I convinced myself of many things in order to cope with child abuse, emotional abuse and being defined as less important than others in my life.  

I was unable to cope with the truth so I changed the truth to suit me. I learned how to view “unhealthy attention” as though it was healthy and validating in order to cope with my dysfunctional world the way that it was and by doing so I was able to pretend that my world was actually functional. I found a way to believe that I was special.   

But in order to feel loved and to believe that I had at least some degree of self worth, I had to change my understanding of the word “special”. I had to warp my definition of that word in order to fit it to the actual circumstances.  The things I accepted as “proof” and validation that I was “special” became pretty sick and unhealthy.

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old, my mother started commenting about the way men were looking at me. I remember that it was embarrassing to me. She would whisper to me in the grocery store “Darlene, did you see the way that man looked at you??” She told me that I was attractive to older men as though this was some great gift I had.  I felt uncomfortable about it, but at the same time I felt validated by my mom. I felt like “finally!! I have done something right!” She looked so happy when she told me these things. She looked pleased with me. It was important to her that I was attractive and she was saying that I was. I found some value for myself when she commented on these “older men” who were looking at me with appreciation.  

I thought I was special because my mother wanted to take me out to bars with her to pick up men when I was 17. I thought that meant that I was attractive; SHE thought I was attractive. I thought she was validating me and I longed for her approval and acceptance, so I accepted this as the way I could get it. 

I believed that I was special when I was sought out by older men when I was too young to be in any kind of man/ woman relationship with them.

My mother usually took me to hotel bars; bars where men were staying on business trips. The men that hit on me in the bars I was in with my mother were married men. In my youth and naive way of thinking I thought that I must be “really special” if they were giving me attention when they were married. This kind of thinking sounds really sick now but it comes from the situations that I was put into without knowing that this kind of thing was not “normal” or right.

I remember the duality of the way that I processed this kind of dysfunctional relationship that I had with my mother and the men that were hitting on me. On the one hand I thought I was special. On the other hand I was scared of what might happen.  One night this man hit on me and it was clear that he was married; he was wearing a wedding band for one thing.  But he asked me to go out to the lobby of the hotel with him.  He made a phone call to his wife while he had his arm around me. I was SO uncomfortable. I wanted to run. On the phone he asked his wife about her day and about the kids while he was stroking my arm and rubbing my hip and he kept smiling at me.

Thoughts were firing through my mind at warp speed. I didn’t really know what the hell he was doing and I felt dirty, but there was the thrill of danger, mixed with the relief of acceptance and approval. At the same time I was wondering why my mother wasn’t worried about where I was. I felt sick to my stomach and I felt powerless. I felt like a hooker, but somehow the whole thing felt like a compliment. I felt special; I felt like I had some kind of exotic power that this man would take this RISK “for me” in that way.  At some level I knew he was using me but I was too young to understand the cheap thrill he was getting talking to his wife with a 17 year old girl tucked into his side.  He winked at me which scared me and reassured me at the same time. I wanted to walk away but I didn’t think, (didn’t know) that I had a choice. When had I EVER had a choice? How would I have learned that I had a choice? I didn’t want to be rejected by him; I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. Where the hell WAS my mother?? 

And under all of these thoughts, I had just a whisper of a feeling that I wanted to avoid feeling more than anything else. I couldn’t face the truth that both this man and my mother had absolutely NO regard for me at all. I was just a means to an end for that married man. Perhaps he thought he would get me in bed at the end of the night? I was nothing to him. I was nothing. I was just some object some “thing” to distract him from the tedium of being on a business trip out of town with nothing to do in the evening. I was just a good story to tell to the boys at home. He had to have known that I was just a kid; even though I was in a bar I could not legally have been less than 19.  

And to my toxic mother I was just someone to go to the bar with. I was likely a good man magnet too. What did she care about what could happen to me? As an adult it took me YEARS to face that what my mother was doing was wrong (not to mention illegal!) and that her actions showed how little regard she had for me. This was all about her.

Talk about an example of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

The world might have judged me accountable for being in this situation if the world had known about it so to protect myself, I couldn’t tell the world. I had to keep it to myself. In my world the girl always got blamed. That man was married and fooling around on his wife but I would have been labeled as the tramp that had enticed him. I would have been judged as a home wrecker and a slut.  I knew that stuff already so I went along with him… smiled at him while he sweet talked his wife as he winked at me somehow knowing that I wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t expose him and that I would submit to this objectifying treatment.  In order to comfort myself, I told myself that this defined me as “the special one” in the situation.  

By the time I was 18 years old I had lived without value long enough to believe that there was something wrong with me. I was full of shame and disappointment; full of self loathing, full of self disgust. I wasn’t even legal age yet and I believed that no one would ever love me. And even though I believed that all I needed was to be rescued by a man, I didn’t trust them anymore.

This story represents the how I took a situation and broke it down in order to understand my belief system and how it formed and how this situation resulted in being one of the ways that I came to view myself. Because of circumstances that I didn’t know how to process, I decided that I was special because my toxic mother thought that I was attractive enough to take to bars when I was underage. This conclusion was a lie. That didn’t make me special at all. Believing that I was special because a married man was attracted to me and therefore used me to boost his ego was not a healthy self view and it was a lie about me. The way he acted didn’t define my value in a good way at all. I was coping with the fact that my mother was using me and putting me in a very dangerous situation by reassuring myself that her actions defined me as special. And the pain that I had to face was that her actions defined me as nothing. Not important, not worthy of respect or protection, not loved, and certainly not special.  The truth is that my mother and I had an extremely dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

~Just a little more context ~ Although this was nowhere near the first time that my toxic mother had taken me to bars with her, (she had started doing that when I was still living at home) I was living with my boyfriend at the time of this occurrence and on this night he was in jail serving time for impaired driving. I told myself that my mother must have thought that if I was old enough to live with a man then I was old enough to drink in bars with her.

But here is the funny thing and the conflict that I never saw the truth about; the reason that I was living with my boyfriend was because my mother had told me to get out of her house for staying out too late twice.  I wonder why I wasn’t old enough to stay out late, but I was old enough to go to bars and help her pick up men?

Like I said, my mother and I had an extremely dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.

Please share your thoughts on this subject of the fear of not being special and switching the truth around in order to avoid the truth and cope with the pain.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

For Related posts on Mother Daughter Dysfunctional Relationship or Toxic Mother Daughter Relationship please see the “Mother Daughter Category”  ( also see links (the words) in highlighted bold print throughout the article)

Seeking understanding and validation from the WRONG people

the wrong gift

The Ghost of Dysfunctional Christmas Past ~ Part 2

How come I could NEVER find the right gift for my Mother? I never seemed to be able to make her happy. My Christmas gifts  as well as any other gifts I found for her never had the desired effect one wants when giving a gift to someone.

There was always this disappointment she showed when she opened a gift from me. Her face would fall. She would look uncomfortable. She wouldn’t say much about whatever I had chosen for her. I agonized over what I would get her, and then I worried about it until the day I gave it to her. I dreaded her reaction. I guess I was hoping that her face would light up. I was hoping for approval.

I got so that I HATED thinking about what she might like for a gift and what I should get her. There was so much anxiety around gift giving that I couldn’t actually concentrate on the celebration itself. There was so much “obligation” around all these events that I didn’t understand back then.

My mother never made it easy for me by pointing out or mentioning a specific gift she wanted. It was as if my “guessing what the right gift would be to get for her” was part of what would make her happy. It was a though if she “told” me what she wanted, that would ruin it. In order for the gift to be “special”, I had to come up with the idea on my own, or be a mind reader.

My mother collects Royal Doulton Figurines. Not the cheap kind either. The ones she likes cost upwards of $250.00 each. One year I decided to get her one. It was a lot of money but I really wanted to make her happy.

It worked. She loved it. FINALLY I had done something right after YEARS of giving her a disappointing gift and feeling like I had let my mom down. Her face lit up! She approved! It was an exhilarating feeling of success for me!

There was only one other time I recall where my mother was pleased with me choice of gift for her. It was when I sent her a huge amount of roses to correspond with the number of years she had reached on her birthday. (I can’t remember which birthday, but I know it was over 60)  

When I began my journey out of the foggy darkness, I realized that my Mother sees gifts as a reflection of “love” or a measurement of love.  Gifts “prove” her value. If the giver spends a lot then the giver recognizes her value. Gifts define her. It isn’t the thought that counts in her mind. In addition to that, it’s not only about money and the monetary value of the gift but how well the giver has “guessed” what would please her.  When the relationship is dysfunctional however, it is really hard to guess the right gift.

It seems as though according to her belief system, the gift actually “proves” her worth. The gift proves the givers love and understanding of her.

There is another side of this picture. My mother didn’t give gifts to me in the same way she wanted to receive them for herself. Once again this is an example of how controlling and manipulative people live by two different sets of rules.  The rules that apply to her, and the rules that apply to others.  I always say that narcissistic, controlling and manipulative people don’t ‘love’ by the same rules that they demand love. If my gifts to her defined my love for her and her worth in my eyes then I thought it would stand to reason that the same was true for her when she gave a gift to me. 

When it came to me and the gifts that my mother would choose for me, the gifts always seemed practical or convenient.  She hated those kinds of gifts for herself, but she bought them for me. It seems odd to me that she would buy me gifts that would have disappointed her; gifts that would have “defined her” as less than worthy of a major splurge gift.

In the fog of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship, I could not sort this out.

If my gifts to my mother defined or proved my love for her and made a statement TO her about HER worth in my eyes then it would stand to reason that the same was true for her when she gave a gift to me.

Today I realize that her gifts to me were in fact another way of keeping me defined as less valuable than she was.  Upon closer examination, if my gifts defined my love for her and her worth in my eyes, than judging by the gifts she chose for me, it would stand to reason the same belief actually WAS true for her.  In truth, she was giving me gifts according to her own belief system. She believed that I was not worthy of thought and consideration in the way that I had to prove she was worthy of thought and consideration.

Her double standard (in her view) wasn’t odd at all. It was actually a truth leak about the way she regarded me as “less” than herself.

And in some dysfunctional families, this devaluing belief system is reflected differently for each child! In other words, one child gets the best and most expensive gift imaginable while the other child gets socks.

I don’t miss any of that stuff anymore. I don’t miss the anxiety of choosing a gift for her; I don’t miss bracing myself for the reaction from her; I don’t miss her disappointment or her false definition of love that wrapped around the whole Mothers day, birthday, and Christmas gift giving thing.

It took me years to get over my fear of giving the wrong gift. It took me years to get over my fear of opening gifts too.  I was so afraid that I would react the way that my mother did, I was more focused on my reaction to a gift than I was ON the gift itself! Once I found the truth at the roots of those fears, each passing year has become easier. I don’t buy gifts OR give gifts out of obligation anymore. I don’t believe gifts are a measurement of love. And since my definition of love has been redefined and I know what LOVE is and what LOVE is not, I don’t live under those two different sets of rules anymore either.

I welcome your comments. Please feel free to share.

Happy Holidays everyone; Bright blessings, hugs and squishes to all;

Darlene Ouimet

 Emergingfrom 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.

Related Posts ~Part one to this post ~ Dysfunctional Family Christmas and Being Alone

Seeing through New Eyes

This article is based on a page from the unauthorized biography “Oprah a biography by Kitty Kelley”

When I grabbed this book of the shelf at Costco, I didn’t realize that it was an unauthorized biography about Oprah Winfrey. I thought that it was the real story. I thought that Oprah had agreed to the publication. I quickly realized that I had picked up something that might be full of lies and conclusions that had no right to be drawn; but since I bought it, I decided to read it anyway. 

One of the most popular subjects here on Emerging from Broken is the subject of dysfunctional and toxic relationships between mothers and daughters.  I think that as humans we are born craving love, community and acceptance from our mothers and when it appears that our mothers hate us, disapprove of us, judge us or generally never seem to love and accept us… it is a mystery that we are attracted to solving.  I want my mother to LOVE me.  I want a relationship with my mother. But I got tired of how the entire burden of that desire was left up to me with zero accountability on the part of my mother.

I came across a part in Kitty Kelley’s book about Oprah Winfrey that bugged me a great deal. I realize that this is an unauthorized biography, but the example that I found about dysfunctional and toxic mother daughter relationship was so good, that I just could not resist writing about it for Emerging from Broken. It shows the way that society views how we SHOULD respect parents no matter what.  It shows that the definition of love is often communicated in a very dysfunctional way.   In my opinion, this part in the book explains the just how toxic mother daughter relationships can be and that society actually views this toxic false definition of love and respect as the right way to view it.

The following is a quote from page 175 of the book Oprah; a biography by Kitty Kelley. This quote is in the context of a conversation that a very close family friend (whom Oprah calls her Aunt Katherine) Mrs. Esters has with the author of the book.

Mrs. Esters says

“Oprah takes very good care of her mother, who now buys five-hundred-dollar hats and has drivers who have drivers and helpers and cooks and all, but the story of Oprah and Vernita is sad and complicated”. said Mrs.Esters. “Oprah does not love her mother at all…She gives her a great deal financially but she does not give her the respect and affection a daughter should, and that bothers me. Vernita did the best she could with Oprah, who was a wilful, runaway child….Her mother has had to bury two of her three children over the years and I can tell you that when a parent loses a child it can you to your knees. I know. I had to bury my son. So Oprah should be more forgiving of her mother…”

This paragraph bothered me. It reminded me of my own life, and the way that I have been blamed for the problems in my relationship with my mother. It irritated me. Notice the word “should”. (…“but she does not give her mother the respect that a daughter should” and “Oprah should be more forgiving…)

Notice that Mrs. Esters brings up two children who have passed away as though that has something to do with the whole thing.  That is what I call a “rabbit trail” The fact that two of Opera’s mothers children died has NOTHING to do with why Oprah should love her mother or with Oprah’s relationship with her mother. See how the lies are told? Does this mean that the definition of love is “feeling sorry” for your mother?

And you “should” respect your mother, because she is your mother? Because she did the best she could? The best according to who? And why does she use the word “forgiving” because that implies that there is indeed something to forgive and it bothers me that the word “should” is in the same sentence as forgiving. There is just something wrong about all this.

These quotes are a reflection of how society is brainwashed to regard parents as Gods.

Mrs Esters also comments that Oprah was “a wilful and runaway child” which puts the all the blame for the behaviour of her mother squarely back on Oprah’s shoulders. And that is the whole problem in the first place. Children are always blamed for whatever the parents do or “have to do”.  Like I said this paragraph is a great example of the way society views “toxic mother daughter relationships” blaming the daughter or blaming the child no matter what age they are, for all the problems.

There is so much “truth leaking” about what really went on in this paragraph but in our society, nobody catches it.  Everyone hears it the way that it is intended to be heard; that Oprah, the child, failed her mother and continues to fail her to this day.

This part of the quote in the statement “Oprah does not love her mother at all…She gives her a great deal financially but she does not give her the respect and affection a daughter should, and that bothers me.” … well that Really bothers ME. Respect and affection? That phrase made me cringe. We are supposed to give our mothers affection? Why? Even if they beat us? Even if they sexually abuse us? Even if they disregard us as human beings and neglect our emotional health? This whole thing implies that being a daughter is a duty; that this “duty” has guidelines that need to be abided by or else you are NOT a good daughter.  And there is no accountability on the part of the mother.   And what about the concept of “RESPECT”? If the childhood history that Oprah endured is actually true, then her mother was not a very loving mother, and her mother didn’t respect Oprah at all, so why “SHOULD” Oprah give her mother respect and affection?

I don’t believe that children learn by being told HOW to be loving daughters.  I believe that we learn by example and the example that my mother set for me is exactly what I learned. My mother was not nurturing or respectful. Her example of “love” was dysfunctional. She taught me things from a very one sided point of view. What applied to me, didn’t apply to her because she is the mother, and society accepts that view. 

I don’t think my mother is very happy with our relationship because we don’t have one, but honestly, whose fault is that? Why does society view it as MY fault? Based on the small parts of the toxic mother daughter relationship I had with my mother and have shared here in Emerging from Broken, it is clear that my mother did a lot of damage to me. I am not going to take the blame for that because my mother and society are more comfortable blaming all relationship difficulties on the kids, no matter what age they are. I think that it’s time that everyone looked at the difficult subject of toxic mother daughter relationships through the eyes of truth. 

The problems don’t start with the child. Even if that child was never abused by the parent, the adult child is often angry that said parent didn’t protect them from the abuse that did happen and that is understandable.  Think about that in relation to yourself as a child. I believed most of my life that the problem was me, because I was always told it was me. But does that mean it was the truth? No.

I had a very strong reaction to the way this story about Oprah Winfrey was presented and to the way that her relationship with her mother was viewed by a family friend. It triggered all the memories of how no matter what my parents did, no matter how dysfunctional and toxic they were, no matter how I was regarded and devalued, I was the problem and any lack of acceptance or complaint was regarded as disrespectful and therefore viewed as my failure as a daughter.

Please share your thoughts on this example of toxic mother daughter relationship. I look forward to the discussion in the comments.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time,

Darlene Ouimet

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For more about dysfunctional and toxic family relationship please see the category buttons above for Mother Daughter, and Family.

stormy mother daughter relationship

I used to live waiting to be good enough. I thought ~ “as soon as YOU say that I am important, then I will be important.  When you say that I am lovable, then I will be lovable. When YOU say that I am worthy then I will BE worthy”.  Deep down I believed that someone else would determine my value. I had to learn to stop operating under those beliefs. I had to stop seeing myself through the unloving eyes of others.

When I was 14 years old, I vowed that I would never be like my selfish, unloving, self centered mother. That was a serious vow and that memory is one of the clearest memories that I have. I don’t remember what happened the day that I made that vow but I remember it was one of the only promises that I ever made to myself.  I knew somehow that our mother daughter relationship was dysfunctional and that my mother was on the toxic side, I just didn’t know what I could do about it, or how long lasting and deep the effects of her way of relating to me would be.

When I went through my process of recovery from dysfunctional relationships, I took a closer look at the vow I made to never be like my toxic mother.  I asked myself what that meant to me and what specifically I had been referring to back then. I saw my mother as someone who didn’t care about others and cared about herself too much. She didn’t care about me. She discounted my feelings and she discounted my needs. She was disloyal and dismissive.  She was cutting and mean. She humiliated and embarrassed me in public and her actions and statements made me feel unworthy of respect or love. My mother (who demonstrates many signs of narcissism) was very selfish and self centered. My mother and I had a very dysfunctional and toxic mother daughter relationship.

More recently I took a look at this whole dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the ongoing damage that it caused to me, in an even deeper way.  My narcissistic mother put herself first. So I vowed that I would never put myself first. My mother didn’t go without so I wanted to be the opposite;   I would go without many things to prove that I was not like my mother.

Somewhere along the line I decided that my needs would never come before others because that would mean that I was “like my mother” and in putting myself or my needs before anyone else would be showing those same signs of narcissism and since I had learned as a child that my needs didn’t matter, it was easy for me to stop listening to myself and discount my own needs.  I was proud of myself for doing it! That decision represented the vow that I made not to be like my mother. And I didn’t realize that I was taking over from all the other abusers in my life by agreeing that my needs would come last. My motive was understandable, but the practice was funky and dysfunctional.

When I decided that I would never be like my mean and toxic mother, I went to the other extreme and ended up being just as dysfunctional and I ended up treating and regarding myself exactly the same way that she treated and regarded me; as unworthy and unimportant. I discounted my feelings and I discounted my own needs. I put myself last. I humiliated and embarrassed myself by not ever standing up for myself and my own actions reinforced the belief that I was unworthy of love.

It’s a long uphill climb, learning to overcome this self discounting treatment. I still catch myself putting myself last under the guise of being a wonderful person and contributing to the greater good of mankind.  I have done it with my family and I have done it right here with my website and my readers.  Spreading myself so thin that I get sick, all because I vowed that I would never be like my narcissistic, dysfunctional and toxic mother.

I have been rethinking that vow lately.

The way that my mother did relationship with me was dysfunctional and toxic. The way that I learned to do relationship with myself as a result of how I was raised, was also dysfunctional and toxic.  By realizing where I got the ideas and teachings about HOW to treat myself, and how to NOT be like my selfish, toxic and dysfunctional Mother, I discounted and devalued ME, in just the same way that she did.

I still vow that I will never be like my unloving mother but today I am learning that what I regarded as the opposite of my mother is still toxic and dysfunctional. I had to take a look at the whole picture in order to see that I was not actually setting things right by being the total opposite of her because I was still disregarding me. (As I had been taught to do by her example)

Putting myself first is not narcissistic at all. The difference between the way that my mother regards herself vs. others and the way that I regard myself vs. others is that I believe all people are equally valuable. The way that my mother operated was that SHE was the most important and that HER needs were the most valuable.

The truth is that we ALL have equal value and that self care and self love when done in a healthy way, will actually benefit all those in contact with the person who practices it.

Everyone is welcome to share. Please feel free to use any name you wish if you feel unsafe about posting with your real name. I look forward to reading your responses to this article.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet  

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But that is not what I am talking about in my blog when I talk about dysfunctional family relationships and mother daughter relationship difficulties.

I am not blogging about how life was unfair because my mother took advantage of me, didn’t let me stay for after school events because she needed me to cook and didn’t give me an allowance. That was a very minor part of my difficulties.  Although those were the resentments that I could recall easily, those were not the real roots of the problem.

The real roots of the problem were much bigger than that. The real roots of the parent child dysfunction were about things that I could barely remember and the things I could remember ~ I couldn’t think about long enough to really comprehend the truth that they pointed to. There was lots of confusion to work through first.

My mother used me as a magnet to attract men when I was as young as six.  My father watched her do it without saying a word. I don’t think that my parents did the best they could. When I was seventeen, my mother took me to bars with her where we got “picked up” and hit on by business men who were looking for some action.  She put me in danger.  Those are the kinds of things that leave a real mark.  My mother taught me my value was in how Men reacted to me. That doesn’t sound like “doing her best” at all.

My mother advised me that losing my virginity was a small price to pay to get everything I wanted in life. I was seventeen and being groomed by a 32 year old multi millionaire when she told me that.  She was really interested in the “millionaire part”.  Instead of realizing or being concerned about the danger I was in, she only saw the benefits that she might have if I had a relationship with him. I can’t see how that shows that my mother did the best she could.

And speaking of my being a “virgin” She didn’t believe that I was a virgin anyway… she had been publically accusing me of being promiscuous since I was 16.  She had been accusing me of flirting with her boy friend’s since I was 14.  That doesn’t sound to me like things a person who is “doing the best she could” would say to her daughter!

Those kinds of things leave a mark.  Self esteem doesn’t grow in that environment.  My parents didn’t do the best they could.

I have been labelled as a difficult daughter ~ selfish and self centered and those statements cut me deeply and they kept me trying harder. I wasn’t difficult when I was going out to bars with her, helping her pick up men.  I remember this one time; this married man took me out to the lobby with him to make a phone call home to his wife.  He had his arm around me and rubbed the small of my back, while he told his wife that he missed her and loved her and asked about their children.

Where the hell was my mother while I was leaving the bar with this guy??  We were in a hotel bar. He was staying in the hotel. Why did she let me walk out of the bar with him? Was that BEST for me?

I was seventeen and these men were in their forties; married with kids! These men were away from home on business, hitting on an underage teenage girl who had been snuck into a high end bar by her own mother. What the hell was my mother thinking?? Well it is obvious that she wasn’t thinking about me.  I don’t think I was the difficult one. I don’t think I was the one who was selfish and self centered. She knew I was a minor. She knew the drinking age was nineteen where we lived. She knew how old and how married those men were. I wasn’t the problem here. I was the disregarded and devalued one. I don’t see how I can agree that my mother did the best she could! How could that have been the best she could do?

It isn’t my resentments about doing all the dishes and cooking and not getting any money, that is at the root of all this.   It isn’t about her not going to parent teacher interviews, and not mentioning post secondary school or the fact that she never listened to me. Although these things are true, it isn’t about not getting the shoes I wanted or not going to the school dance or any of those “normal teenage resentments”.

It goes way deeper than that. It took me years to realize that having all the emphasis on all the wrong things was getting in the way of my healing. I thought it was me. I thought I was deficient. I thought I was a failure as a daughter. I thought that I needed to change. But it wasn’t that at all. When I looked deeper, to see where the foundation of this difficult dysfunctional mother daughter relationship really had its roots, then I started to see a different picture.  I’d put all the weight of the relationship on my shoulders. I was filled with guilt for things that had been “DONE TO ME”.  I believed that I was a bad person because she said I did something to attract these men. I believed that I was bad because I stole my clothes and forgot that I stole them because she wouldn’t buy them for me. I was 14 years old.

And where was my father while all this was going on??  My father ignored me. I can’t say that my father did the best he could. Very simply, the message he communicated to me was that I didn’t matter.  He was emotionally unavailable, emotionally absent (and when my parents split up he was physically absent too) and disinterested in me and that communicated some very difficult messages for me to accept.  He often mentioned that he paid child support. I guess that is all he thought he had to do as a father. He communicated that child support was the BEST he could do. Ouch.

I also believed that my emotionally and psychologically sick mother was too weak to carry any of the burdens of being a mother and in justifying her that way I believed that my mother did the best she could. I wanted to believe it. I HAD to believe it. The truth was too painful to face.

But my mother didn’t do her best. And the fact that she had fragile mental health or the fact that she came from a dysfunctional family and had abusive parents herself did not lessen any of the damage caused to me and that damage had to be faced. Emotional healing didn’t happen for me until I faced where I got broken in the first place.  And although I can’t change the past, I can face it. I can stop lying to myself about it.

Writing about this hurts. It makes my chest hurt. I have a lump in my throat. It has been devastating to face this stuff. This is my mother I am talking about. These were my parents. They said they loved me. My mother said she wanted a daughter more than anything. She said all the things that I think daughters would love to hear.  But the reality of it was very different.  The truth was not in those words. The way she showed that love was not love at all. We were the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship.  There WAS NO relationship and there was no love. Her actions proved that. And her actions also proved that she knew better then she pretended to know. I can say the same for my father. My parents didn’t do the BEST they could.

How can I say and why should I accept others saying to me that my parents did the best they could? It is clear to me that they did not. I am not talking about perfect here. I am not talking about having “too high of expectations” of my mother and father. I am talking about being taken to bars and being offered to men and stealing my jeans while my mother bought evening gowns and diamonds for herself and my father built a new life with a new family oblivious to what was going on in my life and showing NO interest in me.

And actually, I am more upset about the fact that it got blamed on me, that I was labelled as the difficult one, the emotional one, and the over reactive one ~ than I am about the things that happened to me.

Today when I hear people say that their parents did they best they could, I wonder…..

Please feel free to share your comments and feedback. Please remember that you may use any name you wish, your identity is safe unless YOU want it known. You may change the comment form any time you wish.

Exposing Truth; one snapshot at a time

Darlene Ouimet

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Related Posts ~ Please see the category button for Family and the Mother daughter Category

My mother didn’t want a child. My mother wanted a dolly that would “give back”. She wanted some “thing” to fuss over and to cuddle with for a short time, and then it was as if she expected me to fulfill her needs because she filled mine for a while. To fill her needs ~ as though I could fill the empty space where she was lacking self value and love.  My mother placed a great deal of expectations on me right from the start, and I didn’t live up to even one of them.

It was as though I owed her something because I was born. Right from the start, this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.  Right out of the womb, my mother acted as though she believed that I was going to make her life better and that I owed her for mine.  This was proven over and over again as I went through life and she continually expressed her disappointment in me. If she didn’t have such HIGH expectations about what I could do for her, I could not have disappointed her so deeply.

I was born helpless and innocent. I was born with a right to some kind of safe environment and nurturing emotional atmosphere.  But according to her actions over the years, I was more of a burden then I was a blessing. Perhaps my mother was not prepared for the responsibility and the overwhelming needs of a child? Perhaps she was lost in her own sea of self doubt and perhaps her own value had never been established. But is that something that I should have to pay for? I think not, but it took me a long time to realize that.

Somewhere along the way, I became responsible for my mother’s self esteem. She expected me to restore her order, to restore her value, her worth and her importance as a human being. And I failed, but who could have passed? Who could have accomplished such an unreasonable demand? Surely not a child. This was not my failure. The failure is in that she expected me to be her answer. And this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.

And because I “failed” her my mother seemed to resent me; my own mother seemed to hate me. Why else would she have closed the door (on me) when I asked her to stop treating me like I was nothing? Why else would she have walked away (from contact with me) when I asked her to stop blaming me for the fact that her boyfriend came into my bedroom when I was a teenager? Why else would she have offered me to men and used me as bait to attract men to herself? Why else would she come to regard her daughter in those ways if it wasn’t that for some reason my mother hates me?

And the worst thing is that I believed that I was a failure, that I deserved her disappointment in me. I believed that I should have been able to fulfill her emotional needs and prevent her mood swings. I thought that I should be able to be enough for her. This is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.

And then because her boyfriend DID come into my bedroom when I was barely 14, she saw me as competition. When she took me to bars (when I was 17) to use me as bait and men WERE attracted to me, again she saw me as competition. I could not win. I could not be what she wanted because she kept changing what she wanted and I tried to comply with ALL of it. I tried to be everything she “seemed to expect” me to be and I lost myself.

And this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.

How was my own self esteem supposed to grow in that environment? How was my own identity supposed to emerge? Those were questions that no one cared about because I was not born to be me. I was born to become what my mother never was but at the same time not to surpass her worth. I was born to fulfill the missing pieces of her life. But when I even came close to showing some success at anything, she was jealous and she tore me down.  She couldn’t stand it if I was anything that she wasn’t. She wanted me to be her and she hated herself. She wanted me to be different then I was but she hated that too. She couldn’t stand the “her” that was in “me”. She saw me as an object and as her possession, to do with and to regard in whatever way she felt like it on any given day. And as long as she didn’t approve of me, I tried harder which also worked for her and therefore she would NEVER approve of me in case I stopped trying.

And this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.

I failed at fulfilling her dysfunctional wishes, most likely in the same way that she failed her own mother, and the cycle of chronic depression and dysfunctional family system went unbroken. The cycle of abuse, the cycle of low self esteem, the cycle of struggle with personal identity and lack of simple happiness, continued.

I never questioned her statements or accusations about me but today when I hear those words echoing in my head, I hear that unspoken implication;  that she had a right to do/ say / feel however she wanted to because she was the parent. She would say that I am ungrateful. That I am self centered. That I am the problem; and she always did. And I was brainwashed, trained and taught to believe it and to knuckle under it, or pay the consequences. But I paid them regardless.

And this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.

And I had to realize that in all this dysfunction she had taken my life. I had to realize that I was NOT her. I had to realize that I did not deserve what had happened to me, that I had a right to be me and a right to have a real life as an individual. I had lived most of my life under the threat of rejection if I failed to comply with her wishes and finally I realized that I had been rejected since the first day that I didn’t fulfill her dysfunctional interest in me.

She never was interested in me, but only in what I could do for her. She wanted me to fill the needs not filled for her in her own dysfunctional childhood. She wanted me to make her believe that she was worthy of love.

And I realized that I had to stop following in those same footsteps by realizing that they were the path to nowhere. I had to take my life back. I had to find my voice in all this. I had to stop seeing reality through those dysfunctional viewpoints and realize that the truth about my reality was based in dysfunction. I had to stop believing that I had failed HER. MY normal was false; it was wrong.

I had to look at it the way that it really was, through a new grid. Not through the grid of the way I was “told” and taught to accept as right. I had to finally see through the lies, the manipulations, and dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and see where exactly I had gotten lost. I had to see that it was through NO fault of my own. I had to understand my own value and innocence. I had to realize that I was not a failure, but that they failed me. I had to realize that the “love” I knew was not love and the love she wanted from me was not love either.

In the process of finding my self worth and re-establishing my self esteem I realized that because they failed me didn’t mean there was no hope. It didn’t mean that my childhood and lack of true love from my parents meant that I was ‘no good’

In that process of emotional healing, I stopped the cycle of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and through that process I found my lost identity.  Through seeing the truth about the way things were, I have been able to prevent passing this dysfunctional relationship and false definition of love, on to my own children.

Please share

Darlene Ouimet

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~Related Posts Please see the Mother Daughter Relationship Category button on this site

When my second child was born, my mother said that she wanted to “be there for me”. She said that she wanted to really do something FOR ME and she offered to make the seven hour drive over the mountains to our home to help me in the final days before labor, and help me to take care of my 21 month old son.

I was thrilled. Finally my mother wanted to BE MY MOTHER! I felt closer to her in those phone calls planning her visit then I had ever felt before that time.

My excitment was short lived.

I started to have some complication with my hips. My legs were giving out from under me and I needed more bed rest. I was confident that my mother would agree to come a bit earlier then we had planned and I called her up with the news and my request.  She hesitated. Her familiar voice, the one that I had come to hate as it was laced with disappointment, responded with “well….. how much earlier?”  She asked me “what if you go into labor later then your due date?” It became clear to me that she didn’t really want to help me with what I needed help with; she wanted to help me with the NEW baby. She wanted to help me with what SHE had in mind to help with. She didn’t care if I was having a problem with my health.  I was devastated to realize that even having my babies, was all about her.

In the end, she came on the exact date that she originally planned to come.

When the baby was born, I developed an infection in my blood. My Dr. wanted to keep me in the hospital, but I couldn’t sleep there and after the first night, I begged her to let me come home. She asked me if I was sure that my mother would do everything that needed to be done and that all I would do was nurse the baby. I was (even though history proved otherwise) confident that my mother would keep her promise to “be there for me” and the Dr. let me go home.

From the minute I walked in the door at home, I had that sinking feeling that I was going to be disappointed. First of all, (we have a farm) my mother kept going on and on about how her husband had killed all the flies in the house before we got there and how they had done some cleaning.  Although I said thank you, I got the feeling that I wasn’t acting “grateful” enough but I was exhausted from the trip home and couldn’t think about jumping through their hoops.  (My ingratitude was brought up to me for years to come)

We were at the beginning of haying, (and half of our income depended on getting the hay crop in) and my mother in law came over and asked if my mother would mind making the evening meal for the hay crew. Just a double meatloaf and baked potatoes would do it. My mother stared blankly at me. There was an awkward silence. Finally I decided that I could do it myself. I have no idea why no one thought about getting take out from the local restaurant just this once… but no one including me, did. I made the meal. My mother was happy to hold the baby. No one was worried about me doing the meal, no one offered to help.

That night my mother’s sister phoned and she was about an hour and a half away visiting my cousin and wondered if she could come over and see the new baby. I told my mother that the Dr. said I was not to have visitors and that I needed complete bed rest. My mother assured me that her sister would only stay for a couple of hours in the morning and she would take care of them.

Guess what happened? They didn’t leave and it was way past lunch time when my husband finally came home and made them all lunch.  I was exhausted and since I could not sit on a kitchen chair, I took my lunch to the living room and ate by myself. My mother seriously reprimanded me. She said that I had company in the kitchen and what did I think I was doing?? I told her that it was HER company. I was absolutely shocked. I wasn’t supposed to HAVE company. Apparently my mother didn’t think that my Dr. should have more authority then she had. And come to think of it now, she is so self centered that she may have thought that I was lying, trying to ‘get a break’ by saying that the Dr. said I had to have complete rest and that I was USING her to get one.  That is how my mother thinks.

After my Aunt and her husband left, my mother took the opportunity to tell me all the things I had done in my life that caused her to have such grief and disappointment in me.  She just went up one side of me and down the other. She told me in no uncertain terms what a failure I was as a daughter. I sat there, exhausted with my 3 day old daughter in my arms, and I took it. I just sat there shocked, stunned and disappointed while she went on and on about how much trouble I have caused her. I felt like I was sinking into a black bog of pond water.. sinking sinking into the black murky depths, powerless to do anything about it.

She said that she wanted to be there for me, but in reality it was all about her and she was burdening me with more than I could take.  She didn’t help me at all with any of the normal household duties. She yelled at me and berated me and did the complete opposite of “being there for me” and acted the absolute opposite of love.

The next morning, I asked her to leave. I wasn’t actually standing up to her yet; I needed to rest and she was way more work then I would have had without her there. I was too sick to deal with her and I was more hurt then I can even communicate. I felt like I had just been swallowed whole by a tornado and that I was still lost in it, going round and round and not being able to SEE my way through it. I felt SO confused by her actions.  Even though it wasn’t the first time at all, I was still shocked that she would DO that when I just had a baby and just once I needed her.  I wanted so badly to believe that she would really “be there” for me this time.

Once again I was reminded that I was not important but that my mother was. Even with a new born baby and under doctor’s orders, I still came last. I avoided thinking about that reality just yet though.

That event ended up to be somewhat of a new beginning. It was then that I began to face that something was really wrong with the way that my mother treated me. I didn’t quite realize that something was wrong with her, but I knew something was “wrong.” It took about 14 more years before I drew the necessary boundaries but something significant happened that day. I think a little hole got chopped in the lifetime of fog that I had lived in.

Remembering dysfunctional moments and situations like this one has helped me to see the dysfunctional mother daughter relationship that I had with my mother through clear eyes and through the grid of truth. These truth based recollections have helped me to realize that I was not the one that was wrong, that it was not ME that had unreasonable expectations, and that I truly was not valued or regarded with human kindness or respect. Even sick and with a new born baby, I still did not qualify. She still came first. She still got to decide the way things would be. And suddenly, in my mid thirties, I realized that something was “wrong” with this picture.

Exposing the Truth that set me Free;

Darlene Ouimet

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For related posts see the Mother Daughter Category

Lately I have been writing a lot on the subject of dysfunctional family systems. I feel like I am just getting started when it comes to sharing about some of the things that were so dysfunctional in my own family. The dysfunctional mother daughter relationship I had with my abusive mother was only one part of it. I had an emotionally unavailable father as well. There was sexual abuse and physical abuse. I was not heard or even seen as a child ~ as though I was not really a person yet. And that “non person” fact seems to be at the root of everything; the discounted voice and disregarded feelings of the child. We live in a whole world of adults who have not been valued as children but who are expected to function properly in spite of that.

When I was “in the fog” which means not understanding exactly why some of the details about these situations were wrong, but having this “feeling” or suspicion that they were wrong, I could never put all these “facts” together and therefore I was never able to see the real truth. When I first started this blog “Emerging from Broken” I was afraid to share too much, I thought it would turn people off.  I afraid that I would be seen as a whiner, that I would be seen as someone who was “stuck in the past” and unable to “get over it” and that I was somehow deficient in putting the past behind me, EVEN though I already knew that the way that I recovered was by facing the past, realizing the lies verses the truth and changing my false belief system, I was still scared of rejection and of being unheard and misunderstood. (because that was ALL I knew!) I was afraid that I was “wrong” even though this truth was what set me free. I was especially afraid to talk about the dysfunctional mother daughter relationship stuff and dysfunctional family stuff.

In hopes of contributing to the “greater good” of mankind, I pressed on and took the “risk” of being pooh poohed and even rejected, because deep down I believed that others could relate and that I could make a difference with those people.  I figured I would deal with the rest when it came up.

I was also afraid that people would write comments sticking up for the abusers and controllers.  I lived in a world for such a long time where the abusers were protected and the victims were to blame, that it took a long time to sort it all out.  Kids like me were raised with an “unquestioning respect” for authority. Half the problem with my recovery was that one issue! I could not go against that deeply ingrained teaching especially when it came to my parents. I still feared the same consequences that I feared when I was a child. I feared that I would die if they rejected me.

I was pretty confused. It isn’t that we don’t live in that same world now but the difference is that I no longer believe that abusers SHOULD be protected and I no longer discount myself.  I do not acknowledge that false system anymore. It is backwards and I am not afraid to speak out against it.

There is no excuse for devaluing a child; there is no excuse for mistreatment, there is no excuse for abuse. And respecting authority that is causing harm against children and causing them lifelong damage, is insane. I don’t want to live in that insanity anymore.

The world has to realize that children are born totally innocent and are born equally HUMAN with equal value and equal human rights. Children are not property; they are not objects. The damage done to them is NOT imagined by the child and it is not forgotten by the child. Even if the child blocks it out, the damage is there, lurking and festering and causing all sorts of problems and struggle for the person that it happened to.  It is not okay because it happened “in the past”. It is not excusable. The abusers ARE the ones who are accountable for that damage; the guilt and shame belong to them and the only way for an adult child who grew up with abuse to overcome the belief system that manifested because of that mistreatment is to realize that first of all, it really happened no matter how many times we have been told that we dreamed it up or exaggerated it and then secondly to understand that as a child, we were powerless and have NO responsibility for what happened. Those two things set me on the right road to emotional healing.

And I needed to talk about it. I needed to be heard, but not by the abusers.

I had no idea that the more I shared about this kind of family system dysfunction and confusion the more popular my blog would become. My mother daughter dysfunctional relationship articles have been read thousands of times. They rank very high in search engines and are among the most read blog posts here in EFB. There is a reason for that.  I found out that millions of people struggling with depression, addictions, post traumatic stress, self harm issues, dissociative identity disorder and many many other issues also struggle with this same confusion around the dysfunctional family system and the accepted protection and “respect” for the “authority” who is so often the perpetrator of abuse and emotional mistreatment instead of regard for the child victim.

But WE were those child victims…and we still need to be heard.

Please Share your thoughts.

Exposing Truth, One snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

Shanyn Silinski published a great poem (click title)~ “How Many Stand Silent” on her blog Scarred Seekers

Please click on any of the highlighted titles to read those posts and or to follow the links to Alice Miller and her book “Banished Knowledge ~ Facing childhood injuries”

and then there is peace

Dear Mom,

Each Mothers day I am more aware of my freedom and farther away from the oppression that I used to be under. As I get farther away from the domination, I remember things that I am not so reluctant to remember and I am willing and able to talk about them with more freedom and way less fear.  I know what I was so afraid of and why It was so hard for me to admit out loud how dysfunctional our mother daughter relationship really was and how hurt that I was by your actions and reactions.

I remember that one time that Dad gave us kids money to go to the store and buy you a gift for mothers day. We walked to the department store by ourselves; we were just kids; we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. I don’t know why I remember this so clearly, I guess it was traumatic for me. I remember how hard it was for us three kids to figure out what to get you. We were totally lost! We looked at so many things, deciding and debating over all of them.  I don’t know why we settled on that set of new dishes. We had to carry them all that way home. They were so heavy but we were pretty excited that we had done this by ourselves. And we had done it for you.  I felt proud of myself.

I’m still sorry about that day Mom. It took a long time for me to realize that it wasn’t MY fault and that it wasn’t my failure, and although today I know that you felt justified in your reaction, you never realized how much damage it did. We were just little kids Mom.  We were just trying to make you happy.

I still remember how you opened the gift, and your face fell.  I remember my stomach lurched. I felt a bit of fear. And you were angry. You looked at Dad; I sort of knew that you were mad that he didn’t take us shopping to get you a proper gift, or maybe I just know that now. You told him to take the dishes back to the store. And you were mad at us. You didn’t even acknowledge us, or our efforts. You started to cry and you left the room.  I felt like a worm. What were we thinking buying you dishes?!!  I still feel the shame of getting you the wrong gift. I should have known better. I was the GIRL. I should have thought of something better.  You were devastated ~ as though the fact that we picked that gift proved that we didn’t love you and that it proved that we really were useless children.  I wanted to crawl into the floor.  The whole day was wrecked. You cried all day and you and Dad fought. I am not sure what you fought about; maybe about how stupid I was to have brought home that set of dishes for mother’s day. As a child, self blame had become a way of life.

And now I am a Mother. I have always worried that my reaction to a gift might leave that kind of scar on one of my kids. It has caused me a lot of anxiety around opening gifts. It doesn’t matter what the occasion is, I have this fear of having the wrong reaction when I open a gift; what if I don’t like it? What if they can tell that I don’t like it? I hate that I think about my reaction so much that I don’t actually have a spontaneous reaction.  This continues to be something that I am working on.   

I have never had one mother’s day (since before I was a mother, or since I became a mother) that I didn’t remember that disastrous mother’s day from my childhood.

I suspect that you feel justified about the fact that we don’t have a mother daughter relationship anymore. I suspect that you wish that I was different and that you believe that this is my entire fault. You always blamed me for everything. I know that in your mind I am the one that hurt you. But that is not my problem anymore because I know the truth.  I was the child. It was not up to me to restore your value.

I remember when you “predicted” that this would happen; you said that your biggest fear was that I would use the kids as a weapon against you and that I would one day “take them away from you”. I realize that this was another typical manipulation statement so that I would think twice about standing up to you. To make me second guess my emerging thoughts about how strange our relationship really was.  

But in the end you are the one that walked away from them. Well I guess it doesn’t matter does it? I knew in my heart from the time that they were born, that the day would come when you would try to poison their minds against me, because that is your way. That is the way that you survived; by knocking everyone else down. All the gossiping and stirring up trouble, twisting stories just enough or leaving out the whole story to change it into something more dramatic. Always dividing all other relationships so that you would be seen as the most important one. I don’t miss that and I am relieved that my children don’t have to be a part of it.

I do not have a mother anymore, and you do not have a daughter. It seems so very sad and even ODD and yet… it seems honest and even right somehow too.  It seems like a fitting end to a very emotionally unhealthy and dysfunctional mother daughter relationship; as though truth, freedom, wholeness and recovery were born out of this whole thing. I am so thankful that something amazing came out of the pain. I came out of that pain. I found the real me. I emerged out of the dysfunction and I discovered who I really am. I am not at all who you always said that I was.

P.S. Do you ever think of me? Do you wonder how I am? Do you wish that things were different between us? I just can’t help but let my mind wonder in that direction once in a while. Especially now at this time of year when it is “mothers day”. Sometimes when I am alone in the dark, when I feel really discarded and really vulnerable and even a little bit all alone, I pretend that you are being forbidden to contact me. I tell myself that your controlling husband won’t let you make this right with me; that he won’t let you be my mother. I know that is just a silly fantasy, like a wish and a grieving process all in one because I know that you have a choice but yet it is so hard for me to believe and to accept that you don’t want to have a relationship with me unless it is on your terms and it is still painful to know that I was that disposable and that forgettable just because I said “no more mistreatment”.  

And I know that is not really about me……

                                                             and I still want to wish you a Happy Mother’s Day

Your only Daughter,

Darlene Ouimet

Happy Mother’s day to everyone here; in a way we all have to become our own mothers and fathers in order to heal that pain of dysfunctional parents, to set in place our misplaced self esteem and value. Please share whatever you wish.  Hugs! Darlene

Related Post ~ please read my new post on the Survivor Manual Site ~ Survivors, Mother’s Day and Mixed Emotions

To read other related posts please visit the mother daughter category tab and the family category tab.

Sometimes 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 feeling lost right now. I feel like I have shared way too much here, and I’m feeling very vulnerable. It hurts.”  

Sharing feelings, our pain, our abuse and rejections and stories and sharing about our families makes us feel really vulnerable.  This comment got me thinking about how I felt so vulnerable and scared that I never told anyone about my first blog. There were very few comments, it had very little traffic and even though I was already speaking in mental health seminars, I never gave the name of that website out to anyone.  I was afraid of something.  I didn’t really think that much about what it was. 

Sharing in the first few months of this blog was also scary but it gets easier all the time although  once in a while, sometimes pressing the publish button still makes me feel a little uneasy.

Sharing some of my deepest and darkest moments makes me feel exposed AND it makes me feel like I am in danger. Continued……

In my healing journey I’ve learned to ask myself questions as a way of digging down into my belief system to find the roots of where these feelings and fears come from on any given subject because in doing so it usually helps me to understand why those fears and feelings are still there. 

Incest survivor, Patricia Singleton from the blog “Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker”, also shared her view on this topic. Her  comment came in when I was almost finished writing the first draft of this post, so I thought I would take it as a “hint from the universe” and share it; it is amazingly similar to what I was believe about this particular topic.

Patricia wrote: “When I share something new like I did here yesterday, I face some more of the fear that the abusers put into me to not break the silence of what they did to me.  I think, at least for me, that is why I feel overwhelmed with what I share sometimes.  I will continue to break that silence and share more and more of my story if it means that it might help another survivor to feel not alone.  When we share, it gives someone else the permission to share their stories too.”

For many of us, both as children and as adults, we were not allowed to tell the real truth. We may have had some family secrets that somehow we just knew that we were not supposed to say anything about to anyone else. There were all kinds of things that we just didn’t talk about. I thought that was being “loyal” to my family.  The mere thought of saying the wrong thing was very very scary.

There were a few things outside of family secrets that I did try to tell. Like when my grade 5 teacher was emotionally abusing me. But when I told just a few little things I was discounted, unprotected, called a story teller, and exaggerator and a liar.  I was not protected because I was not believed. Finally a medical doctor had to step in.

Then there was the time that I told about my mother’s boyfriend sneaking in my room that night. I only told because my Aunt caught him and she told first and still I was discounted and then later accused of doing something to have caused it to happen.

Sometimes I said things and I was ridiculed, sneered at or glared at.  Those were warnings. I was afraid of what might come after those sorts of comments and looks.

When I cried, I was told that if I didn’t stop crying, that I would be given something to cry about. (Do children really cry for no reason? I don’t think so, but when I was told that l cried for no reason enough times I believed that I did cry for no reason.)  What that taught me was that my feelings were invalid. That my pain was invalid and that I was not allowed to have feelings or pain. My tears were wrong.

So when I decided to share my life and my past with others, it triggered fears. It triggered fears of rejection; fears of being called a liar, story teller and an exaggerator. Sharing secrets triggers fears of being humiliated, discounted, dismissed and laughed at. Fears of being proven that maybe I am not valid. Maybe I am not worthy. Maybe no one will love me or even like me.  Maybe the abusers were right about me.

It also brings up feelings of being in danger. That danger is close. As I child I learned to guard against danger and not to bring punishment upon myself.  Feelings of being in danger bring up specific fears; that I might be punished; I might get hit, hurt, sent away or all of these things at once. These were the consequences of telling when I was a child.   

And all those fears and thoughts can flash through my memory very quickly. Familiar feelings from the past, flashing, terrifying and tearing down my self esteem, all in a few split seconds and until I really began to understand where those fears were born and raised, I was not able to stop them.  

Please share your thoughts about the fear sharing or the feelings of being exposed. Were there consequences in your childhood for telling the truth?

Exposing truth, one snapshot at a time;

Darlene Ouimet

Note: Click the blue highlighted sentences within the body of the post to read the stories I am refering to.