Mom and Grandma had a Dysfunctional Mother Daughter Relationship

I have to add this, too… I know that I made a lot of mistakes with my 3 children, due to my own brokenness. Unfortunately, although I looked for it, I didn’t find a really good, helpful therapist, and start to heal from my childhood truamas, until I was 50. By then, my daughter and two sons were all grown and long gone from the nest. Sadly, I know that I am a much better “mother” to our fur-baby, our Australian Cattle Dog, Lady, than I was to my own off-spring. IF ONLY I could go back and re-parent them, with the love and healing and wisdom I have gained these past 8 years, since turning 50.

Yes, I know I did the best I could with what I had. And yes, I did far better with my own children, than my mother did with me. But knowing that doesn’t help me feel better, nor, does it help my sons and daughter feel better. The eldest will be 40 this year, the youngest, 30. All I can do for them at this point, is let them know how sorry I am, how wrong I was about some things, and that they deserved much better. They deserved a childhood that didn’t hurt~

Lynda

I have one more question about our very similar mothers, Darlene ~ why could they so clearly see the wrong they suffered at the hands of their own mothers, but they could not see the wrong they were doing to US, to their own daughters?

In my mother’s world, everything is about HER. Her needs, her wants, her feelings, her beliefs, it’s about HER, first, last, and always.

She has several “horror stories” that she regularly trots out from her own childhood, stories about how her mother did this and did that to hurt HER ~ but truly, what her mother did to her was NOTHING compared to the way my mother treated me. My mother parented my by thinking of the worst, most hurtful thing she could say or do to me in any given situation, and then that was what she would do or say. Truly, that’s how it seems to me!

I remember that my mother’s mother, my “grammie,” never seemed to like or approve of my mother. My grandmother had two children, my mother, and then my aunt was born when my mother was 5. All through my growing up years, I clearly remember how my geandmother’s attitude toward my mother was that my mother could do nothing right, while her attitude toward my aunt was that she could do no wrong. Devastatingly hurtful to my mother, certainly, to be treated that way. But still, she never did and said the really HORRIBLE things that my mother did to me.

My mother’s worst story about how badly her own mother treated her, was soemthing that happened long after my mother was grown and married, with most of her own children grown. My mother was talking on the phone to my grammie, and they were discussing foods, what they like, and particularly, what they don’t like. My mother told her mother that the two foods she hated most in the world were egg whites, and rye bread. She could eat just about anything, but those two things turned her stomach.

Not long after that, Grammie invited my mother over to lunch. Mother tells the story with great feeling, how excited she was when she sat down at the beautifully set table, with the best china and silver. How special she felt. Then she lifted the silver cover off her plate, and saw, to her horror, that her mother had given her a sandwich made of sliced egg whites, on rye bread~

Mother tells that story with tears in her eyes. “I felt as horrified as if my mother had a dead rat waiting for me under that silver dome. But when I asked her how, and why, she would serve me such a thing for lunch, when I had told her those were the two foods I hate most in the world, my mother swore up and down that she didn’t remember me ever saying that. But who makes a sandwich out of nothing but sliced egg whiltes… no yokes… and rye bread?!”

OF COURSE that hurt my mother. OF COURSE it felt like she had been served a dead rat. But my GOD… the things that my mother said, and did, to me all my life long, were a thousand times worse…. her mother never tried to gas her to death, for God’s sake. Her mother never told her that her husband wouldn’t love her after he got to know her, her mother wasn’t telling her from toddlerhood on, “I love you, because you are my daughter, but I just don’t like you.” Her mother didn’t invite her one best friend over to the house, and then tell her friend that she, her daughter, was lazy and a liar and no good, effectively ruining their lifelong relationship. Her mother didn’t sit on her own husband’s lap, and talk about leaving her husband for her son-in-law…..

I don’t get it Darlene, I really, truly don’t get it. YES I did see firsthand how badly my grammie treated my mother. But my mother, who complained about her own mother’s slights and neglect, incessantly, all my life long…. why couldn’t she see that she was treating her own daughter just as horribly, and WORSE?

Confused, that’s what I am.

I am having a hard time understanding my own mother because according to my mother and her sister, they had a very normal childhood with no emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. I never saw any signs with my grandparents that their childhood wasn’t as they said it was. I just can’t figure out how my mother ended up as narcissitic as she is. I know with my dad I have more empathy for him, he was raised in an abusive home and came back from Vietnam a totally different person. But with my mother, I don’t know where her issues came from.

Hi Lynda,
Two things:
you don’t know what your grandmother did to your mother. You only know what your mother told you. Depending on how communicative a person is, how strongly they feel about “loyalty to parents” and how much denial they are in, equals what they may or may not say. My mother didn’t tell me tons of nasty stories about her mother, but I remember the way that my grandmother was. I put some of the dots together myself too. So we can’t really compare our mothers to our grandmothers; we do know however that the cycle just continues. People who come from loving healthy homes, where they were raised being valued and encouraged to be self sufficient individuals DON’T end up being emotional abusive or any other kind of abusive.

And the second thing is that understanding your mother is NEVER going to be the answer or lead you to healing. It isn’t understandable. My healing is what I think about today. I bring up these stories to show how I believed the false stuff ABOUT ME that I was taught to believe about me. It is really important to share these stories, to dump them out so to speak, but not so that we can figure out why our own relatives were so nasty to us.

Does that make sense?

I smiled when I read your question “how did you get to be so wise” The answer is this; I did my healing work. I concentrated on me. I found the roots of where my self esteem got so damaged and the beliefs that I adopted because of that damage. And the person that I am today is the result! =)

Love Darlene

Hi Kari,
Just before I went to publish the above reply to Lynda, I saw your post. My response is the same one that I just posted to Lynda.
Hugs, Darlene

“Not for the purpose of assigning blame, but for the purpose of stating the truth.”

Thanks Lynda.

Sheryl,
This is so logical, isn’t it? I totally get what she is saying and actually, it fits for all of us. Not that we have to get “rid” of our mothers either through separation or death but that our lives are up to us. That is really the basis of my entire recovery. My marriage was in a mess; my husband had always made it clear that although he loved me and treated me really well, HE was the more important person in the relationship and that was not really up for question. He was totally threatened by my recovery in the beginning; he even told me we could not afford therapy for me. He didn’t want any changes. My kids were fine with the way things were becasue they were used to it, and I was servant to all so why would they want that to change? They were afraid to upset Dad, so they always went with what he wanted. My mother…. well I have written plenty about how unsupportive that she has been, so it was UP TO ME. I was the only one that going to be there for me.
This is great Sheryl, Thanks for sharing.

For any new readers, my husband had to go through his own therapy process, and we resolved our marriage and he now treats me with equal value. We have a mutually co-creative relationship. Our kids have flourished in this new system of equal value for all, and we spend a lot of happy family time together. They are no longer afraid of their father or respect him out of that fear so they no longer see the need to side with him vs. me but rather are encouraged to have their own opinions about things and they are free to state them. They view me as a valuable part of thier lives and they trust me with the details of their lives.

Hugs, Darlene

As to why a mother would treat her daughter in an unhealthy way? She is gaining something from it.

Lynda,
When I read that your mom told her mom she hates rye and egg white and then her mother served her that very food (IF this really happened,) I thought that these two really “feed” on each other.
Does that make sense?
But you and I can be healthier than that.

Her marriage and family grew up, which is what we all want…

I rememnber me telling my mom that I loved my grandma. She told me I wasn’t raised by her or other wise I wouldn’t feel that way toward her. I loved my grandma and up to a point she was very loving towards me. She was the only person that actually showed me love. I never felt love by anyone except her and my mom sounded jealous and became very mean to me. When I was 11 (I think) I stole some socks that my sister and brother talked me into stealing. My grandma never treated me with love again. That made my mom happy. It broke my heart. Now I litteraly had no one to love me. When I had my two girls I vowed they would hear the words “I love you” and I would mean it. I never want or wish anyone to live their life with out hearing those words.
Renee

Nicki, how wonderful that you are working on your healing now, before you have children.!

Renee, I felt SO SAD when I read that your grandmother never treated you with love again, after you stole some socks when you were 11. How terrible it is when parents, and grandparents, put conditions on their love. If a child has to be absolutely perfect all the time to be loved… never steal, never lie, never skip school, never disobey in any way, then no child could be loved. Was your grandmother perfect, all the time, in every way, all her life long? Did she never sin, never make a mistake?

I was the eldest, and for many years I was the only grandchild on both sides of the family, so I got a lot of attention… until I had a breakdown at age 14, due to the horrible abuses going on in my home, and then my mother committed me to a mental institution. After that, it was as though I had ceased to exist. My being “crazy” was the biggest dissapointment to my grandparents. I never felt loved by them again, either. Ignored, shunned, maybe sometimes pitied, but never again loved, never again looked at with that glowing look of grandparent’s pride. Grandparents LOVE to brag about their grandchildren, to show off their pictures and proudly tell of their achievements. But nobody wants to brag about “my granddaughter in the insane asylum.” Especially not in the high position my grandfather had, at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. My grandfather was the Associate Warden at the “big house,” and he and my grammie lived in the huge, impressive warden’s mansion on the grounds in front of the prison, because the warden had his own house nearby. With their teenage granddaughter committed to a State Mental Asylum not too many miles away from the Leavenworth Pen, that must have been quite an embarrassment to them, to say the least. Appearances, and class, meant so much to my grandparents. They were at the top, and I had fallen to the bottom. They blamed it on the “bad genes” I had inherited from my dad, and then, basically washed their hands of me.

Alone. Unloved. Unloveable. No child should ever feel that way.

Kari,

I am responding to your first comment above. That’s as far as I got and I had to say something.

Our mom’s telling of their stories sound eerily similar. According to my mother, she had a “perfect” childhood. It isn’t that she accepts any responsibility for her obnoxious and inappropriate behavior, mind you; but she also does not blame her parents or find any fault whatsoever with her upbringing. The funny thing is, there were important circumstances surrounding her own birth that they lied to her about until she was almost 65 years of age. My grandfather was also a veteran of the second World War, and brought plenty of baggage home to deal with — which my mom has talked briefly to me about. There are other things about her parents that I and plenty of other people can clearly see which are far from ideal, so I have to assume — considering that my mother herself is an intrinsically dishonest person from the core — that she is in absolute denial. Plain and simple as that. I’m not saying they were horrible people, but they certainly weren’t perfect. And I know because they all did the same thing to me my entire life that feelings were discouraged — anything less than utter enthusiasm. This is not an ideal setting for anyone to grow up in. I also know a great deal (much too much) about my parents’ less than idyllic marriage and a lot of my mom’s issues I think — while they certainly began before meeting my dad — were cemented in her marriage and in raising her kids. Much too much to divulge in this setting, but with my eyes peeled wide open, I can see very clearly that my mother lives in total denial of anything less than perfect that she doesn’t wish to believe. And since most of those things have translated into decades of treating me like an impotent child and outright lying about me and to me, as well as the utter refusal to observe any type of boundaries whatsoever, therein lies the death of our love. Such is life, and I’m moving on without her.

Kellie

Hi Nicki
It does help to understand some of the history with our parents. I had to separate that knowledge in my own recovery. Hard to explain but I had used it for the excuse to “excuse them” and that got in my way. So I had to look at it from both sides in order to heal. I think that it is awesome that you are doing healing work now! I had my first child at age 30 because I was so afraid. My kids are all teens (the oldest is turning 20 soon) and their lives have been WAY different then mine was. The desire to do better will take you far.
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Renee
Interesting statement from your mother. In other words ~ if you really knew your grandmother, you would not have loved her? (and isn’t that what we end up believing about ourselves? “if you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me”).. this is all about controlling, even controlling a kids feelings! I am so sorry that happened to you Renee.
I also want to mention that I had to find a new definition of love. Not loving a kid because they stole something is not real love. That is the cycle that most of us grew up in; that we were loved IF we were what they wanted, and it is trained into us that way. (by withdrawing love or attention every time we “disappoint”.) I can’t think of a reason that I would stop loving my children.
Thanks for sharing. This is like a snapshot of exactly what happens on the road that leads to broken.
Hugs, Darlene

Lynda,
Another great comment about how we learn as children to try harder to WIN or EARN the love of someone else. (your boyfriend story) And how they will never give it (for long) because making someone try all the time is having power and control over that person. It is as though they think “well if I love you and accept who you are, then I won’t be able to control you make you jump through my hoops anymore… ” This is why it is so important for us to take our own lives back and break that conditioning.
Your story about your grandparents is another great example of how this all happens.
Thanks for sharing all of this.
Hugs, Darlene

Darlene,

In response to your latest comment to Lynda, I am having an “aha” moment. You wrote:

And how they will never give it (for long) because making someone
try all the time is having power and control over that person. It
is as though they think “well if I love you and accept who you are,
then I won’t be able to control you make you jump through my hoops
anymore… ”

I can’t believe I have never thought of this before! This answers some of the question of why the standards were constantly changing and shifting — expectations met brought more, higher ones and impossible challenges to navigate as a child. This carried right over into my first marriage. The exact same thing. I honestly never thought of it as a way to control me — although I knew there were lots of other ways.

Thanks again for ALL of your insight. My philosophy is that a wound that is ignored cannot heal. That is why I journey into these pages from time to time. I also take long breaks and give myself days and sometimes weeks in between reading and studying so I don’t become so angry that I’m no good to anyone in my family.

God Bless,
Kellie

Years ago when going through some difficult times with my parents I read a book called…”Divorcing your Parents’. Don’t know who wrote it but it was amazing…I highlighted all the pages that pertained to me and saw me through better days. Unfortunately I have moved several times and can’t find it anymore.

Susan, I remember when that book about Divorcing Your Parents came out. The title was very enticing to me… but, I was going to a church at the time that focused heavily on forgiving and loving your enemies, turning the other cheek, honoring father and mother, dying to SELF, forgetting the past…. and so on and so on. All well-meaning teachings, but they didn’t help me. So, for year and years of my adulthood, I continued to stay in close contact with my parents, and to visit them whenever I could… so that they could continue putting me down, lying about me to other family members, discounting me, and verbally abusing me, over and over and over.

Then I remembered another verse in the Bible, one that says that if a town will not receive you, shake the dust of that place off your shoes and LEAVE. So I did, and it was the best thing I could have done… leaving my parents.

Lynda

Renee ~ isn’t it wonderfully HEALING, to be able to tell our stories, and share our true, innermost being, and receive in return, NOT the rejection we have grown so accustome to, but love and kindness, acceptance and understanding? What a blessed GIFT Darlene’s blog community is.

Patricia, yes, it is so true: “…though our abuses were so different… The feelings are the same.”

With Love & Gratitude,
Lynda

Patricia, I did the same…living in my head so I didn’t have to feel the emotions. Sometimes I think I’m still doing that. Because handling the emotions while navigating a full-time job and having to be at least “semi” functional is extraordinarily difficult. Also I spent a lot of time trying to “figure it out”…figure out where it all went wrong, then I could fix it. As though KNOWING where it went wrong in the past would make it somehow go right in the future. I recognize this as a delaying tactic now, but have not yet learned to replace it with something healthier and more productive.

I was raised by my mother and my grandmother (her mother). I saw firsthand how devalued my mother was by her mother. I spent my life internalizing those things and making it my responsibility to make sure my mother was not hurt or angry or sad. I always failed.

My father left when my mother was pregnant with me. My mother moved back with her parents. My grandfather died when I was seven (he was an alcoholic and there were myriad problems with him as well as far as my mother’s upbringing was concerned…even thinking about it makes me sad and angry on her behalf.) My mother was an only child and she had an alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother. I figured that if I could make her happy, if I could heal her pain, if I could keep her from being sad, then she would be all right. And thus, I would be all right.

That’s a lot of power for a little kid to think she has. Not just a little kid. My grandmother died when I was twenty. I’m 43 now, and, up until very recently, I was still doing this. Even though I had accepted – INTELLECTUALLY – that I could never make her happy, I was still trying. A lifetime of habits are hard to break. I can still see the wounded child inside of my mother and I can still hear my grandmother’s voice tearing her down and it makes me crazy. It makes me terribly sad. It STILL makes me want to make her better! I’m sitting here crying as I type that she had such a bad life and I couldn’t do anything about it!

But then I get to thinking…this woman hurt her at every opportunity. She emotionally and verbally abused her every day of her life. And she thought it would be okay if she went ahead and raised us too. My mother acknowledges this was a mistake. Of course, she couches it in self-justifying language: “I really thought I had no other choice. My only other choice was to go on welfare.” Well, maybe going on welfare would have been better. My mother was not the type to get on welfare and stay on it for life. She was an educated woman who had always worked. She was a nurse. And she never had any trouble finding and keeping a job. She would have only been on welfare a short time, if at all. Instead, she came home to her abusive mother and her alcoholic father and used them as child care while she worked.

My mother talks about a realization she had one day when I was a junior in high school. She tells me about this all the time. She realized that “in a year, you’d be gone and it would just be her and me and I knew that only one of us would survive.” (Meaning I would be going away to college and would no longer be there to be a buffer between her and her mother.) She describes this as her breakthrough moment, when she decided it would be good if she got some help and got out. It never occurred to me, until very recently, that this was a little messed up. It’s great that she had that breakthrough and got out. Long overdue. But it never occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t okay that she had been using me as a buffer at all. By the way, it didn’t (and still hasn’t) occurred to her either.

One incident is sticking out in my head right now from my upbringing. I have no idea why THIS incident, but … I don’t know how old I was, but: My mother was a little bit late getting home from work one day and my grandmother had all of us out on the street, looking for her car, saying, “she’s left you, just like your father.” This terrified me, as she knew it would. I had a stage a little earlier on where, every day, when my mother left to go to work, I was terrified that I would never see her again. I didn’t fear that she would leave me on purpose, but that she would die before she got home. Undoubtedly this was because my grandmother always told us that my mother was at “that dangerous age;” that she could have a stroke or a heart attack at any moment. Of course, I added car crashes and murderers to the list of things that could possibly happen to her. I was terrified. When my mother got home that particular night, she flew into a rage at her mother for daring to suggest that she would ever walk out on her children. I felt safe again. Until the next morning. I don’t really remember when that fear stopped, but it eventually did. And it was replaced by vaguer, more monstrous fears.

And (intellectually, again!), I know that none of that matters! All that matters is right now. This moment. That’s all we really have anyway, right?! “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” If I’m going to be happy, I have to make the right choices and do the right things and care about myself, because no one else can do it for me. I even know that in my heart and soul.

But after a lifetime of making the wrong choices (maybe even sometimes for the right reasons…like not wanting my mom to be hurt or sad), the right choices don’t always come so easy. I may even know what they are (eat right, exercise more, stand up for myself, etc.), but I don’t know how to implement them because a core “motivator” is missing: self worth. And that’s a little more complicated (at least for me) than just “deciding” to feel better. Every time I “decide” to feel better…I end up feeling worse.

Lisa and Lynda, finding your own self-worth is the best possible thing that you can do for yourself and for those closest to you. I was blessed to find people who loved me and showed me how to love myself. My teacher for self-worth was a lady about 8 years older than me that I met through a mutual friend. They later married and both became my counselors as soon as they graduated from college with degrees in counseling. My friend, Kathy became my incest counselor, 12-Step mentor, and best friend all in one person. Kathy was a wonderful role model for being a healthy incest survivor herself. She was a recovering alcoholic. I don’t drink because I carry the gene for alcoholism. She was a recovering bulimic also. The important thing was she was a healthy role model for being a woman too which I had never had before. She taught me but she also showed me by example what it was like to be healthy and to love myself. She also taught me to play and enjoy my life. I only knew her for 3 short years before she was killed by someone that she was trying to help. She probably taught me more about myself than anybody else. She taught me what it meant to be a strong, loving woman.

You are worth loving yourself. You are worth being loved by others. We already are strong women. We already are courageous women just by being here and telling our stories so that others can read and benefit from our sharing.

I had to start my own journey to loving myself by admitting that I hated myself and then going from there. Until you admit what you are feeling, you can’t change it. I hated myself because I believed all of the lies that my dad told me when I was a child. He told me that women were only good for one thing and that was sex. He told me that all women were whores. He told me that a man only wanted a woman for sex, not to love. He made me feel that I was the “other woman” in his marriage. How could I feel any other way about myself?

Like Darlene, I had to see those statements for what they were – lies. I didn’t deserve to be hurt by my dad and neglected by my mom except when she needed biscuits made for supper, or wanted me to bring her a cup of coffee or her cigarettes, or when she wanted me to wash dishes or do some other household chore. I didn’t deserve to be sent off with my dad every time that he decided to go somewhere other than to work. I can’t tell you the number of stomach aches that I got as a kid when he started talking about going somewhere. The stomach aches never got me out of going places with him. The trips always ended with sex in the front seat of his truck.

Wow! Just writing that is giving me an upset stomach. I haven’t had that reaction in a very long time – years, in fact. Darlene, I love/hate the way that your posts are making – no, not making – helping me to feel. A friend of mine says “Feeling is healing.” I have to agree with him. That must be my lesson today. It is the 3rd time today that I have quoted him. So much healing is going on because of your posts, Darlene. Thank you.

Lynda, thank you. That makes me want to cry – in a good cry way. Your compassion touches me deeply.

Hi Everyone,
I took some time off yesterday but I see that the discussion has been amazing while I was gone! I can’t answer all the new comments (I am pressed for time today) but I want to respond to a few.

Patricia ~ Your comment really hit me. I am going to repost the parts that really struck me as SO significant so that anyone reading my comment back doesn’t have to search for yours to see what I am talking about:
You wrote:

” What I learned about asking so many “why” questions is that the questions often kept me so focused on the search that it left me no time to feel. For many years, I lived in my head/mind rather than be connected to the body that had been sexually abused by my dad. Staying in my head was safe rather than possibly having to deal with the body that allowed itself to be used. In my mind, I could hide from the pain of the abuse and betrayals of my childhood.

Second, staying in my head/mind, I didn’t have to feel the emotional hurt, the feelings of worthlessness, the hurt of betrayal by my parents, the overwhelming sadness, the self-hatred for my body and for my feeling, vulnerable child parts. I intellectualized everything rather than feel. That is how I used the “why” questions that my mind came up with. Today, I am connected to my head, body and feelings. Sometimes I slip back into just the head but I see what I am doing and can reconnect to all of my beautiful parts. They are all me.”

I have never thought about this “head/body” thing in exactly this way, but I love how you have described it. It really resonates with me. I have not done a ton of work with BODY memory stuff…. and I think that the way you explain it really well. I have given a lot of thought and done a lot of work about staying present, about the “head stuff” being such a big part of the “spin” for me. The spin that leads nowhere. But this avoiding my body thing… that really makes sense to me. I see it slightly differently then you do, in that I felt all those feelings in my head and dealt with them that way, BUT I also realize that I have avoided the body stuff in that I don’t like to be aware of my body as the “part of me” that was used. I can’t even articulate it properly yet, but I had to say that this has given me a lot to think about and I really appreciate this post Patricia! I am sure that I will write about this more in a new post one of these days.
Hugs, Darlene

You broke because they treated you with hateful behavior.
Being broken is not acceptable, so you move on, and heal.

Wow…… such valuable info from all… thank you for sharing…..

Sheryl, I have done cranio-scral a few times and was very pleased with the process. I was doing inner child work and wrote several blog posts about the process. I had to quit going because of transportation problems which haven’t been resolved yet. I will go back to it as a way to reconnect with body memories sometime in the future.

Patricia and Darlene,
This past Monday as I was being wheeled on the gurney into the operating room for my colonoscopy, I could feel myself leaving my body and going into my head only. I knew I was going to be put to sleep, under anesthesia, and that terrifies me. When I was 14 – 16 years old, in a state mental institution, I was drugged and raped 3 times by my psychiatrist. He used sodium pentothal, the drug that is known as the truth serum. The last time he did that, he gave me too much, too fast, and I almost died. A nurse told me later that she heard me screaming bloody murder from inside his office, but she couldn’t get in the locked door. He yelled at her thru the door that I was under hypnosis and was reliving a very traumatic memory, and could not be disturbed. When he was through with me, he sent me back to the ward, and I passed out right after I got there. I remember floating up in the air and looking down on my body, lying crumpled on the floor. The two nurses on the ward came running out of their office. As they were checking me, one said she couldn’t find a pulse.
The other said that my lips were turning blue…

Somehow they revived me, then they walked me back and forth, up and down the long hall, holding me upright between them. I felt like I was floating the whole time, dreaming, not real. Finally after what seemed like several hours of this, I came fully awake. Then when I went to the bathroom, I could tell by the condition of my underwear that I had been raped… I had no memory of the actual rape, just the dr. telling me to go to sleep and have a dream and saying that when I woke up I would not remember anything. I don’t remember screaming either, don’t remember a nurse trying to get into the locked office, don’t remember the rapist dr. telling her to go away… but I do remember that when he was giving me the drug, in a vein inside my left arm, that my chest, my heart, began to hurt terribly, like it was being squeezed, hard, by a very strong fist. I told the doctor that my chest hurt, he stopped briefly, took my pulse, then plunged the rest of the drug into my arm.

I have a vague memory of him telling me that if I ever remembered, or told, anyone about what he was doing to me, that he would, quote: “stick you back in a hole so far that you will never see the light of day again.”

Afterward, I also remember that he tried to make me kiss him. When I wouldn’t do it, he said, “You will never get better until you learn to stop repressing your real feelings.” That was when he sent me back to the ward, where I passed out and almost died.

The nurses reported what had happened to me that night. The dr’s office was searched for evidence, and in his desk drawer, they found tape recordings that he had made of his rapes. The dr. was fired. Later someone told me he had committed suicide.

One male counselor, and one male psychiatrist, separately cursed me out during the following few days, for having “ruined the life of a wonderful man.” The Dr. said, “I suppose you want to lay right down here on my office floor and screw me too, don’t you?”

About a year later, shortly after I had been released from the institution, the counselor drove several hundred miles to my house to apologize for blaming me for what the rapist dr. had done. I refused to see him… but his effort to apologize did help me feel a little less “crazy.”

I was put in solitary confinement after being raped. Why? Because I was sitting on the toilet in the ward’s open community bathroom, sitting there crying silently, and one of the other patients saw me crying and went and told the nurse who was then on duty, hoping the nurse might be able to help me feel better or something, and the nurse came into the bathroom and yelled at me, “Stop that cyring! You are upsetting the other patients!” In one of my very extremely rare moments of trying to stand up for myself I said, “You Bitch! I can CRY if I want to!”

So the nurse ran and called for help. Moments later, that nurse, and several big burly white-coated male attendants came storming into the bathroom where I was still sitting on the pot, still crying silently…. and they grabbed me off the toilet, and dragged me by my arms, legs, and hair, across and down the hall to a solitary confinement room, and shoved me inside, and slammed and locked the door.

There was a bed in there, that’s all. I took the bedding off the bed, climbed up on the marble window sill, and made a noose from the bedsheet, and hung it from the big metal rod that was bolted into the cement wall above the tall window with the thick metal screens and bars. Then I hung myself.

The metal rod broke off the wall.

I was lying in a heap on the floor, when, moments later, the door flew open, and another herd of white-coated males swarmed in, dragged the rod and bedding out of the room, held me down while a nurse shot me full of dope in my thigh, then they strapped me down to the metal cot in that room, I was strapped with leather-wrapped metal belts that went around my ankles, to the bottom of the bed, around my wrists, to the sides of the bed, and around my abdomen, to where it was all padlocked under the bed. And there I floated, out of my body, for days.

THESE ARE THE MEMORIES THAT RETURN EVERY TIME I AM GIVEN AN INJECTION THAT CAUSES ME TO GO TO SLEEP. I remember it all, as if it were NOW. It IS now…

The doctor who performed my colonoscopy last Monday was a woman. She was very understanding when I told her ahead of time that I have a panic attack when I am being put under anesthesia for any reason, because as a teenager I was drugged and raped. I did not tell her it was my own dr. who did that… usually when I tell that part, I get this look of disbelief. I don’t know if my new dr. would have looked that way, but I suspect she would not. In fact, when I told her that I had been drugged and raped and have panicked over being put under ever since, she looked at me so sadly and compassionately and said, “You’re not the first woman to tell me that. I’ve heard it from quite a few women over the years.”

She was very compassionate and lovely, and I had no fear whatsoever that anything would be done to harm me in any way, during my colonoscopy procedure… but even so, the feeling of a drug going into my vein, that feeling of being warm all over, of starting to lose control, to lose consciousness, to lose ME… my heart began to pound and I panicked and I wanted to RUN. Then I went into my head, out of my body, and I knew even as I was doing it, “I am dissociating right now.” I have never known that before, I have just automatically done it. But this time, I knew that was what I was doing, a split second after I began doing it. And I told myself, “That’s OK, I can do this for right now, to help me through, I won’t stay dissociated.”

I was SO GLAD when it was ALL OVER and I could wake up and come back to ME again!

Lynda

Thank you, Patricia. Your words were exactly what I needed to hear. Like a healing balm.

Your writing about your dad.. that gave me the courage to tell the whole story about my being raped, and how it affects me to this day. I have gone without medical procedures that I was told I needed, due to my panic over the anesthesia, and the flashback it causes me.

I, too, want to hold the child that you were and cry with you and scream with you. No one, no child, should ever be treated the way you were treated. I agree, I don’t know how we’ve survived some of our traumas.

I believe I am both very strong, and very weak. Very strong, to have survived. Weak, in my wounded broken places. Yet very strong, to go on living, even with the brokenness inside, and to continue to strive for HEALING, rather than just giving up and curling into a helpless little ball… although I have done that, too. There are days when brushing my teeth is a major victory.

Lynda, thank you so much for sharing your story. I too have gone without medical procedures and dental work I need because of my fear of going under anesthesia. My reason is different, but I had an operation when I was 3 and the anesthesia didn’t work and I felt everything. I was awake, but paralyzed and couldn’t scream or fight back. I had nightmares about it my whole life, of trying to move, trying to scream, trying to get away, and yet my soul is screaming and thrashing violently inside, just my body won’t move. Every time I have anesthetic, the same thing happens – I feel it but can’t tell anyone. Not only that, no one has ever believed me when I tell them afterwards. My parents told me it was impossible, I was imagining it because I psyched myself up so much beforehand. Doctors and dentists told me the same thing. You couldn’t possibly have that much pain killer and still feel anything. When I had my wisdom teeth out, it was so bad that I did that time actually break out of the restraints on my arms, knocked the tray over and pushed past 3 dentists, through the door and ran down the hall and locked myself in the bathroom. I lay down on the cool tile floor finally feeling safe and went to sleep, but they took the door off the hinges and dragged me out because they were not finished. After all that, my mother was furious at me. I had caused a scene. I embarrassed her. No, wait, I humiliated her. She would not allow me to stay in the recovery room, she wanted to get out of there right away. So people helped me out to the car and put me in the back seat, but I had no strength in my muscles yet (the paralyzing part of the anesthetic worked) so every time she put on the brakes or turned a corner I would roll off the back seat onto the floor and not be able to get up. She was so MAD! She accused me of crying wolf, of being dramatic, and she would mimic me crying and saying “mom stop the car” in a whiny, dramatic, baby, mocking voice. This was how it was my whole life. My pain was an embarrassment. So I wasn’t allowed to have it.

It was about this time, when I had my wisdom teeth out in my 20s, that my mother called me and confessed to me that God was convicting her about something and that she needed to tell me. She told me that she had been afraid I was too needy and clingy when I was little, like 3 or 4, and she was afraid I wouldn’t learn to be independent, so she stopped hugging me, stopped touching me, and stopped letting me come to her for comfort or sit on her lap or hold her hand. It was embarrassing to her that I might cry and not want to go to school while other kids were fine. She thought it was the right thing to do, but suddenly now she realized it had damaged me. She wanted to hear me say the words I forgive you. But she never changed towards me. It was like just KNOWING something in your head was enough.

So back to my earlier point. I basically stopped going to the dentist and doctor. I just ignored my body.

And it’s connected to something else commented on… I think it was Lisa B, about living in your head and not your body. That’s what I did. But truly, I believe that’s what my mother did her whole life too, and she had absolutely no awareness of pain – hers or anyone else’s close to her. I think I did it to survive from the time I was very little, but also I think I learned it or it was reinforced by how my mother was. Everything was logical and rational and intellectualized, never felt. And that’s why analyzing my thoughts and beliefs, as Darlene has done to heal and uproot the lies, that’s why it feels so wrong for me right now. If feels unhealthy and dysfunctional to analyze my feelings and thoughts instead of just allowing them to be there whether they are logical or true or not. Wow. Very interesting. Maybe I’m just in a stage where I need to let myself feel regardless of whether I can INTELLECTUALLY validate it or find the source of it.

Hi Amy,
Thank you for sharing your story. I woke up once while under a general anaesthetic. I had all the same symptoms that you had, I could feel the arm restraints, I was panicking like crazy because I couldn’t move and I thought I was dying. but that is all I remember because the very aware anaesthesiology doctor monitoring the anaesthetic realized that I had woken up. (which was his JOB to realize and it is one of the MOST important jobs of any of the DR.s in the operating room) and the next day he came to see me and asked me if I was aware of anything going “wrong” in the surgery and he explained to me what had happened. I felt validated and supported but I am still terrified to ever have a general anaesthetic again. It is horrifying to think that you were awake AND feeling the surgery! To not be believed is horrific. The abusive way that your own mother treated you is inexcusable. I am so sorry that you have been through ALL that. One abuse heaped on top of another. I believe you Amy. Why in the world would people think a person could make that up????
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Susan
Love your point about DOING. It isn’t about doing, it is about being and YES it is always about emotional healing. And I have to highlight your last paragraph! It is so great ~

Susan wrote:
“It really was vital for me to make that shift from assigning blame to placing responsibility for the way they treated me with those who mistreated me in order that I could release the burden both for my own pain but also the lie that had told me I was responsible for THEIR pain. As long as I was “blaming” them then I could accept others blaming me for things that I had done even though my today choices were based on my past beliefs and the mistakes I’d made from that place. When I could place responsibility for the way they treated me with them, then I could also accept responsibility for my own failures as a parent. Without that – I could only live in the guilt of being a “bad” parent. Instead, I can now live outside of that place of “black and white” where life and people were “all bad” or “all good”. Instead, I can accept responsibility while not accepting blame for who I was and what I did that came from the original abuse all the while knowing that I can do better each day. This was where the past shifted from being the excuse for bad behaviour that was based on shame and blame to being an understandable reason while accepting responsibility for my past actions and my future choices.”

Really excellent points Susan, thanks for being here as always!
Hugs, Darlene

Renee, I feel sad that you didn’t know Kathy any better. She was a truly remarkable woman and a survivor. I owe her and Jack so much with showing me the steps in recovery. I will email you later the links to the blog articles that I wrote about her and the things that she taught me. She guided me through some really painful parts of my healing from incest. It is hard for me to believe that I only knew her for 3 years. By example and by being my teacher, she changed my life in so many ways. Through her goodness and her faults, she taught me what being a woman meant.

Thank you Darlene! I’m so pleased to be a part of such a vibrant community!

Patricia – I really appreciate the way you laid out your tools: sharing what happened with another, writing and a group where you are able to share and give support as well as receive. I know this is not an easy journey but I really like the simple way you laid it out:)

Darlene, I get what you are saying, and read through the first few responses, which clarified things further.

My question is, and I’m sorry if you feel like you are having to repeat yourself, when you decided THEY don’t define you and you are NOT who they say you are, how do YOU decide WHO the heck you are then?

My pastor at church always said that if we believe what God says about us, we don’t worry about what others say, because we don’t believe what they say. So I always thought that the abuse should not have affected me, because I didn’t have to believe or take in any of the nasty stuff ex was doing. So I erroneously believed that the marriage could have survived because I didn’t have to react to anything he did, or feel scared, or affected if I knew who I was in God.

But now I am separated because I don’t believe that God expects us to tolerate wickedness. I don’t believe God puts an institution above the welfare of people. So do I ask God who I am, who He created me to be, then believe it, and live accordingly?

I, too, have so much to apologize to my kids for. Even today I found myself raging at my raging son. How can I expect him to be different if I yell at him (for yelling at me)? I know how I ought to be, I just don’t know how to do it, because I never had a nurturing, affectionate mother. Not that I ever got angry at the way she was and determined in my heart not to be like her. I actually was very bonded to her, because she was very “nice” to me, while being nasty to many others, including my sister, who determined never to turn out like her mother.

Thanks for assuring me that it is never too late. I feel like I have “wasted” my life – all I wanted to do was to impart to the next generation. I gave up a good job for that, and now I find that the legacy I gave was one of having a violent home. And I don’t know how to be the healing agent when I am empty myself, looking for the nurturing I never had and never knew I missed out on.

Hi Lynda,
I know how it feels to feel like I have shared too much. I have been sick and overwhlemed more then once after I have pushed that publish button, but the growth and healing that has come from it is amazing. Please be gentle with yourself ~ you are safe, accepted and loved here.
Hugs, Darlene

@Lynda, I know once Darlene sees this she will respond but I wanted to say none of us know each other on a personal basis don’t let anything intimidate you from sharing your truth. I hope this has been a healing journey for you and that I or none of the other shave hurt you in any way. We are all at different levels on different paths of our journey and I personally do not feel any of them is right or wrong. Just different. But I understand how you feel. I questioned myself being out of place as to why I never had the why questions. off hand I dont think I did. It made me feel so out of place as to why I seem to be the only one who did not. I think after thinking about it my family did not play as much of role in my life or emotions as my friends. I did have why questions when in romantic relationships about the abuse. Just not with my family. My feelings and thoughts abotu my biological mother were only to get away from her. I intuitively knew she was the one who was off and no it wasnt generational. Her mother and her had a pretty good relationship but her dad died at age 10 in an accident. I never tried to understand why she was that way. Even her mom my grandma was a victim of her hatred and insanity. My grandma owned and operated restaurants and bed and breakfasts after her husband died so she didn’t haev time to watch over my mom so my mom was bitter. That is as much as I know but I didn’t want to know more I just wanted to get way and move forward and I did. She tries to get back into my life through court because like Darlene’s mom it is all about her ego. But I refuse to communicate with her and will only do so through my attorney and cant if I wanted to but I dont want to. If you have not been heard before or shared before I understand it can make you feel vulnerable but dont give up. There is power in truth and in your voice!

Renee, Pinky, Darlene, Patricia… You beautiful, wonderful, kind and compassionate women…. THANK YOU.

No, Pinky, I can assure you truly that nothing you said upset me in any way, nor did anything that anyone else say here upset me in any way. It was just me, reliving the rape.. the rape that I don’t remember, because I was drugged. Yet the horror of it, that I do remember. The horror of coming so close to dying, that third time that he raped me, I remember that too, very well. It was so terrifying. And I relive that every time I have to be given an anesthetic of any kind. I’ve gone without needed medical procedures in the past, due to my fear of the flashback/memory. I even had a dr. do a D & C on me in his office one time, to try to determine why I was bleeding all the time, he did it with no pain med whatsoever, due to my fear. It HURT. I also had a dentist drill on my teeth with no shots, nothing, because of my fear.

I am better now, I do allow shots when I really need them. But, I still panic, I flash back, I start to remember the rape. Then the aftermath… being blamed by my rapist’s dr’s colleagues, being put in solitary confinement, trying to hang myself. I really really wanted to die then. When the big heavy metal rod that I hung myself from broke off the wall… I was crushed that I hadn’t succeeded in killing myself.

Now, I am so happy in my life, so glad to be alive. I thank God that I didn’t die that terrible day, when I wasas 15 years old.

But remembering, which the anesthesia for my colonoscopy last Monday made me remember, it puts me in a spin. And then when I wrote about it here, I felt the shame and the blame and the humiliation all over again.

Today, I have been beating myself up emotionally all day long, for being such a wimpy baby last night, when I posted my last comment about feeling lost and vulnerable and hurting. I was afraid to come back here today to see what, if anything, any of you may have said to me in response. I finally just now did read these precious comments, and again, all I can say is, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart. I feel like I don’t deserve these sweet comments tho, because I am still mad at myself for being such a baby. But I thank you anyway! You are all so wonderful, and I’m so glad we’ve met through this awesome healing blog community.

Please accept my apology for being such a baby wimp last night, I am truly sorry for that. The good news is that I got a lot done in the house today, being off the computer. Then I took our Lady dog for a long run in the afternoon. So now I am aching and sore, but I feel a lot better emotionally than I did last night, thanks most of all to you gracious lovely women.

HUGS to ALL,
Lynda

I have learned something here for the first time in my life I have sisters of a special kind. When one is hurting, sick or lost in her pain, there are a legion to pick her up and carry her tenderly until she can get back on her feet to continue her journey. Thank you just doesn’t say it well enough.

Hi Lynda,
You are the farthest thing from wimpy! I totally understand the trigger stuff. I am writing a post about it for this week!
Thanks for sharing more valuable processing! We all go through this!
Hugs, Darlene

Amy
~ I love what you said!

Renee
~ Your summary of this community is beautiful. Thank you.

Patricia
~ as always your voice adds healing.

Hugs, Darlene

[...] I get emails and comments like the one that I got this week on the post “Mom and Grandma had a Dysfunctional Mother Daughter Relationship”  expressing feeling overwhelmed about sharing stories of the past. The comment said: “I am [...]

Hi Everyone, I just published a post about my grandmother with a little more information about how she related to me.
You can read it here: I thought my Grandmother was the Wicked Witch

the Cry of a child.

Do I not have a voice in this big world of ours
I shout loud enough you can hear me on the stars
Why doesnt anyone hear me why doesnt anyone care
I’m shouting and am crying, is anybody there.

They hurt me again today see my bruises here?
I am just a little child filled with alot of fear
If I cry out loud then they will beat me more
Who will speak for me when I cant get off the floor?

Today was a another bad one mommy put me in the bed
Older bro was with me and did things for which I dread
Those candles for the show why were they put in me
Mom and older bro just wouldnt get off me

They say I am a bad child because I’m a big mistake
So I must be punished daily oh for goodness sake
Do you think its ok that my mommy hates me so
Why is it wrong to cry I really want to know…..

I am sharing this with you so you might work with me
Give little ones a voice help others come to see
That abusing little ones is happening every day
But no one speaks for them and we’re afraid to say.

Hello Patricia ..

Thank you for your kind words.. am trying to keep copies in word pad . i am thinking i should create a blog just of the journey…therapy type poems. i have two other blogs with earlier poems..I write them every day sometimes a couple a day as i have no one here to tell my pains to .so i write . .

I feel i share as others feel the same way..as i do… Some of the poems i have share in some groups and people have asked permission to put them on blogs and websites.which I always say ok.

I so appreciate your kind words and all your support Patricia.. you keep me inspired.. . ..

joy

Hi Patricia: Wow 4 years..your blog is such a blessing am trying to figure out how to comment . I tried to put one and dont know where it went..I love your writing there!!! YOu do well..

You are really very far advance and I am just a beginner. I am so glad for the support too .of you and everyone.. i hope someday can be like you .. reaching out and healing and having been healed..

joy

Patricia thank you . is the blog cast today at 7pm or 8 pm ..is it eastern?

I hope I can look back some day and see all this differently as now i look with a little fear. low self esteem.. trying to trust but not doing so good

joy

Patricia thank you as I saw one that I thought said 7pm. so its 8pm Eastern. . i look forward to it

Thank you for everything.

joy

If you go to the link in Blog Talk Radio Joy it will post the show time as whatever your time zone is. But if you didn’t set your computer to be in a certain timezone it gets confusing. So yes, the interview is at 8:00 pm EST.

WEll just wanted to say how very very lovely it was to hear the blogcast and hear how you started out, how you took your power back,and just to “hear” your voices..what a difference it makes reading words and being able to associate them with a live person.Not that you were not live but there is a kindness and caring that I heard there.. its also in your writings but hearing it is so much deeper..just want to say thanks. so much

joy

Hi Renee

Can you listen to the replay?? This is the link;
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/conversationslive/2011/06/01/cyrus-webb-presents-you-are-not-alone
Hugs, Darlene

Darlene and Pat
I finally was able to listen to the interview. Awesome job!

Hi Renee
Thanks! So glad that you enjoyed it!
Hugs, Darlene

Hi J
I remember making the same vow as you, possibly not that young though… I remember when I was 15 I set a goal to NEVER be like her and that was when I decided not to have kids. EVER. I was 30 when I changed my mind. (I have three now) but it was a very scary thing… I read every book about nurturing parenting I could get my hands on! As you read this blog J, keep in mind that when we start to look at the roots of the issues, and when we can see the lies in the belief system that manifested as a result of not being treasured in the first place, the identity thing will straighten out. At least mine did.
Great to have you here!
Hugs, Darlene

Hi Amanda
Welcome to EFB!
I feel that way too ~ I am doing so much better then that with my 3 kids. If my mother cares for me, she had a funny way of showing it. I got tired of that whole system. I am glad that you are here,
Please share often.
Hugs, Darlene