt guilty for wanting to see my father. I did not want my mother to know that I actually wanted to go to my fathers place for Christmas. SO when I decided not to go there for Christmas, I thought that my compliance with my unloving mother’s wishes in the case of that Christmas would gain me great points with her! I believed that finally I was going to prove to her that she was the most important person to me and then she would finally love me! I had dreams and hopes of having a wonderful mother daughter Christmas with all kinds of bonding. I thought we might watch movies together, maybe go shopping, or even out to lunch! I thought we would buy special food that I could prepare for the two of us and I really thought “my sacrifice” of staying home from my Father’s was going to pay off really big. I thought that finally I was going to prove my worthiness to my mother.

My man addicted narcissistic mother found a new love interest that Christmas season.  Guess what happened? I was left alone while she did everything with her new man.  I saw my selfish self centered mother on Christmas Day when we went to her girlfriends for Christmas dinner. She didn’t tell me that her boyfriend was going to be there too.  I felt trapped because it was too late for me to change my mind and go to my Dad’s. She flirted and giggled with her boyfriend the whole day. She didn’t seem to notice me that entire holiday season. There were no movies, no special meals, no bonding or shopping, in fact my Mom’s girlfriend felt so sorry for me that she took me out to dinner one night with her boyfriend so I didn’t have to be alone every day and night of my Christmas holiday from school.

I still remember the confusion I felt about that whole thing. I felt so “thrown aside”.  I don’t know that I had ever felt such a depth of rejection like I did over this one which is kind of interesting to note because I had suffered far worse rejection over the years from both my parents.  I think that the shock of it hit me before my dissociative coping method kicked in.  I was stunned speechless that my own mother would do that to me. I had sacrificed my Christmas with my father, brothers and new baby half sister for HER. And she ditched me. She didn’t even apologize.  I was so unimportant to her that I am sure she didn’t even think she has done anything wrong. She completely disregarded my feelings. It was so blatantly obvious that my selfish self-centered mother didn’t care about ME.

I felt so guilty that I had stayed home from my father’s house. Although my narcissistic mother talked me into staying with her I was far more angry with myself than I was with her! I felt like I had been tricked and that I should have “known better”.  I was 15 and I was in total denial of her manipulative ways and I told myself this was my own fault. I was accustomed to being the one at fault and this was no exception.  I felt guilty and impatient with myself for feeling rejected. 

That was the last Christmas day that I have spent with my mother. As I got older I felt really bad (wrong, guilty, ashamed) that I did not spend Christmas with my mother after that hurtful Christmas when I was a teenager, accepting as always and as I had always been “taught” that it was MY responsibility to arrange it and that it was up to me to go to see her and to initiate all those types of plans. I harbored a secret suspicion against myself that I purposely would not see her because of that Christmas when I was fifteen.  Deep down I (falsely) believed that I was probably “getting revenge” on my mother for that horrible Christmas I spent alone. As usual, I was my own judge jury and executioner. That was the way I had been taught to be, always looking at why it was my fault.

My Parents and I have lived in different Provinces and even in different countries since I was 19 years old. When I was about 45 years old, I suddenly realized that neither of my parents ever once has made an effort to include me in any of their Christmas plans. Neither of them has ever suggested that we see each other for Christmas even when I produced three grandchildren. They didn’t ever make the effort to be with me for the holidays. I was not the only one who had not initiated plans.

In my recovery from dysfunctional family stuff, I realized that relationship is not one sided. Finally that guilt, shame and the belief that I was still executing revenge against my selfish mother from when I was a teenager, subsided and I saw the truth about the situation.  She was the Mother. She was the ADULT. She was wrong. She constantly treated me like I was nothing. She constantly put me last. She never looked at her treatment of me as anything that I was not deserving of. She constantly accused ME of being selfish and self-centered and I was so busy trying harder that I didn’t realize it was NOT me.  I didn’t realize her punishing attitude was wrong and it was likely meant to deter me from realizing the actual truth. I have nothing to be ashamed of and as for not going to my father’s house; I was manipulated into staying home.  I was only fifteen. None of this was my fault. I had to realize this truth. None of the facts of this dysfunctional Christmas event defined ME. The facts about that Christmas defined my mother. They show HER true colors. I was not the cause of the dysfunction in our mother daughter relationship.

My life is brilliant since I have embraced the truth. Christmas is a wonderful magical time for me now as I have overcome the baggage of that past and move forward with my new life in freedom.

Please share your thoughts. Emerging from Broken has a facebook page but this website and the comments here are NOT connected to that page. Your comments will not show up on facebook. Your identity is safe as long as you don’t use your full name in the comment form.

Happy Holidays to all of you who celebrate.

Darlene Ouimet

Note: I wanted to write a series of articles that relate to dysfunctional family Christmas and family issues, but this event is the youngest Christmas Memory that I have. I have often wondered why the heck I can’t remember any Christmas mornings.  I can’t remember even one time of finding presents under the tree before the age of that year when I was fifteen.

Related Post ~ part two of this post:  Dysfunctional Family Christmas and Giving the wrong Gift

Thanksgiving, Christmas and Dysfunctional Families

Dysfunctional Lables and Dysfunctional Family History

daggers of self blame

Looking back on my life, it is evermore clear to me how hard I looked for excuses to blame myself for the dysfunction in my life. There is a very good reason that children take on the blame: it was safer to blame themselves. Blaming “them” was fruitless. I could not “make them change” but “I knew” I could always “try harder”.  I believed that if I could “do good enough” that they would finally love me.

It was very hard for me to learn to see things through a new grid because I had been consistently taught things a certain way. The way that I was taught things became my grid of understanding. My grid of understanding was the way that I saw and believed that life worked.  Dysfunction was my normal. I believed things worked in life a certain way, because that is how I was “taught” life worked.  As I got older, outside influences added to those teachings, confirming them and cementing them firmly in my mind. This is what I call my belief system. 

One of the things that I have discovered about my belief system is that although when I got older I was taught that I can change my thinking by practicing a new thought or belief over and over again, (positive affirmations or positive thinking) the truth was that until I found the original false belief and dispelled it, the original belief was there underneath whatever new thought I was trying to implement.  Furthermore the original belief was still my default mode.  So until I found the original belief, where it came from and what was untrue about it so that I could change it to the truth, I could not find the freedom and wholeness that I have now. All the “positive thinking” in the world did not change my “default mode”.

The belief system begins to develop early. Not only are we taught in words but we are taught by the actions of others and the consequences to us if we don’t comply, if we rebel and even if we misunderstand non verbal communication. When it comes to family, it takes real effort to make these changes in our belief systems because of all the fears related to them. Fears that have their roots in our child hood thinking. These fears are connected directly to our survivor mode. 

*Some children react differently to the teachings; in the opposite of compliance, they act out and rebel against all the wishes and rules the parents set out. The results however, are very similar. It is even easier for them to believe that they are to blame for any “lack” of love or nurturing in their lives.

There are a few really important things to consider if the changes in the way we believe life works and changes in the belief system are going to stick. 

~ I had to be willing to face the consequences of drawing my boundaries.  The fear of the ultimate and final rejection from my family was huge. I had to find out where that fear came from and what exactly I was afraid of and when I discovered the truth about that fear it turned out to be another false belief based in more lies that had to be dispelled. The first thing I realized is that when I was a child if my family rejected me that would have meant certain death.  That was the truth then. It is no longer the truth now.

~ Because of this fear and because of how I had been taught to take the blame for whatever happened to me, I had to constantly remind myself that what I was really healing from was the damage. I had to look at the damage by itself and not try to figure out why the person who hurt me had hurt me or what was missing or wrong with them.  I had to stick to the fact that they hurt me and there was damage. Sticking with looking at the damage was the key when it came to looking at the dysfunction in my family. (Mostly because of the fear of the consequences of disloyalty and again that ultimate rejection.) Unravelling the belief system is complicated.

Because I have been doing this work with others for a few years now, I quickly see when people are making excuses to excuse fault for the damage done. This type of thinking kept me stuck for many many years.

There are lots of ways that people avoid placing any blame on family.

This one is popular; “They didn’t mean to do any harm, they just didn’t have the tools they needed to be good parents.” To which I had to remind myself that first of all, they had the same opportunity that I did and I am not a disrespectful careless parent and second, in order to heal from the damage I had to strive not to get caught up in their excuses of why they failed me. (you may want to read one of my all time most popular blog posts at this point “My Parents Did the Best they could According to Who?”)

I hear this one a lot; “it is my own fault that my life was so messed up. I made the mistake of trying to do everything that my parents wanted instead of turning to God and seeking his guidance. I sought my parents for every decision instead of seeking God and that is why I got so messed up.”

In my case my parents WERE God. It was up to my parents if I lived or died. They represented God in my life and when I understood that, things became a tiny bit clearer.  I was a child when the dysfunction began. When kids are raised in a dysfunctional home, they are not ever taught to depend on anything outside their parents. Words about faith and a loving God are not comprehended even when taught by someone else when the child is living in chaos because there is NO example of how faith or love works.  I believed that my parents held my life in their hands and rejection meant death.  This childhood teaching is not easily undone. I didn’t just “grow out of it.” For one thing, I had to realize it was even there before I corrected that false belief!

Children are taught things through actions and reactions.  The difficulty in recognizing only the damage is in the fact that we are so brainwashed to submit to this ‘loyalty’ to our parent “gods.” This system did not start with my parent’s generation. My parents repeated the dysfunction in their own lives that they learned from controlling and manipulative people too. They passed on their dysfunctional belief systems to me and taught me the same false teachings that they themselves had been taught.  

~I was quick to take the blame for all the problems. I believed I should have been able to prevent them or that I was exaggerating them. That was my survival mode.  I was willing to take the blame for my mother’s emotional and violent outbursts, because I was taught to. I believed that if I had been “a good girl” she would not “have to” hit me.  I believed that I caused her anxiety or whatever ever her issue was at the time.

~I was willing to never expect any attention from my father, because I believed from all those other events that I was undeserving in the first place. And it doesn’t matter if my mother learned it from her parents and if they learned if from theirs.  That makes no difference when it comes time to face that it happened and that it was wrong.

My willingness to take the blame resulted in low self esteem, depression, dissociation, addictions and all sorts of other things. The results of blaming myself for the lack of interest my father showed, the carelessness and emotional neglect that had become “normal” for me was that I put myself beneath almost everyone because that treatment had defined me as unworthy. My needs, in my eyes and through the grid of my belief system, ALL of my needs were LESS important than the needs of others. 

I overcame the labels of unworthy, unlovable, invalid, less important and not enough. I overcame the manifestations of all these types of abuse when I looked past that learned behaviour of self blame and did the work to face the truth about where those thoughts began and the lies that were connected to them. When I knew how self blame got there in the first place, it naturally fell away.

Please share your thoughts. Emerging from Broken has a facebook page but this website and the comments here are NOT connected to that page. Your comments will not show up on facebook. I do not have this blog connected to that feature. Your identity is safe as long as you don’t use your full name in the comment form.

Another snap-shot of Truth;

Darlene Ouimet

For Related Posts click on the bold printed coloured words

It was bad enough that my parents divorced, but then they started fighting about child support. My mother had custody and my father paid child support. My mother said she didn’t have enough money from my father; my father said that he couldn’t afford what he was paying.  No one seemed to care about the difficult emotions that I was going through as a child whose parents had split up.  They only seemed to care about what it was costing them. 

Imagine the message I got as that child. I was 13 years old when the child support argument started. The message that they communicated to me was that my father thought I was a financial burden. My mother thought I was a financial burden too.  No one thought I was “worth it”.  I felt as though suddenly everyone wished I was never born because now that they divorced, no one wanted to be financially responsible for me.

My needing to be supported seemed to be causing a lot of fighting and anxiety and fighting and anxiety went against everything that I had EVER learned about survival.  As a survivor I lived by the rule “don’t cause fighting or anxiety”. Now I was caught in the crossfire of this divorce and it seemed that I was causing a very big problem. 

I started stealing my clothes within a year of their separation.  I would do almost anything not to be a burden to my parents. Stealing was like “my contribution” to helping out with the financial burden that I was. But stealing also made me feel really bad about myself and added to the growing body of evidence that I was unworthy, just like they communicated to me.

I still remember all the things my mother would say about not having enough money.  I remember the way she said “your father” as though it was my fault that he was the way he was. “Your father” was an accusation but I wasn’t sure what I was being accused of and I concluded that I was just not worth the burden that she had to endure over this whole thing. 

I got my period for the first time at school.  I was in grade 8 and I was 13 years old and it just happened that I was going to stay at my father’s for the weekend right after school that day.  I asked him if I could have some money so I could go to the drug store. I was so embarrassed; I didn’t want to have to tell him that I had to buy pads.  But he would not give me any money unless I told him what it was for.  The whole thing was just so humiliating because to me it was a reminder that he already paid enough child support and he didn’t want to give me a few dollars for anything else.  I felt like a beggar. I felt like an orphan. I felt like a NOTHING and I was reminded of how alone I really was.  I was 13 and other girls shared that “event” with their mothers but I had to tell my father who was really only concerned with what it was going to cost him.  I was reminded of all the feelings of abandonment that I ever felt. It was painful. It was one more time that I was discounted.

When I got home from that weekend, I told my mother that I had gotten my period and she was angry! SHE felt ripped off that she didn’t’ get to share that “special moment” with me. She continued to remind me of how hurt she was over it many times throughout my life.  I couldn’t win. No matter what I did it was always wrong. I was always in the way and always a burden. I couldn’t even start my period at the right time. 

People wonder why kids run away from home when their parents split up and get divorced but the truth is that rarely are the kids supported emotionally through any of it. Most kids feel like the divorce had something to with them and their failures.  I remember telling people when I was an adult that divorce is hardest on the parents! That was the belief I had struggled and succeeded in accepting. I don’t believe or accept THAT anymore.

It was communicated to me that the divorce was devastating my mother, but that it was not really my pain because I would still have a father but my mother would not have a husband and so as with everything else my feelings didn’t matter and I tried to convince myself that I was wrong to feel anything but sympathy for my mother.  I reprimanded myself for feeling that I had been rejected by my father too, telling myself that I was “being selfish” I told myself that this was “Not my pain” and think of what your poor mother is going through. I told myself “don’t be so self centered Darlene; I don’t think that this is about you ~ stop making this about you!”…

But the truth is that it wasn’t me that was making it about me. THEY kept making it about me with that fight about child support. And neither one of my parents ever tried to talk to me or help me with all that I was going through as a child of parents who were getting a divorce. They discounted me and my need for emotional support and reassurance so I discounted my needs too.  They discounted my need for financial support so I discounted those needs as well. It was communicated to me that I didn’t deserve to be taken care of properly, emotionally OR financially. Those beliefs didn’t resolve just because I “grew up”.  Even when it became my own responsibility to take care of myself, I had never been taught or shown how to do that.  My “self value” was not known to me.

This ordeal with the ongoing child support argument between my parents contributed to the already formed belief that I was not equally valuable to everyone else in the world and also thing led to the foundation of my belief system about my self worth when it came to money. (Spending it, making it; all of it.)

Please share your thoughts with me about this subject as you think about the ways that your worth was communicated to you.

Another snapshot of truth;

Darlene Ouimet

Emerging from Broken is self supporting. All donations to this work are gratefully appreciated

When a shark bites the damage needs to be attended to and then that damage needs to heal. The fact that something may have been wrong with the shark doesn’t assist in healing that damage nor does it change the facts about that damage.  

Many of us come up with the term “narcissism” when we look into our family history and conclude that our mothers had narcissistic personality disorder.  Sometimes it is the father that fits the description. The diagnosis of Narcissism seems to answer so many mysteries and questions.

At first, realizing that my Mother had the symptoms and all the signs of narcissism I was relieved that I finally realized and even understood what was wrong with her. I felt like I had finally found the answer. I had this kind of “OH NOW I UNDERSTAND” feeling. But the more I thought about it, I wasn’t any farther ahead knowing that she fit the description of being a narcissistic mother.  

She also suffers from depression and is on medication for that too. But that knowledge also didn’t help me overcome the damage that has been caused to ME because the damage is there regardless of what is wrong with her. 

My father is dissociated. He seems disconnected from reality and as he ages he lives in his own little world more and more.  He was passive and non violent but because he was dissociated and emotionally unavailable, there were consequences for me as his daughter. I got the message that I didn’t matter to him.  

Having an answer or a diagnosis for the people who caused so much damage with their neglect and carelessness in my life, did not actually help me to proceed on my recovery journey even though it can be another little piece in the puzzle we are trying to solve as survivors.

All my life I had tried to understand my mother and father.

Why was my mother so self centered? Why was everything about her? Why did she have so much depression? Why did she spend money on herself and leave me fending for myself? Why did she humiliate me in public? What is wrong with me? And at the bottom of all those unspoken questions, I thought it was because something was wrong or lacking in me; that I was a big disappointment and that if I was a better daughter, then she would not have to be selfish with her love. I tried to find the way to “deserve her love.” 

Realizing that my mother has all the symptoms for the diagnosis of Narcissism at first allowed me to believe that her ill regard for me was about the Narcissistic personality disorder, but that knowledge didn’t help for long.  Pretty soon I realized that my mother did not treat everyone the way she treated me.  She was popular in her friend group.  She was much less self centered with her boyfriends and with her co-workers.  She did not treat other people the way that she treated me which helped me determine that she could actually control her behaviour.  And if she could hide it from others… then was it really a disorder? Did she really have narcissistic personality disorder if she only seemed to target it at a few select people?

I decided that perhaps my mother had specifically the “narcissistic mother” disorder which would only affect the way that she was with her children. But the more I thought about that, it didn’t really fit either. She didn’t seem to do the same things to my brothers that she did to me or even have the expectations from them that she had from me and although I am in no way saying that I was the most picked on of the children in my family when I look at the details of this whole picture, the fact remains that my mother could control her behaviour.  People with disorders can’t really help it. 

Thinking about it that way, I was back to square one.  Why me? Although learning about narcissism and other diagnosis’s and realizing which ones my parents may have had, it turned out that only a small piece of that huge puzzle was solved for me. 

It seemed as though my struggle for finding emotional healing went round and round for many years as I sought the solution to the mysteries, until I realized a few key things;

~ I had to realize that there was damage done to me and acknowledging that damage was the first step in my emotional and personal healing.

~ I realized that I HAD to face the pain that damage caused in order to validate myself where I had never been validated before. In a way it was like giving myself permission to be right and to be alive. I began to embrace my own value for the first time ever.

Covering up for my parents by excusing damage they had contributed to had kept me in the spin of mental illness for many years.  My loyalty to them was based on my fear of further rejection and on my belief that they would “be there for me and love me” if I could finally figure out how to be acceptable in their eyes. If I could find THAT missing piece of THAT puzzle I thought I could be good enough and that I could be what they needed and wanted as a daughter.  All those thoughts and beliefs kept me on the wrong track because the focus was based in a lie. I already WAS good enough and I already HAD value. The truth is that THEY had failed to communicate that to me.

In the beginning of my healing process, I had huge amounts of guilt, shame and fear about feeling anger and blame towards my parents. I realized that the fear is based on my childhood understanding that if they reject me, I will not survive. Eventually I realized that the truth isn’t always pretty and that anger and blame are necessary stages that I had to allow and even encourage in myself. Those stages were a huge part of my SELF VALIDATION process.  I had to validate myself in order to go forward.

So although understanding what is wrong with the abusive person in your life may be valuable information and it may even feel like winning the lottery, it is not the answer to healing from the damage. The real freedom and recovery happens when we begin to validate the hurt that was caused.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Emerging from Broken on Facebook

Part two of this post; “emotional healing does not depend on…..”

 *If you find the message here of value, please share it using one of the social networking sharing options available on the share button. 

The related posts are in bold print throughout this post.  One more related post is ~ My mothers Narcissistic Reaction to my book idea

Sometimes it strikes me that my blog may not be “fair” to my mother because I had two parents and the truth is that my father did as much damage in my life as my mother did. Although I want to write about my father, there just isn’t much to write. My father was emotionally unavailable and emotionally absent and by definition my father was emotionally abusive.

My father didn’t contribute much to my life at all. He didn’t pay attention to me, he didn’t affirm me, he didn’t communicate with me in fact I don’t know what role he did play in my life other then financial support while I was growing up. 

I think that my father is dissociated. The “disconnected from the world and from himself” kind of dissociated. Perhaps he has dissociative identity disorder and since that is what I had, I know a lot about it.

My father is passive and apathetic as though nothing matters and nothing impacts him. He refers to himself as easy going. I think that he is passive abusive and as I said emotionally abusive.

Why was my father so apathetic when it came to me? Why did he behave as though I didn’t matter and communicate that message to me through so many of his actions and inactions? Growing up, I didn’t think that it was about HIM. I thought that it was something that was wrong or missing in me.  Realizing that he was dissociated at first made me say “OH YA that makes sense” BUT it didn’t go any distance towards my freedom from the pain I had always had in relation to my emotionally unavailable father.

People say things like “well at least he didn’t beat you.” And I never knew what to say to that. That statement is a guilt trip. It is like saying …“well you should be grateful that he didn’t do anything violent like some fathers do”.  People say things like this as though the good about the fact that he didn’t beat me cancels the bad about the rest of what he didn’t do. Good does not cancel bad. Good is Good and Bad is Bad. Two different things.

In this blog ~ “Truth is Truth”

My father didn’t care about me.  He neglected me. He didn’t engage with me and he wasn’t interested in my life. I don’t remember conversation with him when I was a kid.  That is emotional neglect. I don’t remember any conversation with him that was about ME as an adult either. 

I found the following definitions of Emotional Abuse on the US Department of Health and Welfare site.   

Emotional abuse (or psychological abuse) is a pattern of behavior that impairs a child’s emotional development or sense of self-worth. This may include constant criticism, threats, or rejection, as well as withholding love, support, or guidance. Emotional abuse is often difficult to prove and, therefore, child protective services may not be able to intervene without evidence of harm or mental injury to the child. Emotional abuse is almost always present when other forms are identified.

And These from the Department of Justice in Canada;

Neglect is often chronic, and it usually involves repeated incidents. It involves failing to provide what a child needs for his or her physical, psychological or emotional development and well being. For example, neglect includes failing to provide a child with food, clothing, shelter, cleanliness, medical care or protection from harm.3 Emotional neglect includes failing to provide a child with love, safety, and a sense of worth.

Emotional abuse involves harming a child’s sense of self. It includes acts (or omissions) that result in, or place a child at risk of, serious behavioural, cognitive, emotional or mental health problems. For example, emotional abuse may include verbal threats, social isolation, intimidation, exploitation, or routinely making unreasonable demands. It also includes terrorizing a child, or exposing them to family violence.

My father didn’t protect me from my mother.  I don’t remember my mother hitting me with a belt when my father was at home, so he may not have been aware of some of that physical abuse, but this one time she slapped me as hard as she could across the face because I was late getting home.  The truth about that situation was that my father forgot to tell her that I had called and that he had given me permission to stay later at my friends across the street. My father stood there with his mouth hanging open when my mother slapped me.  No one comforted me.  No one supported me.  He didn’t protect me. He didn’t say anything to her in front of me to validate me or stand up for me. I was hit and it was a mistake ~ but so what?? Who cares about Darlene? She is “just a child”. 

My father failed me. There is just no denying it and believe me I tried to deny it for most of my life. I tried to tell myself that he was busy and that he had an important job. I told myself that his mind was elsewhere and it needed to be so that he could provide for us. I was in effect telling myself that his actions were correct… that he had many things in his life that were far more important than I was and that I was the one with the problem for feeling unworthy and unlovable.  

But really, are there excuses for emotional abuse and child neglect?

The truth is that it doesn’t matter even if my father had some unknown disease that caused him to completely detach from me for some unknown reason… the damage was done and it is the damage that needs to be dealt with instead of excused by finding out the answer to the WHY questions.

Deciding that my father fits the description of being dissociated did not contribute in any way to how I was able to heal from the damage that his lack of interest and emotional neglect of me caused.  Like the above definition states ~  “Emotional neglect includes failing to provide a child with love, safety, and a sense of worth…” And that IS the damage that was caused by my fathers inability to have any kind of real relationship with me.

The real emotional healing came with self validation. I realized that just because my fahters actions and ill regard for me showed that I was invalid and unimportant in his life did NOT prove that I was invalid and unimportant.  The fact that my father didn’t hit me or even yell at me did not make him a good father.  The way that he regarded me fits the descriptions of emotional abuse and child neglect. The fact that he didn’t even bother with me is the fact that I had to deal with. The damage that he caused to me by his emotional neglect and passive abuse is what I had to face in order to overcome that damage.

My father was emotionally unavailable and emotionally abusive. His lack of contribution in my life was his fault and it defines him. NOT ME. 

Please share your thoughts about the subject of child neglect, emotionally abusive or emotionally absent fathers, focusing on the damage instead of the reason or anything else that you wish to share here.

This is the truth that set me free.  

Darlene Ouimet

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As a child I was taught that there would be peace if I didn’t upset anyone.  I was taught that if I complied and if I did what was expected of me; if I was quiet and polite and if I didn’t stand up for anything that went against what the adult in the situation deemed the “right way” to do things, that I would be loved and accepted. 

My mother was fragile. She was prone to depressions and what she called nervous breakdowns. She made it very clear all of my childhood that if I upset her, she would have a “breakdown”. My mother ended up in the hospital when I was little with what was called “a nervous breakdown” back then. I am sure that this event had a major effect on me and that it settled somewhere in my belief system and added to my beliefs that if I upset someone they may end up in the hospital and everyone knows that people die in hospitals. Not only does a little mind wander all the way to “death” but think about the fear of abandonment and all that that implies. I could not survive without my mother. She was the source of all my basic needs.

And I was abused while she was away. So that added to the fear factor in my frame of reference about what happens when Mommy has a mental health breakdown.

Thoughts like “what would happen if my mother had a mental health breakdown and could never come home?” are not always conscious.  Well I didn’t want to find out what would happen; I had enough information already, so I tried my hardest not to upset her. She reinforced my fear of upsetting her by reminding me all the time of how fragile she was.  I can still hear her voice; “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me. (Stop whatever it was we were doing that was upsetting her.)  Stop it or I will have a breakdown”.  And when I got older she told said “Stop it Darlene, Stop pushing me” whenever I wanted to defend myself or if I wanted to talk about the past. I never got to say anything that needed to be said in order for me to have value as an individual. I never got to have a side in anything. It was too dangerous; she might have a mental health breakdown and kill herself and it would be MY fault and on MY head forever.

Ultimately I believed that I would be responsible for her failure to cope as well as then my own failures and the demise of my entire family.

I can still remember my grandmother saying similar things and I remember my mother telling me that her mother threatened her with the same thing.  “Stop it, just stop talking about it or I will have a hissy fit”.  She had learned the same things from her mother that she taught me. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t mess with the consequences. Then when my mother grew up, she finally got her say ~ she got all her accusations or opinions in against me but I was not permitted to respond in case it rocked HER boat.

By the time I was a young adult, I had efficiently learned that I could not and should not tell my mother or ask her to face anything that she didn’t want to hear. I did not want to be responsible for her mental health breakdown. Even as an adult I was afraid of the consequences; that I would be to blame if she went back into her deep depression and worse than that I was afraid that I would be responsible if she committed suicide.

I was afraid that if my mother had a break down it would be my fault. She said it would be my fault.  She taught me that her mental health was MY responsibility. And I believed it.  That is why when she tore a strip off me when I was just out of the hospital with my newborn daughter, I took it. I sat there and took it although I had long since forgotten why I would sit through her accusations and judgements of me.  The conditioning to fear the consequences of standing up to someone had become so deeply ingrained that I just reacted with silence and compliance without even thinking about why. 

It was happening on my blog too.  Some of the comments were triggering my mother’s voice begging me to stop saying what needed to be said. I wanted to be the voice of peace, love and understanding.

I wanted everyone to feel safe even if it meant that the truth would be sacrificed. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I was afraid that I would be abandoned and rejected if the truth that they heard hurt too much. I would sometimes hear my mother’s voice…. “stop it Darlene. Stop pushing me or I will fall apart.” And the (unheard) message that always meant “I will fall apart and it will be YOUR FAULT”   My mother’s voice was still operating to dictate my actions and reactions to some of the comments and commenter’s in my website.

And I forgot how much the truth hurt in my own process and how valuable it was in spite of that pain.

PEACE and harmony do not always go hand in hand with the truth.  There have been many times in my process of healing and personal growth where the truth made me very angry and many times when I rejected it because it hurt too much.  Looking back many seeds were planted that I rejected and rebelled against at first. That is just part of the process. I am glad that I didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am glad that I was (and still am) willing to persist seeking my recovery even when it scares the living daylights out of me.  

I had to learn that sometimes the truth hurts but in the end it heals; if I had successfully avoided the truth I would not be where I am today; NOR would I have the message that I have to deliver. I had to reaffirm that I did not heal from my past when the truth was sugar coated for me and no one contributed to my healing by covering up their truth. 

I had to realize that my mother’s voice was still interfering with my life (and in this case with my message) in a harmful way and in realizing this I have achieved another level of personal growth.

Please Note: It is important to remember that I had to learn the real truth first. Many people hurt me with their voice and their lies; there was a lot of sorting out to do before I figured out the real truth but when I did I began to soar, thrive and flourish.

Please share your thoughts with me and the readership here.  The comment discussions are always very good and insightful. I share my healing for the benefit of your healing.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

Founder of Emerging from Broken

Related Posts ~ My mother doesn’t love me and the process of grieving