Family of Origin (FOO) Support Thread Part 2

[Scent of Cedar *]

My father had the personality and disposition of an alcoholic but never drank or did drugs.

That is how my mother was, Belle. That first therapist described her as a "dry drunk".

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I wonder if the best way to avoid the long laggy post threads is to ask RB to please start a FOO Forum on the website?

That is a good idea, Nerfherder.

Now back to my scotch and salt&pepper pork rinds!)

Have you repaired the plumbing already, Nerfherder?

And I am curious to know how many hogs, if you don't mind? My grandmother had a farm, and there were hogs there.

It IS relevant to our adult children...our early lives and how we are so sensitive if our adult children act in certain ways toward us. Perhaps it could help us learn to both detach (if abuse is an issue and substance abuse) and learn to not take everything our grown kids say innocently with such seriousness.

Oh, yes. I agree.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Regarding trust issues and repeated betrayal.

The way I have dealt with these issues in the past had to do with providing for myself. It was when I could not provide what I needed (whole, healthy, happy, productive members of society kids) that I was left bereft. In looking back on these terrible things that were happening, I see where I picked up, every time. I see where there were terrible betrayals. I survived them, though. I mean I marshaled my forces, identified the questions, and went out looking for answers.

And here is the interesting thing: I found those answers except for where my Family of Origin is/was concerned or even, involved in any way. I may have come through everything less broken had I turned away from my family before any of it began to go so wrong. I can remember trying to function like a normal person while I could hardly breathe.

I remember the horribly cruel things my mother said about my parenting and I remember her predictions for my child.

I remember finding the Benedictines; the Benedictine retreat centers. The women, there. The kindness. How strengthening that was. What might it have meant to me, and to all of us, had my mother and my sister managed even kindness. What would it have meant, to have been able to trust that there would be loving support for all of us, my children included, as our family fell so hellishly apart? I mean, what would it have meant for my sanity, for my ability to recover, to see the brokenness and know it was right to heal it, rather than having spent those horrible years believing I was responsible and my mother's attitudes were correct?

Hate.

That was my mother's attitude. A triumphant kind of victory dance over the wreckage of the life I had devoted my own life to creating.

So, I am having a look at that too, this morning.

I don't understand why I forget these things I know about my family of origin. But when it began, I didn't know anything but that I had failed. I didn't know one thing about dysfunctional family viciousness and how it never, ever stops. I didn't know there are families out there who circle wagons and pull through it.

Would that have made a difference for us, I wonder.

I do count my blessings: D H mom; D H dad. D H family, to this day.

My own strength.

My willingness to look and name and come through it.

So, in future, I need to remember the feeling of comfort I was able to take from those Benedictine values and retreat centers and from the women, there. That is how I will know why I am finally turning away from my FOO (and why).

That, those things, that is what we all should have had from our mothers and sisters and brothers as we went through every dream breaking and every protection being lost and every hope being disappeared over and over when our children fell and fell.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My sister did choose when she was about 8 to identify with the aggressor, although my love for her before that had set the tone of our relationship.

It makes sense that a little kid in an abusive situation would focus all the bad feelings for the abusive mother onto the pseudo-mom without ever knowing she had done so. To feel hatred or rage or resentment toward a parent (hello, Freud) requires the child to face what, for an abused child, are very real mortality and abandonment issues. It makes sense that the pseudo-mom would be a safe target for those feelings. Pseudo-mom cannot kill or desert you. Real mom comes out smelling like a rose; if only pseudo-mom were out of the picture all together, it would be safe and possible truly to love the real mom.

The sibling carrying those feelings would not even have to be pseudo-mom. Any sibling would do. In the weird reality of the dysfunctional family where the real mother turns glass-eyed with hatred, hatred for the sibs would be seen as right and appropriate thing just as love for the sibs is seen as right in a loving family.

If this could be true, it would explain the things I have seen from my sister.

That could be a reason why my sister would be so happy her parents were visiting that she would dance around her own kitchen like a ballerina for her parents at the age of fifty-something. Now that the others, those other children who made you so angry are far away, we can be the family we should have been all along.

Cedar

 

[allusedup]

Cedar, I love you, girl. Through everything you have been through, in the midst of your pain, you still have the most fabulous sense of humor. You make me laugh out loud sometimes. I think a sense of humor is recquired to get through all this crap.

 

[SeekingStrength]

There is also an English country club library with good scotch and deep leather chairs and leaded glass windows in the saddlebag.

That is where we keep our criminal parents until we decide what to do with them.

Because we do love them after all, but we need to figure this out.

Your entire post was amazing.


Thank you,


SS

 

[BusynMember]

That is how my mother was, Belle. That first therapist described her as a "dry drunk".

My entire family acts like dry drunks. You never knew, especially with mother, how she would be when you came home, you never knew if mother would act as if she were drunk as a skunk. And s he was a MEAN dry drunk.

And the funny thing is, I never saw any of them drink. At least drinking is an explanation...it changes personalities. But dry drunks are exactly what they are.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I had never heard the term before he used it, either.

My mom was unpredictable like that, too. We both (you and me, SWOT) have had the middle of the night raging mom attacks. That must have been part of what they label "dry drunk" behavior.

Probably because it sounds more professional than crazy biatch.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

That must have been part of what they label "dry drunk" behavior.

I believe it is exactly what it sounds like. They don't drink, but are as unpredictable and crazy as if t hey do so, yes, they do night raids (which I recall as really scaring me out of a sound sleep to scream at me over something I thought we'd resolved weeks ago).

Of course, Dry Drunks never resolve anything. It festers inside of them and if THEY are bothered about some mishap even at 3am in the morning and a month after it happened, then YOU are darn well going to join the party and be bothered by it as well. Dry Drunk will make sure of that. Nobody likes to dry drink alone, y'know?

But we can't blame alcohol. This is who they are and were.

In my case it could b e as insignificant as she believed I'd dated a non-Jewish boy last month. For those who are new, this was against our rules, although I did break that rule, but not until after I realized that she wouldn't believe the boys were Jewish even if they did the hora in front of her...if they had blond hair. But if she suspected that Ezra Applebaum was a non-Jew because he had blond hair, a month later she may have done a night raid to scream at me about it. (She never gave me a good reason why I had to only date Jewish boys either, by the way).

Now this is a mother who didn't care if I combed my hair or brushed my teeth, who had no rules or boundaries (she was the major caregiver), who did not clean and was a horrible, quick-as-you-like-it cook, who never gave us life skills for adulthood and who did not even blink if I dropped a FLUNKING report card on the table for her to read. She didn't mention those things.

What she cared about:

1/dating Jewish boys only and they'd better have dark hair
2/Never cutting my hair because boys only liked long hair and, above all else, a girl didn't have to be smart, she just had to be beautiful (her words. You can't make this stuff up)
3/I did not own a Barbie doll (she thought they were ugly so I couldn't have one), a Chatty Cathy doll (same reason) or a Thumalena doll, my dream doll (same reason). I could only own toys she approved of, even if I didn't like them.
4/I had to dress in sewn clothing that were the style SHE liked, not trendy. You can imagine how much I got bullied at school. For all those reasons.

My famly was not poor. But they played it on TV and I had to play it in the wealthy Chicago suburb we grew up in and, boy, DID I GET TEASED for looking like a peasant. That may have worked somewhere else, but not where we lived and I was definitely punished because Mom didn't want me to "be like everyone else." Trust me, I wasn't.

Nor was she. Or anyone in my FOO. My sister was good at faking it. I couldn't. Too bad for me, huh?


I can not think of anything else about me that mattered to her. She didn't say she loved me very often, obviously because she didn't. She wouldn't hold me because it was MY fault...I wasn't cuddly so she, as the adult, would not try. She did not stop me from misbaving. She did not teach me, and I am neurologically different, manners, appropriate social skills, appropriate behavior, or anything necessary for a transition to adult life. She also liked to call me things like lazy, bad, disturbed, bratty, etc. It was a lovely childhood...lol.

Dry drunk.

I call my FOO The Loonybin.

Nobody was normal, but Mom ruled the roost and my brother could do no wrong, my sister was ignored and deeply disturbed in many ways even now because of that, and me and my dad were the scapegoats, the wrongness of the entire crazy family was due to us. I got it the worst. My dad was an adult and could and did leave the house. As soon as I learned how to drive, I wasn't around much either.

I'm thinking of opening a very different type of establishment in honor of my FOO called:

The Loonybin Saloon Where You Don't Have to Drink to Get Drunk!!!!!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The piper must be paid. These things that lie dormant within us must have their say. While it might have killed me, I am a better person and will have a fuller rest of my life (I hope) as a consequence.

I think that, given the lives we all had created, we would have been fine even with what happened to our children had we not seen our Families of Origin again. I have been reviewing the damage caused by FOO once I was vulnerable ~ once my confidence in myself and in my ability to think things through and find answers had been eroded by what was happening with my kids. Had that additional condemnation not occurred, I would have been stronger, more flexible, better able to believe in myself. For those who don't know, when we brought daughter into that first Adolescent Crisis Center at fourteen, D H felt we should of course call my parents. We had called his right away. And you know, I knew better but again, did so at his urging. My mother's first words, quick and awful as that were: "Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you."

And that sent me down that same road we all go on when our kids fall and fall, but with a bullet.

I swear, I would like to reach through that phone line now and break her jaw for having said those words to me.

Oh wait.

I meant pass the salt.

Cedar

Back to you, Copa. Your child was experiencing problems too, when you began interacting with your mom and your sister. Like me Copa, you did all the right and true things but somehow, were left bereft and you were not supported either as you should have been. We both should have been surrounded by women who loved us and strengthened us and who loved our children.

That is what D H mom did.

She even went to that treatment center to be interviewed and defend her grandchild and she told me she was going to do it, too.

I don't know what she said, but I loved that she loved my child enough to do that.

My mother did not visit our child during that two week stay. She did not ask about her, other than to predict, in great detail, what the upcoming bad outcome would look like.

Crazy biatch. Oh, wait. I meant dry drunk. Oh for heaven's sake. I meant pass the freaking salt.



***

That feeling of bereavement; not even grief, and not even complex grief, but utter bereavement.

Remember the poetry?

Taste...ashes
ashes, on the westwind, blown....

What I do know is that our lives will be fuller, will be lived from a depth and breadth of self we did not have access to before clearing this material.

I so resent that this happened to me.

I do.

This is a different take on past events. In the beginning, I did not believe myself. Then, I was ashamed. Then, I was so afraid at the intensity and duration of the feelings.

We kept at it though, didn't we.

Now, I have been angry forever, it feels like.

So, though I keep telling and retelling the same events, I am telling them from a different perspective.

This is working.

Thanks, to everyone reading and commenting.

But I really am quite angry.

 

[BusynMember]

Cedar, I do not know how you can do it. How you might initiate and sustain some sort of a relationship with your mother.

Cedar is a magical person. She is so incredibly nice that she really hurts for her mother's meanness. I'm serious too.

With me it was just not going to happen that my mother and I would ever be close. I was hoping we could be civil, but not close. I was hoping she loved me because I was brought up on "if your mother doesn't love you, who will?" But I did not want a CLOSE relationship with her.

Cedar is amazing in her ability to love even those who are abusive.

I do not have that kind of heart. I feel like if I'm going to give you my very big heart and my enduring love, I at least would like to have it back or else I am going to let you go.

"Keep Calm and Let Go." (And I honestly have a shirt that says it and I wear it a lot.)

 

[BusynMember]

"Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you."

This makes me want to punch her in the nose, Cedar. How incredibly catty and mean for a MOTHER.

But were our mothers really mothers?

 

[BusynMember]

I wonder if SWOT or Insane knows how to print out a thread. If they do not comment I will ask RunawayBunny. She will know.

Did you try covering it with blue (I have no other way to describe it) then copy it and past it say on Microsoft Word on a blank page then print it? I never tried it, but maybe it would work?

 

[InsaneCdn]

Did you try covering it with blue (I have no other way to describe it) then copy it and past it say on Microsoft Word on a blank page then print it? I never tried it, but maybe it would work?

Ok, so I haven't actually done it on THIS site, but... usually? It's an ugly way to capture web data, and usually requires a fair bit of editing, and you can only pick up what you can see in each pass.

For the record "covering it with blue" is actually called highlighting.

 

[BusynMember]

HIGHLIGHTING!!!! Duh.

Did I telled ya I got my hi skool deeploma in a gumball masheen?

Thank you, IC!

 

[Copabanana]

Another comment made in today's in-service...As adults, we make our own decisions, have our own beliefs, our own value systems.....
I was tempted to raise my hand and ask if they would tell my parents this;

Seekingstrength, you did not wait for your parents' consent to marry as one, or to decide and act as one. You did it. Because that is who you are.

You will never, I think, receive their acknowledgment of your right to be a mature women, or any acknowledgement of the harm and disservice they have done these years.

To hope for such puts you in the position of being a child, rather than the woman you are who deserves the respect of all, especially theirs.

I am wondering if you harbor guilt over this, that on some level still you see yourself through your parents' eyes, as having acted badly or defied them. As if still a child.

And deserve punishment, that your mother metes out, still, as if for a 5 year old, not the accomplished and complete woman you. As if you wait still for forgiveness from your Mother for bad acts. Seeing still through your mother's eyes.

You are not that child. Even if your mother wants to treat you as such. What she thinks or believes has nothing in the world to do with you. Now.
___

Cedar, I understand better the difference between your mother and sister, as you see them. Let me see if I can explain: in herself your mother can be mean and malicious but she does not seem to try to incite and recruit others to act with her in her meanness. And she may not plot.

Your sister does all of these things, it seems, and she does it in disguise. While pretending to be benevolent and loving in all ways, she plots, recruits, incites and strikes....with the minions she recruits. Your mother a lone wolf, your mother a guerilla commander with a cross.

So...is it my sister feeding on my mom's dysfunction?

Your sister harnessing your mom's dysfunction to use it in a targeted way, to hurt others to gain her own ends.

There is also an English country club library with good scotch and deep leather chairs and leaded glass windows in the saddlebag.

I like old single-malt, but can drink very little of it, because my stomach got bad. In a brandy snifter. I will drink good English tea and read in the deep leather chairs.

That is where we keep our criminal parents until we decide what to do with them.

I am glad they are safe there. I do love and miss my Mother and still cannot believe she is dead, even though she is in an urn in my closet. With her beautiful clothes lest you think I am abusing her memory. It is a very large and lovely walk in closet with original art framed elegantly and elaborately in a frame purchased by my Mother. She was in our bedroom until I had to hide her from my son. When I am strong enough I will speak with you about what to do next with my mother's remains.

What might it have meant to me, and to all of us, had my mother (and my sister) managed even kindness.

My Mom was kind and warm, but not really. That is to say she could be loving, empathic and compassionate to the extent she wanted to and had control. She was loved by others..as long as she was in a superior relationship...like to cleaning ladies and plumbers and cosmetic sales ladies.

My mother could be enormously kind to me, like when I was devastated when my son's hepatitis worsened. I knew I could count on my Mother for empathy when it suited her and cost her not at all. I do not know how to understand a mother like her. She put herself first in all things.

glass-eyed with hatred

expressing her fury, cruelty and control, regardless of the effect and consequence. I loved her.

I swear, I would like to reach through that phone line now and break her jaw for having said those words to me.

Cedar, what kind of person would strike a person who is down, especially a daughter in agony over her child?

Think about our poor hearts having to twist up and contort in order to love mothers that are as hurtful as were our own.

Imagine the task of developing a self.. to accommodate the hatred and venom of the mothers we modeled...towards us...

Honestly I do not know how we have lived through it. I for one did not flourish before my son had problems. I was always broken but I did my best to act is if I was OK and never stopped striving to have a whole life.

Actually now with M, is the closest I have ever come. But I never had even the fantasy of being alright, because I knew I was not. Even though I did things that made me seem so, I never felt so to myself.

 

[Copabanana]

I woke up this morning and did not want to wake up. I wanted to be alive but did not want to be in the state where I had a consciousness where my ego could drive my awareness or volition. I wanted to stay in a dreamy state where my consciousness was as if washed over me, not imposed by my will or my want.

Because I do not trust myself one bit to treat myself well, to keep my wanting with respect to my son in any reasonable balance (where I do not kill myself with worry). And most of all I do not want to be subjected to the cruel and vicious recriminations within me, as I react inside myself to my failure to anticipate, control, understand, foretell or in any way accept my son's behavior and choices...in a way that feels tolerable.

I cannot get it. I do not control him. I cannot cure him. And it is not my fault. I want a brain transplant.
Or to stay in a half dream state for the rest of my half-woken life. If you think I am kidding, you are half-wrong.

 

[BusynMember]

My Mom was kind and warm, but not really. That is to say she could be loving, empathic and compassionate to the extent she wanted to and had control. She was loved by others..as long as she was in a superior relationship...like to cleaning ladies and plumbers and cosmetic sales ladies.

In other words, she was kind if she felt she was the superior person, which is like a Master being kind to a slave.

But if she thought somebody was "better" than her, and I'm not sure how s he judges since I don't judge that way, perhaps she was competitive, snippy or unkind rather than nice.

That isn't being a nice person. I'm not really sure what it is, but it reminds me of somebody being kind of an animal they own and not to her boss. Not sure my meaning comes across here. Not even sure what I mean. I mean no offense though.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This makes me want to punch her in the nose, Cedar. How incredibly catty and mean for a MOTHER.

Yay! Okay then SWOT, you punch her in the nose and I will reach through time and the phone line and twist her lower jaw right off and throw it away.

:O)

Thank you SWOT, for saying all those nice things about me. But I think I was only nice when I didn't have anger issues. Now? I will probably be tearing jaws off and etc every time someone asks to have the salt passed.



Actually, that isn't true. I'm feeling pretty much good about everything, now that I am seeing the wrongness in those words she said instead of harboring guilt over what she implied and shame that she said it out loud. Again, as is the case in every abusive situation, it would be one thing to have been given some specific piece of information that could be validated or let go. These words my mother spoke were a non-specific global condemnation.

That's a thing that will be so helpful for all of us to remember, I think. The damage done by abusers and predators is less what they say or do than it is that we trust them when they tell us, in one way or another, that we are dispensable humans.

On some level, we believed them.

Somewhere in our psyches, we still do.

That is why we need to keep at it until we can see them hurting us through our own eyes and never again see ourselves being hurt, like dispensable humans, through their eyes.

That is a locus of control issue.

That is an important piece to know.

Anger must mean we are getting to the bottom of it and finally, we see through our own eyes.

Cedar


The imagery connected to that phrase now is my hand, twisting my mother's jaw off.

Oh, look.

Some one has punched her in the nose, too.

Good aiming, SWOT.

roar

 

[BusynMember]

Yay! Okay then SWOT, you punch her in the nose and I will reach through time and the phone line and twist her lower jaw right off and throw it away.